CINCINNATI — The Bengals knew coming in they were going to be in rock fight with the nothing-to-lose Patriots with a brand new head coach.
They were right. They got punched in the mouth. They somehow weren’t ready to punch back. They weren’t prepared to play the right way.
Jerod Mayo won his first game as Bill Belichick’s replacement because he did what Belichick would’ve done. He beat the Bengals in the trenches. Simplified the game plan for his quarterback Jacoby Brissett and dared Joe Burrow to beat him underneath.
The Bengals failed across the board to answer these challenges in a 16-10 loss that again, for the third straight year and fifth time in six seasons with Zac Taylor, put the Bengals in an 0-1 hole.
“We share something in common, because 31 years ago, I didn’t get my first win until the third game of the season against the Cincinnati I want to thank everyone from Cincinnati,” Patriots owner Robert Kraft beamed in giving the game ball to Mayo. It was the Patriots who beat the Bengals, 31-28, at Riverfront Stadium in Week 3 of the 1994 season to give Kraft his first win.
While Kraft was thanking Cincinnati after the game for giving Mayo his first win as a head coach, the Bengals were shaking their heads, wondering why and how they could’ve started so flat.
Burrow didn’t bring his ‘A’ game. He didn’t even bring his ‘B’ game. The Bengals said they were out to prove they weren’t going to be the same old cold-start Bengals. All they proved Sunday is that talk is cheap.
The Bengals committed two key mistakes and while they certainly were game-changers, the Bengals started this game against a first-time defensive coordinator (DeMarcus Covington) going 3-and-out three times to start the game. That’s inexcusable at home in your season opener.
Their first first down came with 10:27 left in the second quarter on a Burrow pass to Andrei Iosivas. They finished with four for the half and 13 for the game. Again, inexcusable.
The Bengals were flat as pancakes. Then there’s the issue of Ja’Marr Chase. He caught all six balls targeted for him on the day, but only for 62 yards. Chase appeared to break free for a big gainer and maybe even a touchdown. Instead, it was good for 28 yards.
Instead, the Bengals fall to 1-10 in the first two weeks under Zac Taylor. The coaching staff has to take accountability by this gross lack of focus in the opener. It wasn’t the loss as much as it was the sloppiness, lack of execution and poor quarterback play.
“We’ll have to watch the tape. I don’t really have an answer for you right now, I’ll have a better answer on Wednesday,” said Burrow, who completed 21 of 29 passes for only 164 yards.
“Yeah. I feel like we always start like that,” Chase said. “I’m saying especially in the first game of the year. I feel like we should be better by that by now.”
This opens up the whole responsibility issue with the team. Are the Bengals accountable to the coach and each other? Two years ago, the Bengals lost at home to Pittsburgh and on the road at Dallas and then recovered. Last year, they were 0-2, 1-3 and won four straight before losses to Houston and Baltimore.
Ja’Marr Chase reacts… Says “ask coaches” why only six targets. Says he had food poisoning Saturday. pic.twitter.com/PCOpuUSjMo
— Mike Petraglia (@Trags) September 8, 2024
They have the talent to recover again. But will they? It just seems like whistling by the graveyard to assume everything’s OK when you look so unprepared to start the season. You were bullied out of your own building.
Joe Burrow doesn’t have many answers for what went wrong. pic.twitter.com/wTLQgEB6A5
— Mike Petraglia (@Trags) September 8, 2024
In keeping with the Patriots theme on the day, here’s what Tom Brady (in his first FOX broadcast) had to say about a head coach holding players accountable, and what he learned from Bill Belichick.
“I look at the NFL, and I think, how do you get these superstar athletes that are around so many people in their lives and tell them how great they are all the time? They have parents and they have brothers and sisters, and you are in a league and you’re a great player.
“But it’s nice to have that accountability from a coach, too, and you want to be pushed to your limit. If you’re a player in the NFL and you want to be a great player. You want to be pushed. You want to be challenged. You want to be criticized. You want to be ‘Hey, you didn’t show up to practice today and do the job we needed you to do.’ If you don’t do it like this today, it’s not going to go well on Sunday.
“And again, I was the beneficiary of a lot of that hard coaching, and I love that you have an old school coach like (Mike) Zimmer that does it, (Mike) McCarthy does it, discipline, accountability are mainstays in any successful organization. And I don’t have a problem with any coaches that feel like they need to tell their players the truth, because they just don’t get a lot of truth all the time as an NFL player, because you’re in the league and you made it, you had a good college career. Well, that doesn’t mean anything, even if you had a good game last week. Well, the only way to begin the next week is to prepare equally as hard.”
Those are powerful words from the most accomplished quarterback in NFL history. Burrow has rallied nicely in the past two seasons.
But is Zac Taylor demanding enough of Joe Burrow? Burrow is unquestionably an elite NFL quarterback. But he needs to be pushed. And games like Sunday just make you wonder. That’s the problem with the early-season Bengals and why fans get furious. A talented team like the Bengals should roll out and look like they’ve never played together.
“It’s obviously disappointing that we lost,” Taylor told me. “It’s disappointing because we had a great turnout and a lot of commitment there from the fans, so that certainly gives us a boost. We felt like we were going to win the entirety of the game. Didn’t care what the score was — we felt like we were going to come back and win. Unfortunately, three-and-out on our final possession and missed some tackles there on the final drive that allowed them to ice the game.”
Nothing like heading to Kansas City in Week 2 to prove to everyone you’ve got what it takes to prove Week 1 was just a bad fluke.
