CINCINNATI — Joe Burrow sat the podium Sunday after a 37-17 disaster of a loss to the Eagles with a look on his face that was equal parts disgust and bewilderment.
This isn’t how it was supposed to be for Burrow’s Bengals.
Two and three years ago, in the halcyon days of back-to-back AFC North titles, back-to-back AFC championship visits and a near-miss in Super Bowl LVI, Burrow and head coach Zac Taylor told everyone that there was a “new standard” in Who Dey Nation. Winning division titles was the way of the future and that this was a team poised for multiple trips to the Super Bowl, with multiple wins the goal.
The 3-5 Bengals of 2024 have collapsed way short of those lofty goals.
And after what we’ve seen this season, the team’s leaders have no answers as to why. The damning evidence has been on the field each and every week.
The 2024 Bengals have never shown us to be the talented group that was supposed to bounce back from Joe Burrow’s season-ending wrist injury of last November. Burrow has done his part but the rest of the team has let him and the entire fan base down.
That’s why the fans left in disgust with 11 minutes left in the fourth quarter after Burrow threw a go-ball to Ja’Marr Chase that was intercepted on a deflection.
Bengals fans are disgusted with this because they’ve seen it way too many times before. The team gets their hopes up with one or two good seasons and then they fall off a cliff that the 2024 Bengals are rapidly nearing.
Bengals fans have to be asking themselves today if this Joe Burrow group isn’t like the Carson Palmer group of the mid-to-late 2000s. That was a team that showed incredible potential on both sides of the ball and had a star quarterback with a golden arm.
The dynamics are – of course – different. This group has been to a Super Bowl and won home and road playoff games. But the Bengals have a dark history of wasting valuable chances at what is supposed to be the goal of every NFL contender – multiple Super Bowls.
But then there’s the Andy Dalton-A.J. Green era. Another lost opportunity because the team didn’t build a disciplined defense around them. The 2015 team was arguably a Super Bowl caliber team before Andy Dalton went barreling into the line of scrimmage for a fumble against Pittsburgh and everything changed.
The 1970s teams were great but stuck behind the Steelers, one of the great dynasties in NFL history. The 1980s Super Bowl teams disappeared three years after their Super Bowl appearances. Sound familiar?
The reality is now – at 3-5 – that these Bengals are just not that talented, despite the words of Zac Taylor after Sunday’s collapse.
“I don’t think it’s indicative of where we are as a team because I think the score is going to reflect differently than how I feel about our guys and what opportunities we’re going to be able to capitalize on,” Taylor said. “It’s a disappointing day. There’s no running from that. I felt good coming in at halftime that we were going to find a way to win this game.”
Give Taylor credit for this much, he gave his offense a chance to prove it deserved a chance to make a play on third-and-1 and fourth-and-1 at the end of the third quarter. They failed. That’s not on Taylor. That’s on an underperforming group of players on offense that have failed more often than they’ve succeeded this season. Plain and simple. Your coach is giving you a chance to get a measly yard to keep a drive going because the defense can’t stop the offense (like the Washington game) and they failed.
You can blame Taylor all you want for the decision to go for it. But what Taylor won’t – and can’t – admit is that he’s allowing his players to prove if they’re good enough. They’re clearly not. Taylor is sending a subtle message to the powers that be – namely Director of Player Personnel Duke Tobin and Katie and Troy Blackburn – that the team doesn’t have the weapons on offense or defense to get the job done.
“The second half, it starts with the fourth down,” Taylor said. “They score a touchdown and we come out and go for it on fourth down and don’t get it, and that’s heavy on my mind the entire game. Anytime that happens and I make a decision like that and it doesn’t go your way, you’re sick to your stomach about it. I still felt we were going to have opportunity, and then again, you get a tipped pick and all of a sudden they run away with the momentum. It’s unfortunate. What I just told the team is we’re in a hole, a hole that I believe we can dig ourselves out of. We’re just going to have to find a way to do that.”
The defense failed to bring any pressure against Hurts much in the same way they let Jayden Daniels carve them up. The Eagles scored right before halftime and on the first drive of the second half. The “double-dip”, as Mike Hilton put it, changed the whole complexion of the day for the Bengals and they never recovered.
“We’re sitting at 3-5 with the whole season still in front of us but something’s gotta change,” Hilton said.
But what needs to change and will it? The Bengals do not look like like a team remotely close to answering either of those questions.
Trey Hendrickson, who’s having another All-Pro caliber season, picked a bad time for his worst game of the season. He was beaten badly by Bengals castoff Fred Johnson.
Speaking of the run game – or lack thereof – this is where Burrow’s disgust is rightfully reaching a boiling point. Their two backs – Chase Brown and Zack Moss combined for 17 carries and 43 yards Sunday. That is pitiful, leading to this observation from Burrow postgame:
“After the first game, we ran it well for a couple weeks in a row there,” Burrow said. “The last couple of weeks haven’t been good enough. When you play good rushers like we have the last several weeks, you’ve got to keep them off balance and be able to run the ball. If you don’t, then they aren’t going to be quite as worried about it and then their edge guys are going to start getting push and play action isn’t going to be as good. So, you’ve got to drop back and make plays, and that’s what those kind of teams want. So, it’s tough when you can’t.”
For the third time this season, the Bengals didn’t have Tee Higgins because of a soft tissue injury. That is another column for another day but teams that think they’re good need to find a way to win without a star player. The Bengals are 0-3 this year without Higgins.
“Whenever you don’t have some of your best players, that always makes it tough,” Burrow said. “But that’s no excuse. We’re going out there with the guys that we have. That’s the NFL. You’re expected to go out and play well and play up to our standard.”
The Bengals have some nice pieces for the future. But there’s not a sense of urgency coming from the organization in roster building. The Eagles went out in the offseason and acquired Saquon Barkley. That’s a move by a franchise that has been to two Super Bowls in the past six seasons and won once and nearly won another. There’s a drive and urgency to win in Philadelphia that is severely lacking in Cincinnati. That’s what this season has shown.
Is it too late to change that old and tired narrative in Cincinnati? Well, like Zac Taylor proved Sunday, the players have chance to change it. Are they good enough?
