My "bads" for the game:
1. Offensive line. Not going to beat on a dead horse. Everybody knows they sucked. Was more concerning to watch our Tackles get beat on the outside frequently also, which isn't normal.
Like most, I'm hoping its a product of just needing to play together longer and gel. The cavalry isn't coming to save us (i.e. we're not going to magically trade for some stud mid-season), so this unit (and its depth) is what it is. They either play better, or they don't, and it'll be likely the thing that stops us in January.
Will point out that we played two pretty good fronts through two weeks. Chiefs are pretty good up front, but I don't think they're as good as Houston or Cleveland. Pittsburgh's front concerns me a lot more than the Chiefs do.
2. Tough blow for Tavon, but its not a death blow. We'll learn over time to play without him, just like we did every year Jimmy went down. Everybody is pointing back to 2014 as a barometer, and that's accurate. We lost Jimmy mid-season (the only good Corner on our team), and Ben lit us up for like 5-6 TDs in Pittsburgh the next week. We played them two months later in January, and beat them (largely dominated them) in their own building, with one of the worst secondaries this team has ever seen. He's a good player, but if he's our downfall, then we weren't that good to begin with.
3. I think we've had an "interesting" two weeks on offense. The first half yesterday had me scratching my head, because I couldn't figure out what we were doing. It seemed like Roman is doing one (or both) of two things:
a) just assuming that every team is going to stack the box, so come out throwing or
b) assuming that because Cleveland did that, Houston would also.
I saw some heavy fronts, but nothing close to what I saw from Cleveland. I don't know why we didn't run the ball more in the 1st half, especially when it was clear that our Oline was getting pushed around. If we literally have a strategy of "throw early, get a big lead, run late", that's not going to work against actual good teams. And we better be able to adapt.
I came out of week 1 thinking we were now the most difficult team in the league to defense on offense, because you didn't know when we would run or when we would throw. And that may be true, but we're getting a lot more 3rd and long situations than we had last year, and that's not good for an Oline struggling with pass protection.
For me, its actually kind of comical. We've largely had the game in the bag by mid-to-late 3rd quarter through two weeks, and I don't even think we're playing like SB-level great.
Defense gave up more points, and yet I thought they were significantly improved from week 1. Forcing turnovers, creating a ton of pressure, did a great job stopping the run.