CINCINNATI — The La’el Collins era is over in Cincinnati.
Now the big question: Why?
The 30-year-old right tackle signed a 3 year, $21,000,000 contract with the Bengals on Mar. 21, 2022, three days after his release from the Dallas Cowboys, where he spent six seasons on one of the best offensive lines in football.
He was brought in amid much fanfare after the Bengals nearly won Super Bowl LVI, despite giving up 51 sacks in the regular season and 19 more in the four games of the postseason.
Super Bowl LVI came to an end when Burrow was hurried by Aaron Donald, who wasn’t leveraged inside like he was supposed to be and got around and rushed Burrow before he could get the ball to a wide-open Ja’Marr Chase. The Bengals answer in the offseason was to sign Collins after his release from Dallas.
Collins, entering his ninth season, started 15 games at right tackle for Cincinnati last season. He stabilized the right side of the offensive line before Christian Barmore fell on his right knee in the first half of the 22-18 Bengals win over the Patriots on Christmas Eve in Foxboro.
Collins suffered an ACL tear. He had surgery and was placed on PUP before training camp.
The expectation was that he would start the season on PUP but be reinstated in time to practice and then be reactivated. Instead, the Bengals decided to go with Orlando Brown Jr. at left tackle, Jonah Williams at right tackle and Jackson Carman and D’Ante Smith as third tackles.
It could be that:
- The Bengals could save some of the contract money and save some of his incentive/bonus money as well.
- Jonah Williams has done enough in the final year of his contract to prove to them that they don’t want to keep two $13 million right tackles on the roster.
- They believe Jackson Carman and D’Ante Smith give them enough quality depth that if anything happens to either Williams or Brown, they are in good shape still.
- Collins and his agent asked to be released so he could immediately become a free agent and sign somewhere else and he could play.
- The team didn’t feel Collins was a fit on their roster anymore.
Collins was owed a $5,000,000 signing bonus, $5,000,000 guaranteed, and an average annual salary of $7,000,000 in 2022. In 2023, Collins would have earned a base salary of $4,500,000 and a workout bonus of $100,000, while carrying a cap hit of $9,384,306 and a dead cap value of $3,433,334.
- Quarterback Quakes:
Joe Burrow has some familiar and impressive company after Week 1. It’s just not where and how you would expect.
After Monday night’s Zach Wilson relief effort behind the injured Aaron Rodgers, Josh Allen, Patrick Mahomes and Justin Herbert are all 0-1.
As Burrow indicated after Sunday’s 24-3 loss in Cleveland, it’s downright silly to think any NFL team’s season is defined after one week, win or lose.
Still, there is definite urgency for the Bengals this week. It’s the home opener. It’s Lamar Jackson. And it’s the 1-0 Ravens. You don’t not want to stare down the barrel of an 0-2 start for the second straight year and you don’t want another 0-2 start in the division.
Sunday’s game is definitely a swing game in the early season schedule.
If the Bengals are going to come out on the right end of things, the Bengals simply have to convert better than 2-for-15 on third down. Odds are they will but how?
The general consensus is this:
- The Bengals need to execute in their one-on-one passing matchups better.
- The Bengals need to keep a cleaner pocket for Burrow
- The Bengals need to isolate and target open areas of the field better, something Burrow has done a very good job of over his career.
- The Bengals need to win on second down to get more third-and-shorts after converting just 2-of-15 last Sunday.
- Burrow and his receivers will get a huge boost with drier and less sloppy conditions.
Burrow is not going 14-of-31 for 82 yards this week – or the rest of the season. The Bengals can feel safe assured in that assumption. And Tee Higgins sure as hell isn’t going 0-for-8 on targets like last week.
But that doesn’t mean Zac Taylor and Brian Callahan aren’t trying to improve their scheme against a Baltimore defense that has a reputation of keeping everything in front and taking the receiver to the ground immediately. They going to stick to their passing game fundamentals of targeting the receivers capable of making big plays.
The middle of the field was targeted only a handful of times as Burrow looked to one-on-one matchups on the outside. Usually, those play in the Bengals’ favor. Sunday, because of the weather and Burrow being off his game, it simply didn’t pay off.
“They did a good job mixing their coverage structures,” Callahan said. “They played some double invert coverage that they play quite a bit of, and it’s a muddy middle of the field some of their man to man stuff. We had some guys run in the middle of the field with ball going elsewhere so it’s not it’s not that they took it away necessarily it’s just that there was moments where we took matchups that over the course of time here have been really good, been really productive and really won us a lot of games.
“And so it was just an off day for those particular types of throws that we’ve normally made a lot of ground on. So, I think that to say they took away the middle of the field is probably not necessarily ultimately true. But the ball didn’t go there as much.”
Taylor and Callahan made it clear they are not going to change what they do and how they do it.
“Oh, there’s, again, a lot of factors that played into it,” Taylor said. “We make the corrections on the things that we can control offensively and then move on to Baltimore. So I think it’s one you don’t want to dwell too much on. Pretty clear we weren’t good enough on third down. We were about a yard short on two of the three drives in the first quarter. And so, you know, sometimes it’s the inches like that from gaining true momentum in the first half and that’s what this game was about.”
Fix the third-and-short (3rd down and less than four yards), and the Bengals are almost certainly talking about a different fourth quarter than the non-competitive rout Sunday turned into.
“The very first third-and-1, you know, we had a quick game of throw in the rain, and it was just sloppy. The throw and the catch was just tough,” Taylor said. “We had another third-and-1 where we ran it and just didn’t quite get off quick enough and able to sustain that first down. So those are two that come to mind that first half. You know, big picture there’s a lot of confidence in our room that we’re going to be just fine. It’s first game. We won’t make too much out of it. Wished we would have had more success, should have had more success and we didn’t, and you’ve got to give credit to Cleveland. They came out ready to play. They had a great plan, their players executed it, and they deserved that Week 1 win.”
The Bengals and the rest of the AFC took notice of the loss of Aaron Rodgers Monday night for the season to an Achilles injury and the poor play of Josh Allen in taking care of the football with a 13-3 lead. The Jets won with Zach Wilson.
In short, Burrow had a terrible day but he wasn’t alone.
