Did the Bengals Improve Enough to Beat Baltimore?

The season’s best offensive performance so far got Cincinnati into the W column, but here comes old nemesis Lamar Jackson.
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OK that’s out of the way. Cincinnati put up its first win of the 2024 season at last, beating old pal Andy Dalton and the Panthers 34-24 on Sunday in Charlotte. They’re still behind the eight ball at 1-3, but there is now some daylight to sink the 10 off a carom.

Sunday’s attack was mostly excellent. Cincinnati piled up 373 yards split about two-thirds passing and one-third rushing and averaged 7.5 yards per pass and 6 yards per play overall. Eight different players caught passes, Ja’Marr Chase turned in a huge play, Tee Higgins was steady Eddie, and the usage of running back tandem Chase Brown and Zack Moss was balanced and effective. Erick All got the bulk of the action at tight end, and the team played with huge chunks of two and three-tight end sets, allowing them to become more difficult to defend.

This is the offense I’ve been talking about seeing Cincinnati develop these past few weeks. Even amid the misery of the 0-3 start the team’s transition into a balanced attack and scheme was underway, as we’ve talked about before in this column. Granted, Carolina wasn’t the stoutest of opponents, but putting up 34 points in any NFL game is worthy of note.

The Bengals have now run the ball for 120-plus yards in back-to-back games for the first time since December 2022; they hauled it for 124 vs. Washington and 141 in Carolina. They continue to excel in advanced metrics on the ground: The third-ranked rush offense in the league by DVOA, for example. But they’re nothing without Joe Mixon! Child, please. With Amarius Mims now firmly established at right tackle (and he was very good on Sunday), this will hopefully become a season-long trend.

For all that success, the game was far more even than I would have preferred. Indeed, it reminded me of a game two years ago against New Orleans in the Superdome, when the Bengals were 2-3 and on life support before Chase took an innocuous looking pass and turned it into a long touchdown. It was later in the game, but otherwise there were tons of similarities. Cincinnati went 11-1 after that game (counting the postseason), turning their early-season struggles into a distant memory.

Bad tackling helped the Bengals’ cause on the Chase TD Sunday and elsewhere, and for once the shoe on the other foot. It sure helped that another old pal, safety Nick Scott, slipped when trying to tackle Moss on a dump-off pass with seconds to go in the first half. Moss scored, giving Cincinnati a fortunate 21-14 halftime lead. The Bengals then scored on the first drive of the second half, giving them 14 points in the “middle eight” that was crucial to the win.

In this case, Dalton played a game that was pretty familiar to all of us: heady and efficient, with some excellent throws interspersed with a killer turnover and some plays he simply couldn’t turn into gold because he’s a limited talent. Still, the way Red and wideout Diontae Johnson picked on Cam Taylor-Britt was worrying. Indeed, the guy we assumed was the lone given in the secondary was “benched” for D.J. Turner. CTB didn’t sit out the whole game but was replaced in the base defense and played just 35 snaps (Turner got 51 and Dax Hill 61). It’s OK in that I enjoy having three good boundary corners. But outside that sensational interception in K.C., Taylor-Britt hasn’t been good. In 19 targets he’s given up nine catches for 191 yards and two touchdowns—what chunk plays the Bengals have surrendered have largely been on CTB through four games.

Another given in the back end, Vonn Bell, did have the big interception (off a deflection caused by, natch, Trey Hendrickson), but he was a sieve in run support, an area where he’s supposed to be a hammer. These are the kind of things that continue to hold back the defense overall. For all the excellence the Bengals showed on offense, the Panthers had very similar stats. Again, the lack of pass rush (exacerbated by Hendrickson’s stinger) was apparent.

One good sign was Kris Jenkins and his club hand playing stout on the inside, in particular on the fourth down stop at the goal line that prevented an early Carolina lead. In retrospect, it may have been the play of the game because it allowed the Bengals to grab the 7-0 lead they’d never relinquish rather than playing from behind. With reinforcements hopefully coming (Myles Murphy and McKinnley Jackson for the first time, B.J. Hill back from injury) the D-line rotation will hopefully get closer to what it was meant to be before the season.

Still, no “comeback” from 1-3 will be possible without some sort of defensive improvement. The unit really took off after that aforementioned Saints game in 2022, but it hasn’t been good much since. Indeed, as measured by DVOA, the stretch from the 2021 postseason through the 2022 postseason seems like an outlier under Lou Anarumo. (Remember, negative is good when it comes to defense.)

2019: 13.4% (30th in the NFL)

2020: 8.3% (26th)

2021: -0.6% (16th)

2021: (including playoffs) -7.9% (7th)

2022: (including playoffs) -11.5% (5th)

2023: 5.5% (23rd)

2024: 7.9% (22nd)

Needless to say, only a sterling defensive effort will suffice against the No. 1 offensive team in football, Baltimore, Sunday at Paycor. (Cincinnati’s offense is No. 3, by the way.) Lamar Jackson and Co. crushed the Bills in a dominant display last week to improve to 2-2. In general, it’s always better to play a team when they’re coming off a blowout win rather than a blowout loss, especially among contenders. Still, it was disquieting to see Derrick Henry look 22 years old again while the Ravens’ defense clamped down on the previously high-flying Buffalo offense.

Baltimore’s offensive line remains in a state of flux, which is where the Bengals need to establish some sort of neutral buoyancy, if not actual dominance. Jackson will no doubt be his usual frustratingly elusive self, though the Cincy D has generally been able to corral him of late. But if the Ravens can simply line up and slam away for 271 yards rushing on 8 yards per carry, as they did Sunday night, no amount of Joe Burrow excellence will be able to offset them.

One good thing is that Mike Macdonald is now on the Seahawks sideline and not coordinating the Ravens’ defense, because his masterful disguise work confounded Burrow as no other D has the last couple of seasons. Where Pittsburgh and Cleveland have slowed the Bengals’ attack by simply outmanning them up front, Baltimore has done it with scheme. (Of course, Roquan Smith and Kyle Hamilton are tremendous players.) New DC Zach Orr hasn’t yet fully established a reliable style, but Baltimore’s man-to-man coverage was excellent against Buffalo after struggling early. They scarcely played any of the dreaded Cover-2 concept, and it worked in part because Hamilton is so versatile.

They won’t play nearly as much man against Chase, Higgins, and the others, so expect to see plenty of zone that will rely on a Springsteen-style Brilliant Disguise. You’d rather have Burrow in the diagnosis chair than just about anyone, and with the O-line in as good a shape as any of Joey’s career the Bengals certainly stand a fighting chance to offset Baltimore’s myriad difficulties. It will come down to the defense—no one expects a shutout, but steady tackling, some key red zone stops, and preventing the big plays will be critical in finding a path to victory.

A defeat and a 1-4 record still isn’t a death blow to the season, but 2-3 and tied with the Ravens after five games would feel a whole lot better.

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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