[MTK]

Enough clues were there that things weren't quite what they seemed with the defense and the team overall. Look at some of these wins last year.

Week 7: 25-3 over Dallas. Andy Dalton and Ben DiNucci at QB. Dallas was 2-4 at the time. If Dak was healthy, who knows. Probably a much different ball game.

Week 11: 20-9 over the Bengals. Burrow was balling before he got hurt. Finley came in and was terrible. Bengals were 2-6-1 at the time.

Week 12: 41-16 over Dallas. Andy Dalton at QB. Dallas was 3-7 and in a free fall.

Week 13: 23-17 over Pittsburgh. Legit good win IMO. But Pittsburgh seemed due for a loss and hadn't been playing that great coming in. But hey, there were 11-0. Again, legit solid win.

Week 14: 23-15 over the 49ers. Nick Mullens at QB, enough said. SF was 5-7 coming in.

Week 17: 20-14 over the Eagles. We know the story here, Hurts gets pulled inexplicably, Sudfeld comes in and is terrible. Philly was a bad team, 4-10-1 coming in.

I think it's safe to say that if Dak played in both of those games, we probably lose at least one of them. If Burrow doesn't get hurt, we perhaps lose to the Bengals. And if Hurts plays that whole game, we again could have easily dropped that one too. Not crazy to think we were close to being 4-12 and completely different expectations for this year.