These are my initial observations, made without watching the game a second (third, fourth) time yet.
Excellent game plan and play calling by Cameron.
Flacco looked like he has much of the preseason. Calm. From what I have read, heard, seen, he comes off as the type who learns from mistakes and doesn't make the same mistake twice.
Was given the ability to check off to other plays (probably very simple ones), but was able to read the defense on several plays and get the Ravens into a play that gained yardage. Didn't audible into a four yard loss, for example.
As stated earlier, there were several balls that could have been caught that would make his completion/yardage stats look better. Todd Heap dropped a TD pass, and Ray Rice dropped a pass that could have gone for big yardage.
There are some plays that you can tell that Flacco is a rookie. His reads were sometimes slow, so that by the time he threw the ball, the defender was able to make a play on the ball. His footwork on handoffs needs to improve; he needs to get the ball back there a split second faster. Might be part of the tradeoff of having a QB of his size. Both of those problems are correctable.
The 38-yard TD run came on a busted play where Flacco missed the handoff. He had the presence of mind to realize where the blocking was, and his run was the type of thing that gets a team and home crowd behind him. (The crowd was chanting "Let's go Flacco!" several times during the game; the type of thing we haven't had around here since the C-O-L-T-S and Shake and Bake chants of the mid seventies).
Even bigger was the double reverse that Mark Clayton scored on. Flacco made TWO(!) blocks downfield.
All in all, as good a performance as one could hope for in a first start.
The offensive line provided good protection overall.
Rice and McClain were okay in the running game. McClain was somewhat of a surprise; while he had carried the ball several times in the preseason, I did not expect him to get 19 carries. The majority of his work came in between the tackles, while Rice ran a lot of sweeps . I will have to go back and watch this again. I don't believe Magahee was really ever going to play. It was close, but I think it was more of a cat and mouse game with the Bengals to make them think he was going to play.
Heap looked like a guy who had not played in some time, which of course he hasn't. Fumbled the first time he was hit, dropped a TD pass. Need improved play here. Went down in the 4th quarter when he landed on a players foot, but came back in later in the game.
Cincy looked bad. I do think that some of the issues were coaching. Marvin Lewis was hell bent on establishing the run, even when they couldn't run. I had heard him on Sirius talking about the run game and how they were going to run, but seeing is believing. The play calling was suspect; the only time the Bengals got into any rhythm all day was when they went to a hurry-up offense mid-way through the 2nd quarter, only to never be used again.
Palmer had no time on several passing plays. Many of those came in obvious passing downs, as the Bengals seem to run A LOT on first and 2nd down. I will go back and look at this again.
Chad Johnson was a non-factor. TJ was covered by Suggs on a lot of passing plays, and wanted a Pass Interference flag on at least two of the incompletions thrown his way.
