Skins v Bengals week 3 preseason thread

Agreed, he wasn't playing 100% at all. That's fine, he'll be ready. But at the same time you'd like your best player to be a leader by example and pull his unit up !

Side note watching the 2nd half right now: Moreau, Nicholson and Holsey looking good... and Galette is out there! Good to see him healthy.

I admit, on TW, I wonder (thinking too much as Scheed would point out) if the fact that KC didn't sign a long term deal affected him. I think he has always been an emotional player, I think of RG3's first year when TW would have cleared blocks 10 yards down the field for him, and then later when he didn't even pick him up off the ground. Not that TW would let KC get hurt on purpose, but I remember reading comments that TW was not happy KC wouldn't commit.

Maybe Jay is taking the Joe Gibbs approach to the preseason. Keep the offense vanilla and try to work on plays that are more designed to be successful depending on the physicality of the players executing those plays. Where as, the real bread and butter, chain moving, explosive plays will be unveiled in week one?

Otherwise, I have been very unimpressed with the starters in preseason - on both sides of the ball!

Preseason is such fool's gold. Little to no game planning, play calling is vanilla, effort is definitely questionable at times, small sample sizes, etc.

Stay medium folks.

Yeah I remember the Osaka days. Ole' ball coach was trying to win the SB in the pre season..

Preseason is such fool's gold. Little to no game planning, play calling is vanilla, effort is definitely questionable at times, small sample sizes, etc.

Stay medium folks.

Right. Simply put, you're not going to have your stars making any great efforts out of fear of getting hurt. Look like Julian Edelman for instance. Out for the season with an ACL. There's been others lost for the season. We need these guys healthy and 100% by game one.

Yeah I remember the Osaka days. Ole' ball coach was trying to win the SB in the pre season..

We need to create a preseason HOF. Ryan Grant, lets induct him first. Marko Mitchell you're up next.

Perine has gotten like 15 carries this pre season as a rookie and everyone already want him basically cut.

I don't want him cut, but he sure didn't really impress, even for being a rook. I guess
Mack is a goner.

Right. Simply put, you're not going to have your stars making any great efforts out of fear of getting hurt. Look like Julian Edelman for instance. Out for the season with an ACL. There's been others lost for the season. We need these guys healthy and 100% by game one.

We found some late round gems it appears, in Chase and Holsey. That's how you build a team quickly. Oline in general better take these next couple weeks seriously in practice. Its go time!!

Cousins needs to get his swagger back. Grab Dan Snyders head and rub the shit out of it.

Agreed about the value of preseason. However, throughout the Gruden regime, this team has been a slow starter and nothing I have seen this preseason gives me hope that this has changed.

While I fully understand and completely accept that preseason play is absolutely not a reliable way to predict a team's in-season success, and, in fact, it can be incredibly misleading about the same, it is disconcerting to see the lack of crispness in any aspect of the team, particularly as they come out of the gate.

If they had been sharp in the opening series, gotten a first down, maybe hit a nice pass downfield ... sure, preseason is preseason, so, as a starter, you hit a good play, clock it internally as, "okay, got this. Now not going to get injured," and take the rest of the game easy. But ... the starters weren't crisp out of the gate or at any point in the first quarter. In fact, the offense didn't get things together late in the 2nd half when most of the Bengals were probably "don't get hurt" mode.

IMHO, under Gruden, this team rarely comes out of the gate strong and focused. Whether for a single game or the start of the season. It's a disturbing trend and this preseason has done nothing to allay my concern on that particular issue.

I like Gruden. I don't think he's a bad coach. I don't think he coddles players or otherwise refuses to hold them to account. At the same time, I just don't see evidence that he has the "it" factor either. While the players apparently generally like and respect him, I am not impressed by him as a motivator.

In an admittedly unfair comparison (different eras, salary cap, etc.), I think Gruden is on a par with Gibbs as an X's and O's guy. Yes, Gibbs' was an innovator, etc. and has the edge, of course, but Gruden is not a slouch in that department, runs very good schemes, and can come up with creative ways to attack opposing offenses. However, when it comes to adaptability and motivation, and based on what I have seen, Gruden has not shown himself to be in the same class at the very good/great coaches.

Almost from the first game, Gibbs demonstrated an ability to scrap a failing game plan and come up with something on the fly that countered the opposing team's counter to his original plan. Hell, when Gibbs came to the Skins, he was the offensive mind behind Air Coryell and looked to install that offense here. Five games in, he scraps that and becomes a run-first coach behind Riggins. He literally abandoned his offensive philosophy to create a new way of winning with the tools at hand. Throughout his career, he was famous for his halftime adjustments. There are tons of anecdotes of him creating new game plans / counters on the sideline.

I just have never seen that kind of in-game creativity from Gruden.

Then, and more importantly to the slow starts, there was Gibbs the motivator. Players didn't just like and respect Gibbs, they would run through brick walls for him. He KNEW how to make players play their best from the first play to the last.

Again, I just don't see this kind of inspired leadership from Gruden.

He's a solid coach and he has been a winner. It's only year three, so I remain hopeful he will turn the corner on these two skills. Preseason is useless as to judging the first (adaptability) and a limited predictor of the second (motivator), but I just am not seeing anything that makes me confident that improvement is occurring on either front.