You are pretty much spot on, a game we should have easily won and gave through lack of clutch performance and conservative play calling in the end. Great teams put away games like this early one, good teams put it away in the 4th by throwing for clutch yardage or scores when everyone knows you are running it and mediocre teams to exactly what we did tonight. I can take a game like last week where Chicago played well enough to win but todays game, there is no excuse, I am sure there will be many who will say it is still early and it is but that does not mean it should be OK to lose games like this, someday this team will develop a winning is the only option attitude and then they will be tough to beat until then we will see a lot of games decided in the 4th.

I’m only now calm enough to type.

I agree with you on the 4th and 4 call (although it’s a bit much to say it decided the game). The chances of not making it, then giving the Bungles a short field, were too great. It would have made more sense to go for it when it was 4th and goal from the one.

On Sweed: he pretty much did the only thing that could have caused him to drop the ball—-he landed full force on his elbow. If he pulls the ball into his chest and turns on his side or back, its an easy catch. Even better: stay on your feet! I actually think a light may finally come on for him after that, the way it did for Santonio and Nate Washington after they dropped too many balls in their first years. I still think Tomlin should sit him for awhile, and concentrate on developing Mike Wallace. Time to give McDonald a chance too. Let’s see if Limas has the character to claw his way out of Tomlin’s doghouse and earn some playing time. Or, if he is the offensive equivalent of another failed second rounder, Ricardo Colclough.

I don’t think the coaches (besides BA) are blameless. Besides the 4th and 4 call, it looked like the kick off return team was unprepared at the end. Shouldn’t the idea have been to get out of bounds as quickly as possible? Or, if they decided to go for the homerun on the kickoff, why not run set up a lateral across the field? It looked like the defensive line was really tired at the end. Aaron Smith almost had Palmer on one play, but he was out of gas. I didn’t pay attention, but how much substituting were they doing on the line in the second half? Woodley looked gassed too. If he could have gotten off the ground, he could have batted down Palmer’s pass into the end zone. Also wondering if conditioning is a factor in the D’s late game breakdowns.

Parker and the running game disappeared in the second half. Not sure what happened there without watching again, but it looked like there were Bengals in the backfield on most of his runs. It seemed like they didn’t run as much play action and no screens in the second half, and something like a shovel pass might have been worked.

I happen to agree with there is no need to panic, there is never a time to panic. I also don’t believe in saying it’s ok to lose games like today’s. Last week at least I thought the Bears played a decent game. Today we were obviously the better team. I agree with great teams overcome adversity, this is not adversity, this is a self inflicted loss, great teams dont’ do that. Great teams put this away in the first half and spend the second half with their ears pinned back shoving it down the Bengals throats. We are not a great team, yet.

not blitzing palmer on pretty much their entire last drive was a poor decision. one sack to move them back 7 or 8 yards and cost them a down couldve easily been a drive killer. it may be that he’s afraid to put some of our DB’s on an island if the blitz doesn’t work. regardless, sitting back and hoping we can get coverage sacks was obviously not the solution.

I think the lack of blitzing is a direct result of trying to protect our weaknesses. It worked pretty well most of the game. Most will want to put this on the defense and to some extent you can but I put more of the blame on the offense for not finishing. BA obviously doesn’t know what to call in the redzone, especially deep in the redzone. He needs to start studying what highly successful redzone teams are calling and incorporate some of that into our offense. A team should be able to win most of their games with a defense who gives up 43 pts. in 3 games. The offense needs to stop leaving points on the field plain and simple.