There have been several gut punch losses already this season, but Sunday’s depressing 37-17 loss to Philadelphia was different. This one invoked a hopeless feeling that the 2024 Bengals are outmanned, second-best on the sidelines and at most positions save quarterback, and the issues at hand are too fundamental to be fixed. Worse, it felt like many pre-Joe Burrow seasons, with a competitive hope that drifts away as the game progresses and the flaws continue to be exposed.
The Eagles produced 397 total yards and nearly seven yards per play, another example of a good offense cutting through the Bengals D like a chain saw. Philly went under center for 21 snaps and threw for 142 yards out of play-action. There is an element of Saquon Barkley terrifying defenses and the rest of the offense taking advantage, but as we saw in the Ravens game the Bengals actually contained the opposing star runner for most of the game.
Barkley had 53 yards on 13 carries before the game-turning fourth down stop and 55 yards on nine carries after. But the same old issues in pass defense arose, with the safeties ceding huge openings in two-deep coverage, the corners beaten in man coverage, and the linebackers in Nowheresville play after play.
Mainly, and worst of all, once again there was no pass rush at all. As always, if Trey Hendrickson doesn’t get home, the opposing QB is able to shred the defense at will. He was terrible on Sunday. Fred Johnson, the fill-in at left tackle who couldn’t even make the Bengals, got the best of him. Trey is certainly allowed to have a bad game here and there—he seems to throw in a stink bomb once a year when facing a replacement-level tackle like Johnson.
Hendrickson is probably exhausted from carrying the defense all season. I mean, how does he run halfway to Kentucky on the long bomb to DaVonta Smith that was the eventual winning-TD. (Are we sure Smith caught that ball, by the way? I remain dubious.) But no one stepped up to offset Trey’s struggles, as usual.
Strictly in terms of the big picture, Cincinnati somehow remains alive in the AFC playoff race, despite the 3-5 record. The Bengals have scored 195 points and allowed 203 after eight games—in other words, they remain on their pace of losing every game by a single point on average, just where it was a month ago. The rest of the conference hardly terrifies, and the Bengals are just two spots out of the seventh seed, with their main competition being highly flawed clubs like the Colts, Chargers, and Broncos.
Still, Cincinnati’s play overall hardly inspires confidence that a playoff push can occur and, if one were to happen, they can do anything in the postseason. The defense remains atrocious, especially at home against any offense worth a damn. All you need to know is that the Bengals forced New England to punt five times in the opener. In the three home games since, they’ve forced a total of four punts.
And now the offense is stagnant, having scored just 55 points over the last three games—despite the fact that Burrow is playing some of the best ball of his career, efficiency-wise. On Sunday he repeatedly made chicken salad out of chicken droppings, despite being under duress for most of the contest and not having Tee Higgins to throw to yet again. The Bengals were 10 for 13 on third down despite running for fewer than three yards per attempt. That is an insane testament to Burrow.
Of course, they failed on crucial third and fourth downs late in the third quarter trailing 24-17, with victory still well within grasp. As you know, the Bengals opted for another ridiculous throw well behind the line of scrimmage, and even Ja’Marr Chase couldn’t turn it into a first down. Cincinnati’s superpower has always been allowing Burrow to make the right call depending on the defense and allow things to develop before making the right play, which he invariably does. But in this huge moment Zac Taylor and the staff took the decision-making out of Burrow’s hands—not for the first time. This is when we see a somber Taylor at the podium talking about “regret.”
The real issue isn’t so much that call as the fact that Cincinnati couldn’t run it for a yard on third down and didn’t trust the running game to move the sticks on fourth. After opening the season as one of the most efficient rushing attacks in the NFL, the Bengals’ run game has fallen off a cliff over the last month. Over the last four games, their rushing success rate is just over 19 percent. It’s hard to overstate how awful that is, because the next lowest is over 30 percent. In essence, 80 percent of the time Burrow is “behind the chains” after a running play. That sounds far-fetched, but it’s likely they would have been better off literally never running the ball at all over the last month.
Why is the running game so putrid? Like most football matters, it’s a long, complicated, and varied series of answers, most of which boil down to the fact that all it takes on most plays is a single screwup to ruin the down. And there always seems to be a screwup these days: a missed assignment here, a failure to read the hole there, a lineman getting whipped, guys colliding with each other. Everything can work but for one defeated block or one jump cut inside instead of outside, and suddenly it’s second and 8 instead of second and 4 or third and 5 instead of third and 1 or a punt and not a first down. It’s happened repeatedly, maddeningly, over the last month.
