Full disclosure: I didn't watch the game this week due to running low on internet bandwidth for the month. Just caught up on the highlight video and read all the thoughts. Swish cued me in earlier in the day on what happened.

As I think about the shellacking we took last week and what happened in Baltimore, I think many have nailed in what our issues are. National people, locals guys, and people here are seeing Baker's growing pains in trying read quicker vs not throwing it to the first guy.

It's hard for me to figure out what he does on the final throw, but a couple of replays may help us determine how he broke down his decision.

First, here's the replay: (may replace the link later as I'm not sure it's going to stay live...)


It looks like he does want to throw it to Landry but he quickly moves off of it.

Here's the Next-Gen Stats breakdown of the play:


Judging by the movement of the safeties, it looks like they're keying in on his eyes to Landry, but I wager he does this to draw off coverage to Donovan Peoples-Jones. He gives an indication he wants to throw to Landry and he sees the safeties bite it.

He whips his eyes back to the other side, sees DPJ has his man beat, and places it in just the right spot for the catch. Seeing the Bengals defender almost react a second early for an INT makes me nervous every time, but the odds fell in our favor on that one.

These are the decisions he needs to make in order to elevate his game. I hope he continues to learn from the decision making he learned here.

The best part of the play to me: he looked off the safety. That was something he hasn’t done much at all, especially in a big spot

Man, I was all over Baker during the start. I was pissed. I generally consider myself to be someone who doesn't let emotion get the best of him, but that can really go out of the window during the game, haha. I was livid.

That really turned around.

There were a couple times when he had moved his looks around. On the rocket TD to Bryant in the middle, he actually looked to the left before coming back and firing the laser. I don't know if that was by design and he meant to go to Bryant the whole time, or if it was Baker actually going through progressions.

I noticed what you mentioned too about the progressions during the TD pass. I need to go back and rewatch the game to see what else happened.

There were at least 2 TD throws where he looked off the safeties. This is a big deal for Baker.

AND a few throws where he hit a check down ... which was another weakness. Nice job by him yesterday

He was also much better in the pocket. What I'd like to see from him here on out is consistency in the areas we're mentioning.

dude was money after the first quarter...