Cincinatti is very elite, don't kid yourself. If Dalton did not get injured god knows how far the Bengals would have gone.. I would have taken them over Denver or New England.

And I like a lot of what I have seen from Pittsburgh even without Leveon. I'm sure am glad we don't play in that division that's for damn sure.

 

Cincinnati is not "very" elite. only a crazy man would have bet actually $$ to pick them over either Denver or New England, especially the way Denver played to end the season.
Cincy is a very good team, but they beat 3 teams in 2015 with winning records. couple that with them losing their coordinators and some talent, I don't see them improving at all.

 

They would have won if Dalton had not gotten hurt.

 

That's possibly true IF Dalton played in the playoffs as well as he played in the regular season. We're never yet seen him play well in the playoffs so that's a "prove it first then I'll believe it" kind of thing.

His regular season passer rating average is 88.4, but in 4 trips to the playoffs he's had 51.4, 44.7, 67.0 and 63.4 ratings for an average of 57.8. That's consistently poor, so I'm not convinced playoff Cinci is the regular season Cinci even with Dalton (until proven otherwise).

 

Well, we need to start beating the Bills and Jets first, before worrying about the rest of the league. Can't win the wild card finishing 3rd and 4th in the division.

 

I would prefer we just win on our own merit regardless of that other teams do or what happens to them.

 

the loss they had was brutal. I mean they had that game in their palms and fumbled it away.

 

People were looked like they were crazy betting on Denver with Peyton's noodle arm leading them.

 

That is your opinion and you are certainly entitled to your opinion. I have yet to seen Dalton play well in any playoff game and therefore even if he had been 100% healthy in the playoffs last year. I still don't think the Bengals were better than the Patriots or especially the Broncos.

Until Dalton shows he can play at a high level in the playoffs, he remains a huge question mark for a Bengals team that is very talented at a number of positions.

 

Whats the proof? I agree that Hue could be a big loss but outside of the QB position (and its probably not even fair to add that disclaimer anymore) the Bengals are one of the strongest teams in the league. Hiring good coordinators is a part of the head coaches job, you can't fault him for that. He should get a lot of the credit for building such great team. And his team still outperforms the Vikings and Chiefs.

 

Andy Reid coaches the Chiefs.

The Vikings in Zimmer's tenure have become a better football team than the Bengals imo.

They were a chip shot FG from giving the Seahawks a 1st Rd exit.

That defense is on point.


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IMO, the AFC has a ton of talent and potential.

Denver, with that defense, is elite.

The Pats, with me at QB, and their cheating ways, are still elite. Like in 2011, they won't miss a beat. However, I don't see them making it to the SB, with or without Brady. They will win the AFCE, however.

Steelers, Chiefs, Bengals, and Texans will all be really good teams.

 

I agree.. with Dan Marino at QB (assuming you meant yourself in the 80's or early 90's) Pats are definitely elite.

 

I'm talking 8 Super Bowl wins...haha

 

I highly doubt that. Bill B changes the gameplan every week, and remakes the entire offense every couple of years. People say Brady made Bill, and others say Bill made Brady.

Both are correct.

Dan was not a complete qb. He's the best passer to ever grace the game, but as a QB, he was lacking a bit.

 

The only thing he lacked was a defense and running game. ANyone who thinks that Marino wouldn't have won multiple SB's on the Pats of the 2000's is either a Jets fan or delusional...I guess that's redundant, but I think you understand. lol

 

I think Belichick is smart enough to tailor his offense around the talent he has. You give him Marino, I bet he finds WR's like Duper and Clayton to maximize Dan's deep ball. I doubt he forces a dink and dunk offense on Marino.

And we know Belichick can put together a good defense, OL for protection and a running game year after year, so yeah I think Marino wins at least as many SB's as Brady has. Would he win 8 in 15 years? Probably not.. this is the NFL in the salary cap era and it's tough. But 4 for sure and he goes to 6-8 SB's IMO.

 

You really are selling Belichick's MO short. You forgot the Game of Thrones level scheming and cheating.

 

It would be glorious if we seize a win in Foxboro early.

I see the Seattle game as a trap game for the Seahawks quite frankly.

Pittsburgh needs to have their asses handed to them for like a decade...

 

I'm sure there is a deflator like person that will get messages to him.

 

Good teams often need a fair bit of luck to get over the hump. Don't quite think we are in elite or SB territory yet, but it can't hurt to have other teams dealing with negatives. You take what you get.

 

i'm glad you are all getting excited about the season, but I'll keep the brakes on for a bit until the team actually takes the field and shows something.

