Captroop

Honestly the way the Bengals are playing is my answer to anyone saying we need to tank and draft a QB. "We need a top 10 QB" My answer will always be, "behind what line?" This is not a QB driven league. That's erroneous thinking. This is an Offensive Line driven league. The Bengals are starting 4 different O linemen from their Super Bowl team. Now Joe Burrow looks like Jimmy Clausen. And every QB who has looked good today, you know what the commonality was? Time in the pocket. Cam, Teddy, Sam, Baker. They've all looked mediocre. And yet people want to pursue ANOTHER QB? That will magically be the answer? What's that old saying about the definition of insanity? Until we have a line, we won't contend. Period. You will not succeed in this "Top 10 QB driven league" if your QB is constantly throwing from a collapsing pocket. When the Bengals have the same record we do after today, you'll believe me.

The rose tinted glasses are off and smashed. And someone pissed on the shards. I've given Rhule every benefit of every possible doubt because I so wanted this team to be successful. This should not only have been a W. This should have been a blowout. To be 0-2 in the softest part of our schedule is inexcusable. I'm on the band wagon. Fire Rhule. If we win a game it will be in spite of him not because of him. It's maddening that were in week 2 and I've already completely lost hope for the season. And I'm as blindly optimistic as they come. You've got to be a special kind of awful to make me start thinking about how we're going to rebuild in the off-season in week 2. And you did it, Rhule. Congrats on achieving the impossible.

Hell no. Here's what I saw today: the Browns are strongest where we are weakest. The Browns have an incredibly strong rushing attack, and our Run D is weak. The Browns have an incredibly strong pass rush, and we're staring a rookie at LT. Ickey looked raw, but going up against Myles Garrett in your first regular season action is a very tall order. Honestly, until we play the Rams and Aaron Donald, I don't think we're facing a pass rush the likes of which we saw today. And by that point, Ickey will be a salty veteran by comparison. Similarly, I'm not sure we're going to face a two-headed rushing attack like we dealt with today. I don't know what Nick Chubb is covered in, but they should bottle it and it would outsell KY jelly. I saw a lot of fight in the team today, and I wouldn't throw in the towel after 1 week.

I don't think it's code; I think Fitt was pretty transparent with his comments. They're Panthers right now because they haven't received an offer good enough to consider trading them. The FO isn't actively shopping them, but if someone comes up with an offer we can't refuse, we won't.

Honestly, I thought Chandler would be cut for that sack attempt alone.

Is it just me, or does anyone else hear a clown nose honk in their head when squeezes his junk? It's just me, isn't it...

He looked woefully out of his depth. And a few more training camp reps were not going to make the difference. I want to see a silver lining here, but losing a year of practice really will hurt his development. What he will need to do is spend the year watching, and conditioning, and conditioning, and conditioning. He's very talented, but he's more raw than I expected him to be. So a year riding the bench with no expectations will be good for him. But as others have pointed out, if Rhule isn't hear next offseason, I doubt his future will be with us.

So PJ probably the backup for the first 3 games. Doubt we'll need to call on him anyway.

1) I disagree, when so much of what people are giving him crap for ITT have nothing to do with his coaching on Sundays, and 2) If that's the case, why do we have this thread in late August?

People complained nonstop Corral wasn't getting enough reps. And in his second game his foot snapped like a toothpick. All of a sudden bringing him along slowly starts looking like it was the right call. Is it not giving them the reps, or is it letting them get up to speed an minimizing opportunities for an injury. If Ickey had ruptured his ACL after getting all the training camp reps, what would you be saying then? "Rhule's an idiot for throwing him in too early against our first team?" I'm willing to accept that as a fan I'm not privy to everything going on behind the scenes and all the decision-making that goes into why a camp is run the way it's run. And I'm going to give the head coach the benefit of the doubt that he knows more about how to do it than me. Curious about what you're seeing here. Phil Snow put together a solid defensive group last year. He needs to improve Red Zone D, but I'm by no means ready to jettison him. So why hold that against Rhule? He's cut out the college disciplinary, "take a lap" nonsense, and from what we've seen, ran a very professional-level camp We have depth at positions where we didn't have depth last year We have an NFL OC Anything else, I don't know how you judge his coaching until you see how he coaches in regular season games

I agree. He doesn't have the under-qualified coaches anymore. He's not doing the DBO nonsense. He's improved in every area he was skewered for in the past. So people can either continue to hate him because of the past, or choose to see the trajectory as improving and wait until the actual season to judge him on the things a coach should actually be judged for.

