This is not their full Super Bowl preview (which comes out Thursday). But an interesting pre-preview...
Full article here. Some highlights:
- Bengals offense has been much better in weeks 10-17 and the postseason than they were in weeks 1-9
- Rams defense has gone from good to great since week 10 (including playoffs)
- Rams offense stepped back in the 2nd half the year from being top-2 in weeks 1-10 but has been excellent in the playoffs
- Bengals defense was not good all year but has stepped up in the past two games vs. TEN and KC
- The two offenses use empty set backfields more than any other teams. But this might be one of the game's biggest mismatch areas- Rams offense was 4th best in empty backfield production, Bengals defense 28th; Bengals offense 15th, Rams defense 3rd.
- Rams pass rush win rate (especially Donald) was excellent while Bengals pass blocking win rate was terrible as a unit and at all 5 OL spots individually.
- Rams ranked 29th in DVOA against passes in the short middle of the field. Including the postseason, the Bengals rank seventh in offensive DVOA on passes in the short middle of the field. Troy Reeder played 59% of snaps for the Rams during the regular season and 86% or more of the snaps in each of the last six games. so he's usually been sitting in the middle. Hence, perhaps, the move to Weddle getting the green dot (and Jones presumably playing more ILB snaps.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/08/2022 11:12AM by LMU93.
