Real, real sick of the toxic positivity brigade in here after every abominable pants shitting saying “its just one game we’'re fine.”
We’ve lost three very winnable games out of 10 so far. We play in the toughest division in football and have an extremely good Bengals team in 4 days with several impact players almost certainly out. If we lose that game - and I’d favor the Bengals right now - we’re 7-4 with a chance to be in last place by the end of next weekend.
If you still think that’s fine and we have a chance to make it up, well, no. We have the second toughest remaining schedule of any NFL team. at Jags, at Niners, at Chargers, Rams, Dolphins, and Steelers are left. We’ll be lucky to go 3-3 in that stretch. Couple that with a Bengals loss Thursday, and we’re 11-7 on the season. At best. That’s not winning this division. That may not even get us a wild card given how easy the rest of the division’s easy schedule.
Thursday’s game is as high-leverage as it gets. And the only reason why is because we didn’t bank wins against dogshit teams - the single most important thing to do in the NFL - when we had the chance.
My first thought is that there’s no possible way in the world we end the regular season 11-7 because there aren’t 18 games. If we went 3-4 down the stretch right now we would be 10-7. I may end up having a nice snack on my foot for this, but I think we’re more likely to go 4-3 or 5-2 during that run and end up 11-6 or 12-5. Also, I understand if you’re leaning towards the Bengals winning Thursday. I get it, and you may very well be right. Still, they just got beat by a team we held to 9 points and put up 25 against. They don’t seem to have improved dramatically since opening day, considering they’re barely over .500 right now.