I haven't yet seen the Bengals game but Rashad Coward is getting a lot of positive reviews for his play at RT.  Many are saying he's doing well enough, given his very limited experience, that he could be the replacement for Massie at RT next year.  I haven't seen the Bengals game yet although there is a replay at 7am.  Anyone here take notice of Coward and how he played this past weekend?  It sounds as if he had a ton of snaps.  If true it would appear the coaches are definitely giving him a chance to learn the position and perhaps stick on the final roster.  He's someone to keep an eye on as we get reports back from practices in Denver and then the game. 

     

To me watching the game, even though Coward was playing against lesser competition, the difference between him and Massie was night and day. Massie is slow and on skates. Coward looked better in both pass pro and run blocking. He pancaked a D-Lineman on the Mizzell TD run. 

 

Mizzell TD Run, Coward pushes his defender deep into end zone then pancakes him

Compare to Massie:

 

 

 

 

 

 

I finally got to watch the game, at least the first half and focused on Coward.   He definitely moves much better than Massie and his power was evident on more than one run block.  He still looks tentative in his kick step and maybe his hand use so he's clearly thinking his way through things.  With experience that should smooth out but for now he's just a better athlete than Massie so he can recover quicker from mis-steps.  

On 8/15/2018 at 11:29 AM, AZ54 said:

I finally got to watch the game, at least the first half and focused on Coward.   He definitely moves much better than Massie and his power was evident on more than one run block.  He still looks tentative in his kick step and maybe his hand use so he's clearly thinking his way through things.  With experience that should smooth out but for now he's just a better athlete than Massie so he can recover quicker from mis-steps.  

Just think what you said though, Coward looks better than Massie (who is a long time vet). Coward is a newly converted DLineman. Once some things become instinctual, he is going to be really good.

46 minutes ago, adam said:

Just think what you said though, Coward looks better than Massie (who is a long time vet). Coward is a newly converted DLineman. Once some things become instinctual, he is going to be really good.

We'll know a lot more tonight.  At this point we're almost a month into the camp/preseason so I hope a lot of the basics are getting habitual for Coward.  More importantly he's had two games' experience and film study to learn from and now two days of practice against some good Dline players in Denver.   He should be much more confident in his ability which will slow things down on the field.