Bengals Beat: A Winnable Game Lost In So Many Ways

CINCINNATI — Go ahead and blame Tyler Boyd, if you like, for dropping a couple of passes Sunday, including the potential go-ahead touchdown in the end zone with 1:35 left in the fourth quarter.

But that is the cheap and easy way out.

There was so much blame to go around for a brutal home loss that no one could really leave the locker room feeling free and clear. Well, maybe Ja’Marr Chase and his five catches and 124 yards on a bruised back deserves a legitimate pass free from blame in the 30-27 loss that ended a four-game feel-good vibe and dropped the Bengals to 5-4 on the 2023 season.

But everyone else? Stand in line to take a dip in the blame pool. That includes franchise quarterback Joe Burrow, who threw interceptions on consecutive fourth-quarter possessions. And still the Bengals nearly pulled off one of the most improbable comebacks in the Zac Taylor era.

“We have to step it up. We have to be better,” Burrow said. “(Sunday) wasn’t good enough; it’s as simple as that.”

Here are the cold hard facts from Sunday that led to a loss that never should’ve been.

Offensive asleep at the switch:

The Bengals generated exactly 22 yards of net offense from their second drive of the game to their horrific-looking three-and-out to open the second half. This is a Houston team that allowed 37 points at home to Tampa Bay. The Bengals had two first downs over their final five possessions of the first half. Inexcusable. Perhaps Brian Callahan needs to rip into his offense again. It was that bad.

“It was definitely stunning,” Trenton Irwin said of the loss. “It’s definitely a game where we wanted to come out there, put ourselves in a better place at the end of the game. And we got close enough to be able to make some plays to win (it). We all got to make some more plays, to help the team win.”

Bengals secondary allowed C.J. Stroud to escape the pocket and throw downfield:

That’s fine. Stroud is the front-runner for NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year. No shame in that. But what is shameful is letting receivers like Noah Brown roam the secondary like Jerry Rice with not a defender within 10 yards. Coming off a 470-yard effort against Tampa Bay, Stroud went for 356 yards. Noah Brown had seven catches for 172 yards, including catches of 34, 30, 29, 28, 22 and 20 yards. On the top three, Brown sat in spaces in the Bengals secondary, unguarded.

“Nothing cheap and deep,” Cam Taylor-Britt told me. “No shots, man. I put it just like that. No shots. We can (learn) from this most definitely.”

No Sam Hubbard, no run defense:

With Hubbard out with an ankle injury, Devin Singletary looked like Walter Payton. 30 carries for 150 yards and a touchdown. There was little resistance at the point of attack. Nick Scott had a dubious day, not just in pass coverage but in run support. He had Singletary in his sights on the first play of the second half and whiffed for a tackle-for-loss. It wasn’t just Scott. The Bengals allowed Houston to run wild, gaining 188 yards on 34 carries.

Tyler Boyd:

First, the obvious. He made a beautiful move to get open on stick route in the end zone on the final drive. But as he was turning his body, he dropped a dart from Burrow. For those who might remember Super Bowl XLVI, think Wes Welker from Tom Brady. Wasn’t a routine grab but still should be caught and Boyd, who tossed his helmet coming off the field, knows it. But Boyd also had a drop of a Burrow seed over the middle on the first drive of the second half that sealed the fate of that drive. Boyd still had a sensational statistical day, catching a team-leading eight passes for 117 yards, including a 64-yard grab that set up the ill-fated end of Cincinnati’s last drive.

“We wouldn’t have even been down there if it wasn’t for him,” Burrow said. “Obviously, you’d like to come down with it, but we were able to go down there and tie it up. (We would have) liked to punch it in, make them go down and score a touchdown in that situation, but we were able to tie it up.”

Offensive line:

Not a great day for Alex Cappa, Ted Karras and Cordell Volson. The interior had trouble with pressures up the middle, as Burrow was sacked four times for 33 yards.

“Too much pressure on Joe,” Karras said. “(He was) uncomfortable. Didn’t get anything going in the run game, and really had no business even being in the game at the end. And that’s just the fight of this team to tie it up with a minute and twenty (seconds) left, inches away from taking the lead at that point. So, no margin for error in this league. And that’s a good Houston team. It’s probably a playoff team, and we need to beat those types of teams if we want to be who we think we are.”

The Bengals are 5-4 for the third straight season. Yes, they’ve rebounded in each to win the AFC North. But this team knows full well they need to stop relying on the past for future performance. The Bengals are a brutal 1-4 in the AFC, holding only a tie-breaker over Buffalo. That is not the way to go about an extended run in the postseason, which clearly was the goal of this team from the moment they fell in Kansas City last January.

Thursday is suddenly a must-win, on the road, against a Baltimore team they’ve already fallen to at home and a team that blew a 17-3 lead at home Sunday and lost, 33-31, to the Browns.

The Bengals consider themselves a championship-caliber team. The talent certainly suggests as much. But championship-caliber teams can’t afford the volume of mistakes on display Sunday.