I had a tree fall in my backyard this past weekend, so the good news is I was too busying cutting and hauling wood to give much attention to the Bengals’ ridiculous 48-10 mauling in Minneapolis. Luckily, I guess, the game was over by halftime, after a ridiculous turnover spree handed the Vikings 24 points in a nightmare first full game with Jake Browning at the helm. I had my work gloves on during the second half’s garbage time.
Somehow, the Bengals lost three fumbles after the two-minute warning. Three! I don’t recall ever seeing that in football, so of course it had to be the Bengals doing it. It wasn’t the fault of a bunch of rookies or backups, either—trusted vets Ja’Marr Chase, Noah Fant, and Samaje Perine coughed up the rock. Toss in the two picks thrown by Browning, one returned for a touchdown, and there is really nothing left to discuss.
Sadly, one cannot simply ignore or wish away that stretch of incredibly poor ball security. Avoiding giveaways, as coaches and talking heads remind us about 899,485 times each Sunday, is the most important aspect of the game. That may be slightly overblown, but certainly a team can’t play so ridiculously as Cincinnati did in Minny and hope to avoid a blowout loss.
Fortunately, there is a strong likelihood that the display of butterfingers was an anomaly. According to Bengals offensive coordinator Dan Pitcher, the team entered Sunday’s game having fumbled five times over their previous 800 snaps, and it took 900 snaps to lose three fumbles. Both happened against the Vikings over a span of just 35 plays. They fumbled on three of the last six plays of the half, losing them all. Forcing fumbles is a skill, but recovering them is luck thanks to the pigskin’s oblong shape. The Bengals were both godawful and awfully unlucky—and that included, as I worried about, facing Carson Wentz, a decent if unspectacular backup, and not the overwhelmed J.J. McCarthy. Cincinnati still has never won in Minnesota, so it was always going to be a tall task even with Joe Burrow playing.
The best thing we can collectively do as a fanbase is flush the game and move on. The general case in the NFL is that teams who look terrible one week respond with a good performance the next, and vice-versa. That holds true even in a small sample like Browning’s starts. Remember his first full game in relief of Burrow in 2023? If you don’t, I can’t blame you. It was no offensive masterpiece, though the Bengals had just one turnover, an interception, in a 16-10 loss to the Kenny Pickett-led Steelers. Cincinnati ran for all of 25 yards that afternoon. Then the offense performed much better over the next few games, although good defenses still stumped them.
Next up is Denver on Monday Night Football. The Broncos have a good but not elite defense (14th by DVOA, 11th against the run, 14th against the pass). The question is whether Cincinnati has enough offense to threaten them. The Bengals’ rushing attack through three games has been atrocious, to put it kindly, a consistent bugaboo of the Burrow Era that’s simply hard to countenance for longtime fans used to always having a good O-line and a strong run game. (Speaking of which, Godspeed Rudi Johnson, who sadly committed suicide this week in Florida.)
Per Next Gen Stats, Chase Brown has -54 yards before contact so far. Negative 54! We’ve seen this before, with Joe Mixon in particular, where Cincinnati backs can’t even be competitive because they’re crunched almost immediately upon handoff. Zac Taylor and the coaching staff catch a lot of heat for this situation, much of it deserved, though it’s also true they have a history of adjusting midstream and finding ways to improve the ground game, at least somewhat. Lord knows they can’t be worse.
Denver’s pass rush can be ferocious, as Justin Herbert found out on Sunday when he took a beating from Nik Bonitto and Company. We all remember when the Broncos sacked Burrow seven times last December. Both Cincinnati and the Chargers beat the Broncos in those games, however, largely thanks to rollercoaster play from Denver QB Bo Nix. His first three games this season have been mediocre at best, with forced throws, happy feet, and missed opportunities, which he lamented on camera during the Chargers game. Nix completed just 3 of 9 passes on attempts of 10-plus air yards (-18.1 completion percentage over expectation, per NGS), a huge reason behind their narrow defeat.
Of course, Nix was worse in his initial foray as a rookie last season before improving, and he certainly is looking at the Bengals as a “get-right” game. Denver’s main issue has been a horrendous third-down conversion rate, just 12-of-37 (32 percent). They’ve been getting behind the chains and into difficult lengths to make on those third downs, with penalties and ineffective runs on the early downs a killer. Sound familiar?
Cincinnati’s main focus will be to continue that trend. Oddly enough for a 48-10 blowout, the Bengals defense wasn’t bad on Sunday, just placed in consistently untenable positions. Provided the offense gives them something to work with, there is no reason the D can’t help backbone a win in Denver, much as they did in a 15-10 win at Mile High in 2021 that keyed the Super Bowl run.
Cincinnati has a weird history in Denver. They lost their fifth-ever game by a field goal there in 1968, and the Bengals didn’t even host Denver between 1982 and 1996, with five straight in Colorado, all losses. The infamous missed PAT game on Christmas Eve in 2006 that cost the Bengals a playoff berth was emblematic of the series, as was the “Brock Osweiler Game” in 2015, when Cincinnati blew a 14-0 lead to B.O. and lost in OT, costing them a playoff bye and setting up that year’s wild-card debacle vs Pittsburgh.
Still, the Bengals have won their last two at 5,200 feet, including that 2021 win. Yet with Browning at quarterback, the Joker’s Wild element is constantly in play—there is simply no good way to predict what he’ll bring to the game, mainly in terms of the ratio of good throws to poor decisions. It’s certainly a lot to ask for the Bengals to win as touchdown underdogs, but hardly impossible.
Browning’s best work came under the bright lights of MNF and a stand-alone Saturday game in 2023. If he is to recapture any of that magic, now is the time to do so.
Robert Weintraub heads up Bengals coverage for Cincinnati Magazine and has written for The New York Times, Grantland, Slate, and Deadspin. He guests on Mo Egger’s radio show every Thursday in the 5 p.m. hour. Follow him on X at @robwein.
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