More Bengals game post mortem

A few more notes from the Bengals game:

Bengals did some interesting things that we have to prepare for in the future and that will give the coaches some ideas to work on. Here they are:

They did more than "just" bring a safety down to play 8 in the box to stop our running game. They played 5 DL-men AND occasionally brought a safety down to play sometimes 9 up at the line of scrimmage. Why, you might ask, did the Giants not pass when Bengals went into these formations? It's because the Bengals also blitzed frequently off of these formations, coming with all out blitzes at times, leaving only 2 guys back in coverage. This looked almost like a variation of the Buddy Ryan 46 defense of the 1985 Bears. Giants have to figure out how to handle this better. One way would be to go to max protect and only have 2 WRs running in patterns. Another idea would be to let them come and run a screen. Bengals used this tactic, I assume, because they didn't have confidence in their db-field and had to take chances. Their DB's no doubt were instructed to play aggressive and hold if they get beat deep, which they did twice (the only two times Giants tried to go deep until OT).

I would have more confidence in Spagnuolo figuring something out for the defense than Gilbride for the offense, but I think we have very good coaching on both sides of the ball and we will work it out.

As a practical matter, most teams are not going to play this way, because it is too much of a risk, but we have to fgure it out anyway.

On offense, Bengals played 3 WR formations much of the game. They made a lot of plays to Chatman on short quick passes. This did two things: it got the matchup they wanted, with Chatman vs. Dockery. It also got the ball out of Palmer's hands quickly before our pass rush could get to him. I think we may be seeing Madison in the game more often. Dockery had a rough game. He has good speed and can run down the field pretty well, but he had trouble with the short slants that Chatman was running.

The other play that Bengals did several times that worked well against us was the little WR bubble screen. Two WRs on one side block for the 3rd WR who gets in behind them. Once we stopped it for a loss, but they worked it effectively several times. Patriots made a living on this last year with Welker and I guess Chatman is a similar type WR. Not great speed or big and powerful, but he is very quick and we had trouble stopping this.

The running stats will show that Bengals did OK against us, gaining 102 yards on 27 carries for a 3.8 average. But 23 of the yards were gained by Palmer on 3 scrambles. If you take those out, the numbers come down to 3.3 yds per carry. And if you really want to get technical about it, 25 of those yards came on one play, the TD run, which was very well blocked and which S Michael Johnson got out of position and did not contain on the outside. If you take out that 1 run and the scrambling by Palmer, Bengals gained 54 yards on 23 carries for a 2.3 yd average. I guess it's dishonest to take out one long run, but it does demonstrate that we were not getting pounded in the running game.

The TD came in a passing set when we were in a dime package with only one LB in the game. Ross, a very good tackler, was out with shoulder injury for that play and Michael Johnson was playing close to the line of scrimmage. Johnson did not play the run well, Perry got outside of him for the score. We have to work on that formation. Either Michael Johnson has to get better in his run contain repsonsibilites or we have to move rookie S Phillips closer to the line of scrimmage. He is a deadly tackler. But he is also more athletic and better cover guy than Johnson.

I figured this out about our other S Butler. He has decent speed and he knows what to do, but he does not have good body control and he has terrible ball skills. Whenever there is a long pass play against us, look for Butler in the area. On the TD to TJ Houshmenzadeh, Butler was right there, giving deep help to Pierce who had the short zone. He was right on the guy but when he jumped to make a play on the ball he could not control the point where he launched into his jump and when he reached for the ball he could not get to it. TJ easily grabbed it away from him. This was a similar play to the Superbowl when Pierce was called for PI right before Patriots first TD. On that play, Butler blew the coverage entirely and left Pierce without deep help. On the play against Bengals, he was in position, but he could not make a play on the ball. Palmer tried another pass into the endzone to a TE who was being double covered by Dockery and Butler. The pass should never have been thrown into double coverage but Palmer tried it anyway. Butler was giving deep help, should have been able to come up and make an INT or bat the ball away. He didn't but fotunately the TE dropped the ball as Butler grazed his arm from behind. We have to fix this situation on defense. Kenny Phillips has to get more playing time.