11/19/24: Mo Egger with Shawn Syed

Shawn Syed of Sumer Sports and the Stats and Scheme podcast broke down the Bengals/Chargers. 

Better him than us, right?

He joined us on ESPN1530.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm sure after this past Sunday night was very entertaining.
Let me start defensively, the Chargers look, they commit to
the run. They ask Herbert to do maybe a little
bit more than the average quarterback, but not as much
as the Bengals asked Joe Burrow to do. And yet
that offense for much of Sunday night, certainly in the
first half, looked unstoppable.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Why we the defense, it's a really simple defense, and
that they're going to drop to their areas in zone coverage,
They're going to be sort of stationary, and offenses are
just too good with how they attack that you're asking
them to solve a relatively simple problem. And when you
have a quarterback like Justin Herbert, it almost doesn't matter
who's playing receiver there because he can throw the ball

(00:39):
into any window. So I don't think they did enough
to make Herbert's life hard at all. And when they
did sort of change things up a bit, you start
to see Herbert just scrambling and just causing problems. So
you know, obviously such an unfortunate part of the season.
There's too many runs where guys are getting caught a
little bit inside, where the defensive line is just being
totally moved. Of course, you get injuries in the second
area as well to end this game, and just you know,

(01:01):
all in all, No, We've talked for a bunch of
weeks now, and it feels like sometimes it is the
same thing over and over.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
So Cam Taylor Brick gets benched, which is problematic for
a lot of different reasons. Part of it, you just
referenced that the lack of depth in the secondary. Also, look,
this was a guy they were counting on to be
their top corner this year and it just hasn't worked out.
When you watched him and you honed it on him
on Sunday, how glaringly bad was he?

Speaker 2 (01:26):
You know, it's just not good enough. It's tough obviously,
cornerbacks like a year to year, they have a lot
of volatility where you know, maybe you look at some
snaps in the past and see some good things there,
but you just can't lose your one on ones kind
of over and over. And it feels like on this
defense as a whole, when guys feel like they're playing
the wrong assignment or you just have two players in
the same position and that's like a clear sign of hey,

(01:48):
I'm not one hundred percent or who is wrong? I
can guess who is wrong. I know someone is wrong.
It just it feels like the communication is such a problem.
And then when you include individual performances that are just
you know, not the best, it's such such a rough
situation as you start to think forward to well, how
do you rebuild this defense and what sort of answers
do you have for the longer term?

Speaker 1 (02:07):
Yeah, I mean, look, I think if you were to
ask most fans here about the Bengals defense Bengals defense,
they would say, well, you know, Trey Hendrickson's great elsewhere, eh,
is there is there anywhere else on that unit where
you could say there's a player worth building around.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
I mean, I guess I personally don't think so, based
on what I've seen on the film. I certainly don't
think it's the other defensive end position. I think they've
had a bunch of struggles with that. I think that
when you look at how teams rebuild and you think
about the Bengals being so good on offense, maybe it's
you have to hit some you know, home runs in
the draft unfortunately, or maybe you can get some free

(02:45):
agents to sort of come in and even if they're
not like all star, you know, Henderson level players. No,
you just need competence on the defensive end. If this
defense was like the nineteenth best defense instead of like
the twenty ninth, then we're talking about a playoff team
because of how good the offense is. So it feels
like you hope that you're able to just you know,

(03:06):
make it, you know, the sum of the parks kind
of going forward.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
Yeah, I think that's the frustrating thing, right. We talked
about that here a lot during the offseason. They needed
to be better defensively, but they didn't need to be
the Steelers, right, They didn't need to be the Chargers.
They didn't need to be, you know, have a top
five or ten defense. They needed to be somewhere middle
of the pack. And the inability to even come close
to that is is very frustrating. We've seen Joe Burrow

(03:30):
do Joe Burrow things in games the Bengals have lost.
He's averaged more than three hundred yards in the seven losses,
eighteen touchdowns, two picks, but he is getting hit a lot. Schematically,
is there anything the Bengals can do to keep him
from getting hit as often? As he is without compromising
the production.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
I am glad you mentioned that, because I mean, in
that game against the Chargers, they were some big hits,
and like that's something you can see filing. You see
it on TV right away. Obviously he gets shaken up
a little bit there. It's tough because the Chargers did
a good job finding way two double team Higgins and
Chase and look, the Beneles had two touchdowns on double teams.
But their offense kind of necessitates Burrow hanging onto the

(04:08):
ball a little bit. You're kind of sifting through things
and figure things out. Of course, you'd hope for just
better offensive line play, particularly from those interior spots. I
guess I'm just worried overall. The margin Frerer is just
it's so thin, Like it is a fantastic offense because
Joe Burrow is playing lights out and then you know,
you miss just two deep throws, two deep connections, and
that's sort of enough. And of course I don't want

(04:29):
to forget like in this game of the whole entire
week eleven, they had the three most unlucky plays between
the two miss field goals and then that drop interception
late in the game, so It's it's rough, mo because
there's so much good that you see on the film,
and I can only imagine fans that have been through
this for a year every year. I mean, I'm eleven
weeks deep here and I'm already thinking like, oh man,

(04:49):
the bye he gets up ahead. You know, we get
a week off from a film, we get a little
bit of a break, and I don't know, maybe things
fall a little bit further in their direction because I mean, look,
I said they were going to be a playoff team,
and I certainly felt that out the time. But the
way that literally the ball bounces or hasn't bounce has
been so outside of the Bengals favor and you know,
they're not doing themselves any favorites either.

