CINCINNATI — With Joe Flacco, the Bengals suddenly feel like they have a real chance, at least in the AFC North.
Flacco gave the Bengals what they desperately needed Thursday night, a strong-armed gunslinger who can activate weapons Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins and deliver an offense that is now capable of erasing some of the serious flaws in their young and transitioning defense.
The Bengals under Zac Taylor have been an offense-first team. It’s their identity. It’s precisely why they signed Joe Burrow to the five-year, $219 million extension before the 2024 season. It’s why they invested $161 million in Chase and $115 million in Higgins. But when Burrow went down in Week 2 against Jacksonville, the Bengals thought they could plug in Jake Browning and he would reprise his 2023 season when he finished 4-3 as a starter. But three starts into his substitute role this year, it was clear the Bengals needed a new back-up plan.
This is where you have to credit the front office and Taylor for identifying the kind of quarterback that could activate the offense again. Russell Wilson, Jameis Winston and Jimmy Garoppolo weren’t it. They were reportedly told no on Mac Jones in San Francisco.
But they thought back to Week 1 and knew that Flacco, even at 40, still had something you can’t teach – arm strength. That’s what appealed to Taylor and Duke Tobin. No one knows the AFC North better than Flacco. They were able to pry away the 18-year NFL veteran who was MVP of Super Bowl XLVII in New Orleans, much to the dismay of Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin.
We saw Thursday night why Tomlin was so upset. Flacco threw for 342 yards and three touchdowns. He has five touchdowns, zero interceptions and over 500 passing yards in his first two starts with the Bengals. No NFL quarterback in HISTORY has ever done that in his first two starts with any team. In other words, Flacco has given the Bengals exactly what they were looking for.
“Yeah. His experience. He has 18 years of experience playing these games,” Taylor said. “We had a short week playing the Pittsburgh Steelers in a game that we needed to have. It’s easy for him … because he’s putting in the work. He’s just so experienced in this situation. You gain a lot of confidence from that, because he goes out there and it’s not too big (for him). I have to enunciate my formations better because some of them he’s hearing for the first time. And so, I have to do a better job enunciating. I think it’s my Oklahoma accent. It had him a couple times. I thought he did a great job managing the game.”
The Bengals saw one chance, one window, to salvage their season at 2-3. The offense didn’t look great in the first 30 minutes against Green Bay. It was non-existent. But in the second half, signs of life started to appear. The Bengals lost 27-18 but you could sense the offense was getting their mojo back.
Then it exploded Thursday night in the second quarter, scoring 17 points.
The offense Thursday night had a functioning offensive line that was giving Flacco enough time to at least make it through 2-3 progressions and Flacco, in turn, was rewarding them by getting rid of the ball quickly and mostly on time. Chase Brown finally had explosive runs of 27 and 37 yards in the second quarter. Tee Higgins flashed all-world speed in his sprint that split the Steeler defense in half on the second touchdown that gave the Bengals their first lead since Sept. 29.
And then there’s Ja’Marr Chase. No one benefits more from what Flacco brings than the superstar receiver 15 years younger than Flacco. Chase had an incredible (and team-record) 16 catches on 23 targets for 161 yards and a touchdown in his much-anticipated matchup with Jalen Ramsey, one of several defensive backs the Steelers acquired for the expressed purpose of slowing down Cincinnati’s receiving dynamic duo.
“Last week, it opened my eyes, just with the simple things,” Flacco said. “Not the fact that they went for a hundred yards, obviously. But you could see it. Then today, what I got to see was just how a defense has to treat those guys, and if you don’t treat them a certain way, they can hurt you, and if you do treat him a certain way, well, maybe we have some other guys that can get the job done. Today, I think I got to see just the problems they create in general. Last week — I said it earlier this week — last week, we didn’t do anything crazy, but you could see it. Those guys are different, and it’s pretty cool to be able to throw to them.”
One night is not a season make for Flacco or the Bengals. They are fully aware of this. Flacco caught fire at the end of the ’23 season, leading the Browns to the playoffs before the carriage turned into a pumpkin in a 45-14 loss to Houston in the playoffs. Flacco won’t be able to cover all of the blemishes of a Bengals defense that couldn’t stop Aaron Rodgers on second-and-20 and allowed a 68-yard touchdown to Pat Freiermuth that put the Steelers ahead 31-30 with just over two minutes remaining.
The Bengals and Al Golden must find a way to resolve a crisis of missed tackles, totaling at least 34 in the last two games. Without Trey Hendrickson Thursday, they allowed Aaron Rodgers to dance and prance all night in and out of the pocket, including for 8.6 seconds on his touchdown strike to Jonnu Smith in the first quarter. There was no pass rush, poor tackling and obviously, breakdown in coverage that allowed plays of 68, 31 and 25 yards downfield.
But Flacco saved that from being the primary talking point Thursday. He led the Bengals to a win for the first time in five games. The Bengals are still 3-4 but with home games against the Jets and Bears coming up before the Week 10 bye, there’s reason to think they can catch the Steelers, who they will face in Pittsburgh coming back from the bye on Nov. 16.
“It is huge. We really needed this win. We needed this,” Taylor said. ” “It’s been too long since we’ve won. And so, when you’re fighting for all these things that we fight for, and these guys just keep coming out, as a coach you just keep sticking with it. I see it coming, but you need the results. And so, we have the results. There were no nonbelievers in that locker room. We knew what we’re capable of, and we can see it. We just had to put it together. But, it’s significant to find a divisional win and be 2-0 in the division right now. Now we are going into a long weekend and then we have a home game coming up. Just a great opportunity for our team to capitalize on this.”
The Bengals have the likes of Baltimore (1-5) twice in the second half, an up-and-down Patriots team at home, Cleveland at home, Miami on the road, Arizona at home in the second half of the schedule. What the 40-year-old Flacco did was give hope to a Bengals team that had Joe Burrow on the sideline Thursday night in a walking boot on his surgically repaired left foot. All the Bengals are hoping for from Flacco is to give this team a chance to get Burrow healthy so the Bengals can make a late-season push for a division title and a return to the playoffs. What the Bengals saw Thursday night was one snapshot into what fighting for a division title might look like with Joe Flacco, which is so much more than what Who Dey Nation had going in.
“Yeah, you sure hope so,” Flacco told me. “You hope you can come in here and play well and you always want to, especially when you get guys that are good at playing football. You want to go show them like, ‘Hey man, we’re going to do some good things.’ You hope that they feel that way, but now to go out there and have done it for like the last six quarters, I think it’s going to give us a lot of confidence and hopefully we can carry that over and use it to our advantage.”
