2011 Season Preview: Cincinnati Bengals

AFC North – Bengals
Summary:

Last year the Bengals were an average PossessionPoints team with an offense that ranked 16th and a defense that ranked 14th. Despite these average to above average numbers the Bengals managed just a 4-12 record. We would classify this as an underperformance and we would expect some bounce back in record even if there were to be no improvement in performance. That is a good thing because with the loss of veteran quarterback Carson Palmer and wide receivers Chad Ochocinco and T.O. we are actually lowering their offensive numbers by 10%. We left their defensive performance unchanged.

It is going to take some serious coaching by Marvin Lewis to get this team to make the playoffs and we are forecasting a 6-10 record. We color this “yellow” which indicates that we wouldn’t be surprised to see the Bengals in the playoffs but we would be surprised to see them in the Super Bowl.  

Room for improvement:

There is plenty of room for improvement, the question is how realistic are their prospects to improve. Can we really expect an offense led by Andy Dalton at quarterback to outperform last year’s Palmer led team? So we decided to see what would happen if the offense just matched last year (0% change) and we improved the defense by 10%. That sent the Bengals projected record to 11-5 and got them the wildcard playoff bid we said wouldn’t surprise us. 

How they could falter:

When you revamp this much on an offense there is always a chance that there will be a learning curve. So if we drop the offensive performance by an additional 10% to a negative 20% and drop the defensive performance by 10% the Bengals projected record falls to 4-12. 

In the Bengals case we are forecasting an expected performance much closer to the downside then the upside. So it seems the Bengals have a pretty good base of 4 wins and they build from there. Playoffs?  It is possible, but probably not this year.

Biggest Question Marks:

Quarterback. The Bengals didn’t want to be in this position, they wanted Carson Palmer back but it looks like Andy Dalton is going to be their quarterback for 2011. We bet all you fantasy players are rushing to add him to your teams for this year aren’t you? No, we didn’t really think so. Hey, surprises happen every year and perhaps Dalton will be this year’s surprise. Bengals’ fans can only hope this is so.