Speaker 1 (05:08):
Yeah, Bengals need a break, and I think a lot
of us need a break from them. Sean Saide is
with us on x at Sayat Scheme Stats and Scheme
Podcast as well as the Monday Morning Mashup column for
Sumer Sports. Let me mention something that you just referenced here,
and that's that's luck. Now, in a very sort of
non analytical way, we could talk about teams being unlucky

(05:29):
and lucky. You know teams benefiting from a call or
a team being hurt because of a non call. But
there's a way to sort of quantify luck, and if
you can, because you're a smart guy, I want you
to walk me through how you guys do that.

Speaker 2 (05:45):
So there's a thing just called win probability, which look,
I think when you watch a game you can feel
the swings of it. Rather it's like a touchdown is
going to increase your win probablity of course, right, you
know a fumble interception is going to hurt it. And
then you have the plays where it's not that a
field goal is a tossup situation because it's not. There
are like percentages that field goal kickers have right when

(06:05):
you base it on your kicker who has been historically good,
the percentages are usually high. And then you have plays
where it's a miss field goal or specific examples are fumbles,
right where causing a fumble is one hundred percent of skill.
It's more I think in the analytical world that it's
hard to predict from year one two year two, like
is that going to stay constant? And so when that

(06:25):
kind of changes on a pretty rapid basis, I think
the analytic usually look at it is Hey, you know,
luck might not be the best word, but it's just
less of like a predictable thing. So when you have
dropped passes, when you have fumbles, when you have fumbles
with the balls on the ground and look, either team
can pick it up, or things like dropped interceptions or
those sorts of situations where that is the difference in

(06:46):
a lot of these games, like the difference in this game.
I mean, obviously the Chargers go down and score at
the end, but if you make those field goals where
it's not like your field goal kicker is this bad kicker?
And you know, across the league certainly kickers have had issues.
When you just look at things like win probability and
the swings of things like turnovers where you're gonna have
a game when you have a lot of turnovers, you're
gonna have a game and you have no turnovers. It's

(07:07):
not that it's fully luck, but when you look at
just how probable like things and events are adding to
a team's ability to win. You know, I do I
like love how you know, nitty gritty and the numbers.
It is maybe not, but when you take it at
the season level of how the Bengals are kind of
lucked out in some ways and had bad luck in
some other ways. It's an unfortunate kind of mess.

Speaker 1 (07:25):
Yeah, No, I think that's that's well put. I want
to fling it back to the offense here. So you know,
we know Burrow is great, and we know Jamar Chase
and t Higgins are awesome, and so I think a
lot of folks look at what the Bengals do offensively
as pretty much solely a byproduct of having those three
elite players and almost independent of the scheme, the system,
the play calling, et cetera. I say that to ask

(07:49):
you this because he gets he gets a lot of
criticism for his play calling, and I think sometimes it's overblown,
and then there are times where I think it's it's
well deserved. Is Zach Taylor a good play calling?

Speaker 2 (08:01):
You know, it feels like it's Zach Tayler and Joe
Burrow together because Joe Burrow is checking things at the
line and Burrow's getting his offense into the best situations.
As always, I guess when I think of like the
top player callers, and the NFL back killer is certainly
not you know, at the top of the list. I
do think that you want to build the ecosystem around
the quarterback, and but we see like little things kind
of tried here and there where it's Jamar Chase in

(08:23):
the bathfield. I guess I want to give some credit
because you're allowing the quarterback to do so much. You're
putting him in the situation to make some of those
big plays, because I would be surprised if you bring
someone else in there, how much are they really going
to change it? Because it's it's Burrow's offense, Like it
has to be Burrow's offense. It should be Burrow's offense,
and it should continue to be. I guess I kind
of hesitate when it's a really really good quarterback. Just

(08:46):
who to give credit to? I always lean the player.
I would, you know, if I think about like Chuck
May and Matt Stafford together, like some of the plays
that they had kind of cooked up together, those passing concepts,
I felt like I like those a lot more. Now,
of course, you have different weapons with the those guys,
but overall, you're you're still looking at a Joe Burrow offense.
I think whoever is kind of there, You just hope
that the person that's calling plays is able to you know,

(09:08):
add just enough easy buttons, whether it's just being things
a bit easier for Brow and maybe you can convince
Bro because you know he certainly likes to be in
the shotgun, Like can you get him to commit a
little bit just you know, some under central looks, or
just teaching your run game in a little bit of
a different way where you're taking some stress off of
just an excellent quarterback.

Speaker 1 (09:27):
Well said, as always, next week, no Bengals game, but
I still want to have you because I'm actually going
to ask about other teams and we can take a
little bit of a mini break from the Bengals, which
I think all of us need.

Speaker 2 (09:39):
Well, I agree with you. I think all of us
could use that. I'm looking forward to it.