It’s rare that a hard-fought (if sloppy and needlessly close) victory over the hated Steelers carries so little oomph in Cincinnati. They’re ordinarily celebrated regardless of circumstances. Since I feared the Black and Gold would end our season in typically brutal fashion, there was certainly a large measure of relief in Cincinnati’s 19-17 win Saturday night in Pittsburgh—and it Jesse Jackson’d the Bengals season (“Keep hope alive!!”) for an additional 17 hours.
The achievement was rendered moot about the time Kansas City released its inactive list for the finale against Denver, a game K.C. needed to win for Cincinnati to advance to the playoffs. The game Sunday against the Broncos was over so quickly it made a mockery of the countless hours we Bengals followers have spent over the last month gaming out scenarios to squeak into the seventh seed. There was never even time to work up any stress over the outcome, a 38-0 Denver blowout. Andy Reid may be indifferent to his own cardiac care, but he’s looking out for yours.…
With three weeks left, the 6-8 Bengals needed seven games to fall their way: Win all three remaining games, have Denver lose all three (including one to Cincinnati), and have the Colts and Dolphins lose to one of the horrid teams left on their schedule. We got all but one, thanks to Kansas City turtling so hugely they should relocate to the Galapagos Islands.
So the Bengals finish 9-8 once again, their fourth-straight winning season, if you care. Zac Taylor is now just 14 seasons behind Mike Tomlin! Whereas last year’s January boredom in Bengals Nation came with a giant asterisk thanks to Joe Burrow’s wrist injury, 2024 can only be described as a gigantic, embarrassing failure. The team scored 28 points per game and received Canton-level seasons from Burrow (who led the NFL in passing yards, completions, and touchdowns); Ja’Marr Chase (who captured the receiving Triple Crown of yards, receptions, and touchdowns); and Trey Hendrickson (who led the NFL in sacks)—but they aren’t among the 14 teams competing in the league’s postseason tournament.
It was, in many ways, an unprecedented season, and sadly not in a way any of us will remember with much fondness. Heads needed to roll, and that’s what happened on Black Monday. Zac Taylor was spared, not surprisingly, but defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo; two of his position coaches, Marion Hobby and James Bettcher; and offensive line coach Frank Pollack were thrown to the alligators. These moves were obvious and necessary.
I don’t need to tell you how poor the defense was this season, but here are some numbers just in case you are feeling bad for Anarumo:
• 26th in points per drive
• 27th in DVOA
• 29th in EPA per play
• 30th in Red Zone TD percentage
• 1st in WTFs per game. OK, maybe it only seems that way.…
Cincinnati’s defense also committed far more penalties than it had in recent seasons, including 24 “passing penalties” (holding, illegal contact, pass interference)—easily the most in the Zac & Lou Era. Then there were the missed tackles, the botched coverages and communications, the lack of pass rush from anyone other than Hendrickson (who had 17.5 of the team’s 36 sacks), the late-game letdowns, the glaring lack of development from the highly drafted defenders, etc., etc., etc. Frankly, the third & 4 Justin Fields run in the first Steelers game was a sackable (pun intended) offense by itself.
As I’ve pointed out many times before, Anarumo succeeded over a small if highly important stretch of about 25 games from the 2021 playoff run through the 2022 AFC title game. It’s been memory-holed, but the defense in the ’21 regular season was average; remember, several weeks before the magical playoff defeat of the Chiefs, the game that made Anarumo’s rep, K.C. and Pat Mahomes hung 31 points and 414 yards on Cincinnati even though the Bengals won in a shootout. (Both games were master classes in halftime adjustments, in fairness.)
“Big Lou” foiled opponents for a brief window of time, when he had a lineup of vets who were experienced in his complex system. He didn’t adapt when some of those vets departed in free agency or slowed a step or three, and he was unable to refashion his unit to be effective when new players, drafted specifically to fill those roles and make the defense younger and cheaper, took over.
As for Pollack, he too lived off a slice of success (Joe Mixon’s big rushing year in 2018) and failed to bring the O-line up to respectability for most of his time on the staff. Yes, he was dinged by bad luck in 2022, when a solid unit suffered a wave of late-season injuries just in time for the biggest games of the year, and this year, when tackles Orlando Brown, Trent Brown, and Amarius Mims all struggled with injury. It’s unfair to say he did a terrible job. But the guard play this season was atrocious, the run game he coordinates has never been an outright strength, the drafted players (save Mims) never emerged, and Burrow has taken far too many hits in his career. Again, not all of that is on Pollack, but a change is certainly worth making.
The good news is that, for once, a late-season surge didn’t result in the front office shrugging and thinking, “You know, maybe these guys are getting the hang of it.” One shocking, sensational but ultimately meaningless fourth down bomb back in 2017 rendered all of 2018 (and by extension 2019) moot; you simply can’t flush away any more of Burrow’s prime, and it is progress—small but apparent—that the Brown/Blackburn family recognizes this truth and performed the needed coachectomy.
These moves, of course, take the parachute away from Taylor. Even with the Bengals’ fabled patience, ownership cannot accept repeated slow starts, questionable in-game management, and personnel decisions any longer. Burrow was visibly frustrated throughout much of the season, and only winning will appease him. Generally speaking, coaches who win Super Bowls get to fire assistants and stay on the job, while coaches who don’t (even ones who come excruciatingly close) don’t. It’s been said a million times, but once more, with feeling: No coach/QB combo has ever won its first NFL title together after five years have elapsed. The 2025 season will be Year Six for Taylor and Burrow. The pressure on Taylor to get it done going forward will be enough to implode a deep-sea submersible.
Unfortunately, there are many, many more questions than answers as we embark upon the offseason, even with Burrow around to erase so much of the buffoonery around him. How do we fix this mess going forward? I’ll attempt to tackle (more pun fun!) that topic in next week’s column.
Robert Weintraub heads up Bengals coverage for Cincinnati Magazine and has written for The New York Times, Grantland, Slate, and Deadspin. Follow him on Twitter at @robwein. Listen to him on Mo Egger’s show on 1530AM every Thursday at 5:20 p.m.
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