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If I'm being positive I'd say I still think we can beat this team, especially with Thuney, Toney and Hardman. But right now they've got our number.
I pretty much agree with the OP but I'd say it's a combination of talent, execution, scheme and play calling .
On talent it's what everyone identified at the start of the season. A RT that blows goats, lack of elite targets outside of Kelce, and most importantly a sub-par DL. I'd probably add poor safety play to that. The DL hasn't been upgraded. Stop Jones and outside of blitzes our DL gets no pressure. I honestly don't know how Veach looked at that line and thought it was enough, maybe he didn't, I think he possibly expected more than, what is it, 1.5 sacks from Karlaftis? I think anyone whose honest would say they expected more. If the other contenders are Bills, Bengals, Miami, SF and Eagles, say, the difference between the talent we have at DL and those teams is night and day.
Our secondary may end up being great with these CBs, but our safeties have been bad this year. I said when Reid came in it would depend which version we got. We've got the last 2 years version of him. Poor tackling, odd coverage misses, just bad. Same from Thornhill through the year. They've been weak links. But that also points me to scheme. Spags is a blitz wizard and he's great at developing average CB talent into solid, cheap players. But sometimes it feels like he puts too much trust in players to just man up against elite WRs. Just bracket Chase for heaven's sake. It's a tough ask expecting a rookie like Williams to deal with him, just give him help and take away that target. I get that Higgins is another WR1 but I do not understand our approach to defending this team, it's the same result over and over again. Offense it's play calling. If something works, do it until it stops working. It feels like we overthought it at times, the run game is working, keep it going, don't second guess it.
In terms of what we can do in-season, I guess we're stuck with Wylie. Who knows maybe Bell comes back and helps as support, maybe Niang magically becomes the answer. Probably it's next year. If Toney and Hardman get fit I think our WRs will be fine this year. Our DL...nah, we're going to have to hope for the best. Karlaftis isn't making a breakthrough this year, Clark is who we thought, Saunders is bizarrely over-hyped, Nnadi is a corpse. There's just not a lot of scope there until new guys come in.
Bengals are still in their golden period of a relatively cheap, elite QB. They can build a roster that realistically it's far harder for us to. But we're close, and I still think we can beat them. It's not all doom and gloom
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