CINCINNATI — Sunday in South Florida, Bengals fans finally got a look at what their team was projected to be way back in the hot months of July and August.
An athletic defense flying around the field, giving up some big plays but flying to the ball and forcing turnovers. An opportunistic offense taking advantage of an average starting field position of the opponent’s 45 in the second half.
A franchise quarterback coming out of a one-week doldrum and blasting an injured defense for four touchdowns and no interceptions, moving in the pocket like the spry quarterback he has been in his first five years in the NFL.
The Bengals blew the Miami Dolphins off their own sun-soaked field, 45-21, before their disgruntled owner Stephen Ross and showed what they were supposed to be in 2025.
Joe Burrow completed 25-of-32 passes for 309 yards, four touchdowns and was spreading the wealth all around the offense. All of the weapons clicked. Chase Brown caught two touchdowns and ran for another.
“When everything is firing on all cylinders, we’re going to score a lot of points,” Brown said. “It felt good to score, but at the end of the day, it’s just building momentum. Even though our season is going to end not the way that we wanted it to, we can still finish it off on a positive note.”
Tee Higgins had three catches, including two early on that reminded everyone why the Bengals invested $115 million in him for the next four seasons. Higgins high-pointed one catch for 35 yards down the left sideline with the Bengals pinned back at their own 9 to start a 91-yard drive. He finished it by spinning Jack Jones on his back hip and catching a perfectly thrown ball from Burrow for the first touchdown of the day.
Chase caught nine passes for 109 yards, though he’s still looking for his first touchdown since Oct. 16 against the Steelers.
“We had a lot of answers for everything that they threw at us,” Chase said. “The situations that they handled well, we handled well ourselves and put ourselves in a better position to get down on third down and make it easier for us for the next down.”
Samaje Perine scored on a perfectly blocked duo scheme by Dylan Fairchild and Ted Karras, giving the Bengals the lead for good at 17-14 before halftime. It was the first of 35 straight points on the road that gave the Bengals the sense that they were clearly the superior team on the day.
Everything the Bengals did on defense in the third quarter, forcing three turnovers and turning the Dolphins over on downs on another drive, set the Bengals up to succeed on offense. Say it together: Complementary football.
“That’s how it’s supposed to look like,” Burrow said. “That’s what it’s supposed to feel like, so we’ve got to keep that feeling going the next couple of weeks and build some momentum.”
Of course, the problem is that it took 16 weeks to get to this point. The Bengals had nice wins against the Steelers and Ravens, and rallied for a dramatic win against the Jaguars in Week 2. The Bengals were on the verge in Buffalo before self-destructing in the fourth quarter.
The Bengals have the chance to finish the season with three straight wins, which would be their longest win streak of the season. They have a pair of 3-12 teams – Arizona and Cleveland – at Paycor to put a bow on the damaged gift-wrapped box that is the 2025 season.
“I am proud but not surprised by the response our guys had,” head coach Zac Taylor said. “We expected to come down here and get a whole lot of questions about how these guys are going to respond. We saw how they responded all week. We knew how they would respond. To come down here and put together the performance they did, especially settling down at halftime and coming out and getting four straight turnovers, three turnovers and a turnover on downs, and the offense responded with four straight touchdowns. The special teams unit did a great job controlling the field position the entire second half. Just really proud and again, not surprised by the response we had.”
One week after getting inside the Baltimore 35 five times and scoring zero points, the Bengals were 6-for-6 in the red zone, scoring six touchdowns and looking like the offensive juggernaut they were planning to be in the summer. Nine different players caught passes from Burrow Sunday, including Perine who had two catches for 16 yards and seven rushes for 25.
But the true star of the day was Chase Brown. The third year back out of Illinois ran 12 times for 66 yards, caught four passes on four targets for 43 yards and two touchdowns. The Bengals looked like Bill Walsh’s 49ers of the 1980s on Sunday, with Burrow doing his best Joe Montana, spreading the ball masterfully wherever the coverage dictated and wherever the defense wasn’t. It’s enough to make you wonder why the Bengals just don’t run the West Coast offense that started in Cincinnati with Paul Brown in the 1970s and call it a day.
Mix in a tight end here and there, like Mike Gesicki, Noah Fant (injured Sunday and didn’t play), Drew Sample and Tanner Hudson, and you have the complementary weapons to Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins.
“Yeah, it really provides us a lot of versatility. We’ve been able to put two backs on the field, because we feel good about Samaje and obviously feel good about Chase. It provides challenges for the defense, how they’re going to take that, how they’re going to play that with their personnel, what coverages they’re going to play with that, because if I was a defense, I wouldn’t feel great about a linebacker covering Chase in space. He proved that on his receiving touchdown today. Another guy who just loves to improve, Chase’s first year, I’m not sure he caught a ball in practice. He came out the next year, and he’s catching everything. Really took that to heart and has improved, turning into the player he is now.”
Then there was the classic Burrow scramble play, where he’s flushed out of the pocket on third down in the second quarter and finds Drew Sample uncovered on the backside of the defense. Burrow throws to him for a 27-yard gain to the Miami 11.
“I was really just trying to throw it away, and I knew Drew was over there somewhere,” Burrow said. “I was going to throw it to the ground, then I see Drew wide open there. I just popped it over to him and then he did the rest, it was crazy.”
“That’s usually how it works. They had a tough time containing Drew,” Taylor added with a smile. “But Drew is just Mr. Reliable. He’s in there in protection and has a great feel – very similar to the Buffalo touchdown he scored a couple of years ago, the same protection – where he has this awareness where Joe needs my help right now, I’m out of protection world, and I’ve got to find a way. He was trying to score. I was hoping he stayed inbounds to keep the clock running there at the end of the half. Drew was hoping on getting in the end zone. That’s a huge play right there by Joe and by Drew and by the protection to give him the time to be able to extend the play like that.”
But the Bengals are not defined by Chase Brown, Samaje Perine and Drew Sample. They are defined by Joe Burrow, Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins.
“I feel like we’ve shown this a million times over the years,” Taylor said. “Unfortunately, this year we just haven’t been able to do it. But this is no surprise. I was walking off the field with Drew Sample and he said ‘this is how I’m used to these games going, when we’ve got everybody on offense ready to roll.’ So, again, we’ve got another opportunity this week against Arizona to come back home and do it in front of our fans, and I expect our guys to respond the right way.”
Sunday felt bittersweet for the Bengals, a tease of what they could’ve been, if Burrow had stayed healthy, if the defense didn’t get torched midseason, if the defense forced some turnovers to make those explosive plays they allowed not so destructive, if Tee Higgins and Ja’Marr Chase were on the field most of the time. If Chase Brown was the all-purpose yards machine to start the season. If, if, if.
“It is what it is. This is the situation we’re in and this is what we can control. After the season, you’ll have a chance to reflect back on things we’ve got to do differently. But I think right now, this is all we can control this week was what our response was in the building to a lot of people are after us right now. The response was tremendous by our guys. To put together such a complete game I thought was really impressive.”