Shoulda shoulda shoulda What are you seeing right now, leading up to the 2022 season that is 2 weeks away that is worse than last year? Is he, in your honest opinion, continuing to make the team worse?

This post. The one you very cleverly responded to by writing "lol"

I literally spelled them out point for point on the last post you quoted me on.

And I'm someone who believes that you can't judge someone for not performing well in a bad situation. And rationalize however you want, but the Panthers were in a bad situation. You're stepping into the post-Cam, Post-Luke, Post Gettleman/Hurney 2.0 era. That's a mess you have to clean up, and it was never going to happen overnight. That's a New Years Day in Times Square level mess. If you want to look at 2020 and 2021 assume that's indicative of his future performance, that's fine. I'm judging by what I'm seeing in 2022, and it's correcting a lot of his mistakes in the past. The only arguments I'm hearing at all against Rhule are "shoulda." He shoulda done this, he shoulda done that. Well that's the past. It's a new year. If he flops he flops. But I just don't have a reason to be as pessimistic as people in this thread choose to be.

Okay, if you're going to bring up rookie mistakes as failure in coaching (as though we hold rookie players to the same standard) then I'd counter that not repeating those mistakes is representative of a positive in terms of his coaching ability. He didn't build the O-Line. The GM and the available free agents did. And that's not even a slight on Fitt. There was no one on the market we could practicably get. ...And really? Cam is the hill you're gonna choose to die on? Are you really going to hold up not renewing Cam as a failure of coaching? Knowing what we know now, moving on from Cam was 100% the right move. And Teddy was really the only option. Rhule made mistakes, I grant you, and from where I'm sitting he's not repeating them. However, regardless of what his moves were, no one was coming into the situation in Carolina and succeeding the last 2 years. NFL-experienced coordinators or not, he would have been rolling with broken down Cam or Teddy, and the best O-Line the FA market would bear out.

Refute me, then.

The truth is there's not a single NFL head coach, who could come in and get more than 5 wins in the first two years with the team and the roster Rhule had. No offensive line. A total of 10 games out of 33 with CMAC, and starting Teddy Bridgewater and Sam Darnold at QB. You show me any coach in the NFL who could have simply coached a team into a winning record in that situation and I'll show you a zero calorie cheesecake. You can't. Because there isn't one. He's contributed to improving the roster, he's replaced his college coordinators and assistants with people with real NFL experience, and he's cut out the "DBO" coaching young men nonsense. He's improved in every area you all were bitching about last year. So I guess the only solution was to move the goal posts further. 5-win seasons suck, but I'd much rather believe we have a coach trending in the right direction than wishing for him to fail. I'm not saying I have full faith in Rhule. I am saying you all have an impossibly high standard for success, and want to speed run to another tear down and reconstruction. Because that's so fun as a fan to endure.

Honestly, the strength of our schedule. I think we've done as much as we could to be successful this offseason, and the strides we've made are very impressive. But it might not be enough if some of the teams continue on the trajectory they were last year, or get hot at the right time. I look at our schedule and, damn, I wouldn't even call the Lions a gimme this year. We have to run through the NFC West that could produce 3 playoff teams. The easiest games we'll have all year are probably in our own division, but considering what a crap-shoot division games are odds-wise, I wouldn't count on them either. My concern, is we have find ways to win games that on paper we should lose. At least we're only playing the Bills in the Preseason!

You are not well.

That's the BEST case?! Holy poo it's embarrassing that you people call yourselves fans

Have fun.

So Corral is just that bad, then?

This. This. Only this. The end.

I'm not a Corral doubter. But holding up Matt Corral's rocky NFL debut and weak foot as evidence of failure of Rhule's coaching is dumb. In fact it shows he was right to bring him along slowly. His job isn't to pave the way for a third round QB. It's to get an NFL team ready for a 17 game NFL season.