 

Dan was glorious from 1984-1986/1988.

You know he never led the league in TDs after 1986? He only hit 30 once, after 1986? Did you know Steve Young led the league in TD's more times than Dan? Playing in the same era, Steve Young had a HIGHER TD% than Dan? Insane right? Dan threw more passes, and a 5.0% TD rate. Steve Young threw half as many passes, 5.6% TD rate.

Dan was GLORIOUS until 1986/1998 (depending on where you want to cut it off). After that, he was decidedly good, but not great anymore.

1991-1996 Steve Young was off the charts (I'm talking individually, not even team accomplishments).

Dan was the greatest pure passer the league has ever seen, But as a complete QB ... let's just say he lacked the study and work ethics of today's top QBs. Dan was notorious for sleeping in the film room and even talks about it. "Just find the open guy and let it rip" was his MO.

 

Borrowing from the Tannehill supporters ; Dan's teams were way more sucky then Young's teams

 

Marino was not a complete QB, but given the right situation he certainly could/would have won multiple SBs. He lost his SB against a better SF team. IMO we would have won the SB against Chicago if we'd gotten past NE in that AFC Championship game. As great as Chicago's D was they had a weak secondary. We weren't the best team, but we were a nightmare match-up for them.

And I would say the only elite team is NE. I consider Denver and Cincy good but not great teams. IIRC Denver lost their second best pass rusher and a starting LB. I felt that last year their pass rush was only great sporadically. A small drop off there can have a big impact. I think they'll need more from their QB this year to repeat last year's run. While I'm not one that believes in "clutch" or "non-clutch", I do believe that you need more physical ability when going against better teams. I think that Dalton has struggled in the playoffs b/c he lacks the arm to challenge better secondaries. You often see weaker armed QBs mistakenly get that "non-clutch" label. The issue isn't that they can't handle the moment, but rather that the windows are smaller. I also expect Cincy may drop off a bit with the loss of some very good coordinators. That being said, I could easily see us stealing an early game in NE. I'm not predicting anything until I see how the respective teams look on the field, but NE often starts out slow, Garapolo is an unknown and division games are often tight.

 

I agree somewhat, he wasn't the student he could've been, without a doubt, and 87 was also a great year for him, he only played 12 games and still put up 3200yds, 26 TDs to 13 INTs, but the team around him was getting worse, Duper and Clayton were worse than Dan in their laz a faire attitude to the game.

When he came back from injury he really worked at it, and it showed, that was another great year, 92, also had a good WR corps, he was leading a bad to avg team to .500 records and better, and I'm not sure Young could've done that.

Young was surrounded with HoF talent, on a truly great team, he had the GoAT, who was taking 7yd slants and taking them to the house, and being honest, he kind lucked out a couple years with 25 and 29 TDs leading the league, he only threw over 30 twice, compared to Dan who did it 4 times, and in 87 if he played 16 games it would have been 5.

But as I said, I do agree that he could've been a better student.

 

People under-estimate the importance of the team around a QB. In TB, Young was considered a bust (3-16 record, 11 TDs and 21 INTs, <55% comp %). Walsh saw that the talent was there. Young surrounded by a great team and coaching was arguably the GOAT.

As for Dan, I think his intelligence was a weakness. I spoke to him in '87 (might have been '88) and asked him why he didn't work on his play action more. He told me that he felt he needed the time to read the defense and couldn't afford to look away long enough to sell the play action. As instinctive as he was, I never found him to be particularly smart on the couple of occasions I spoke with him. Dan was very good at his pre-snap reads which does take a certain amount of study. Where he struggled was his post-snap reads. I think he had difficulty processing the defensive change quickly enough. Dan played in an era where most defenses didn't shift their coverage post-snap. NE was one of the few teams that did back then and Dan struggled against them. It was the same tactic that SF employed in that SB. I always assumed that they noted how Dan seemed to struggle most against NE so they just stole the tactic.

 

We've got several inside stories questioning Dan's intelligence. Reinforces how special he was physically, and instinctually. He's the guy who can hit a fastball 500 feet every time, but has trouble with a changeup.

 

It also has to be noted that Dan's technique was as good as it gets, Bill Walsh thought he had the best technique ever.

His lack of intelligence goes all the way back to his reportedly very low wonderlic score, and might not have been very smart, but no QB ever came out of the box like Dan, he was a true prodigy.

 

I recall hearing DCs complain that they would be in the perfect defense, Dan would throw it to the guy they expected who was perfectly covered, but it would still be completed.