Obviously losing an already gimpy Orlando Brown on Sunday hurt; he’s been by far the team’s most consistent blocker this season. Cody Ford has been less good but certainly passable in his stead. Indeed, the tackles, backs, and tight ends are hardly blameless, but the more regular areas of difficulty are in the interior line play: guards Cordell Volson and Alex Cappa and center Ted Karras. They’ve played three straight games against difficult D-lines to contend with, but the idea was that Karras and Cappa in particular are solid vets who’d be competent more often than not.
Cappa looks past it, unfortunately, while Volson is about at the ceiling of his ability. In theory the Bengals could insert promising rookie Matt Lee at center and move Karras to one of the guard spots, but that’s risking a lot more “moving parts mistakes” as a rookie learns on the job and Karras plays out of position. Barring injury, it’s best to go with the vets.
Part of the difficulty in transitioning into a multi-tight-end base look and running less 11 personnel (three wide receivers) during the season is the growing pains in doing so, especially as the year goes along and defenses watch film and attack weak points. The Bengals caught some teams off guard with their early-season power/counter actions utilizing tight ends Drew Sample and Erick All as motioning linemen to spring open soft portions of the defense with kick-out blocks. Now opponents are ready for it and attack the slower developing blocks or fill holes meant to be opened by the formation.
Cincinnati hasn’t counter-attacked. They don’t play off these looks, deceiving the opponent by showing the familiar but breaking tendency. More play action early in the series, as the Eagles did over and over to them on Sunday, would be one idea. Run inside zones away from the motion or use bootleg action and pass to those moving tight ends—anything to get the enemy defenders to stop, think, and play slower. Right now defenses can attack the run game with impunity, and it shows.
Meanwhile, “play better!” Yes, that’s a nice concept, though at this point, except for rookie tackle Amarius Mims, these linemen are what they are. But what separates good players from average ones isn’t talent, it’s consistency. Karras and Cappa are on the backside of their careers and can reach their former levels of consistent good play only at times, it would seem.
As for the backs, the whole point of going for quicker, more decisive runners than Joe Mixon was to get more explosive and make tacklers miss. We’ve seen snatches of it but not enough, and shorn of Mix’s power there has been very little “fall forward” yardage. Chase Brown and Zack Moss absolutely need to hit the holes more decisively, play with more strength, and not get stood up so easily. I was worried about this lack of “weight” in the running game all offseason, as you know. I don’t like being proven correct, but here we are.
Right now they aren’t running with power and aren’t making explosive speed plays to compensate. The team remains so slow outside of Chase—this wasn’t supposed to be the case, but it has been over the last few games.
The good news is that Burrow has been playing so well and the passing game, when not completely hamstrung by down-and-distance obstacles, has been so good that the run game doesn’t need to be awesome, just decent. When it has been, the Bengals average 30 points per game. The coaching staff has shown the ability to tweak and make large changes in mid-stream before, so there’s some hope they can again.
Hopefully the Raiders provide a panacea on Sunday—their run defense has been worse than Cincinnati’s this season. But five games against top 10 run defenses (by DVOA) remain ahead, and unless some things improve in this area the Bengals have no chance to build a stretch run to the postseason. Right now they resemble, ironically enough, last year’s Eagles, lacking in the run game and unable to unlock any explosiveness. Kellen Moore was brought in to diversify Philadelphia’s attack and make things easier on the quarterback, and its started to work. By contrast, Cincinnati is making things harder on Burrow, not easier, and despite a Herculean effort he can’t get them over the hump.
Perhaps the Bengals are missing Brian Callahan more than we know, or they just need some fresh approaches. I’m not one to pile on the head coach when things aren’t going well, and Taylor has lifted the tide in these parts so much that we notice only when it runs out now—waves washing high ashore has come to be the expectation.
The fact remains that coach/quarterback combos almost never win their first title after five years together. Taylor and Burrow were oh so close—intestine-ripping close—but now a Super Bowl seems farther and farther away. History tells us things aren’t likely to change in that area unless there’s a change at head coach or QB. And Joey Franchise isn’t going anywhere.
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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