I think that it's important to note that even with the inconsistencies on offense... The two most important takeaways from this loss are this.
1. This offense is way better than last season's despite having a shit oline. Flacco, did not play well as a whole, but he didn't totally shit the bed either. Say what you will, he tried to get us back into the game and if not for the oline ruining the second half for him. We would've probably come back and won this game. Now, the Oline has two massive liabilities on it. Hurst needs to be benched immediately, he should've never started, the reason they gave was utter bullshit too. Per Ronnie Stanley himself, he's fine. I think he should be good to go. Yanda still needs to knock the rust off, but looked good otherwise. Lewis should get better with more experience, but methinks he's just mediocre.. Told you so. Leaving Skura and Hurst. Well, we bench Hurst that should help open up a running game. Collins himself looks fine, just no line. Receivers look good, hell Andrews looks good. Once good Hurst comes back, I cannot wait. Seriously, you make that one minor adjustment and I think the line becomes adaquate. We do need to find a C though. And I want us addressing nothing but the offensive line next draft.
2. Personally.. I think the defense will be just fine. Say what you will about the Bengals. They lack an oline, but they called a good game, and when you call a good game with the sheer amount of fire power you have, and with a red hot Andy Dalton, well, it's a miracle we were in a position to win the game at all. I liked what I saw from Martindale out of it. He showed an ability to adjust at halftime that Pees NEVER had. Even Harbaugh is saying the CJ injury isn't that serious. So I'm not too worried about that. 10 days, if he's good enough to play, his presence alone is like having another coach on the field. I know that people are going to needlessly complain "nothing's change, one guy goes down".. The QB of the defense went down. I actually understand why that we would fall apart as hard as we did. Mosley is one of the smartest players in the game. Without him, the front seven looked lost, and it took us giving the mic to weddle for the bounce back. Which shouldn't surprise anyone. Weddle is also like having a coach on the field. People are going to give Tavon Young in particular a hard time. He's a good player, a really good player, AJ Green is fucking unguarable. Even Jimmy would have his hands full there. We needed to give him more safety attention there. I suspect that this is more of a growing pain from Wink. Because we played it a lot better in the second half. Unlike Pees, I think Wink can learn from his mistakes and grow. The Bengals schemed the defense perfectly and a lot of their big plays were plays the offense just won. A bad or mediocre team wouldn't have adjusted at all. We did.
This is a loss, but this feels different than any of the losses last year. This is a game where we only played poorly for one quarter. There was a lot of good with this loss, as opposed to past years where we would just blow it at the end. Hopefully, we can learn from it, because if we do, this team is seriously talented. 2017 and 2016, we would've been blown out. I think we got a little cocky post the bills game and it kind of showed. Hopefully this serves as the slice of humble pie.
It's honestly reminiscent of the good Harbaugh teams from 2008-2012. We'd win week one in an impressive fashion, and then lose week 2 to an opponent we should clearly beat, but we either got cocky, or just had an off week. I personally think we are going to be fine.
