Bengals Beat: It’s Time For Bengals To Question Every Facet Of Their Football Operation – Because It’s Broken

DENVER – The Bengals played like a team Monday night that knows they aren’t good enough – with or without Joe Burrow.

The Bengals were completely outclassed in every facet of the game in a 28-3 humiliation that was record-setting in its futility. And given this is a franchise that put its fan base through the 1990s and the early 2000s and left them without a playoff victory for 32 years, that truly is remarkable.

But the Bengals look lost and their best players and captains know it.

Ted Karras and Orlando Brown Jr. are offensive captains but suddenly look outmatched and slow trying to protect their backup quarterback. The offensive line has been mediocre to poor in all four games this season.

“Winning is hard in this league but figuring out a way, to me, is what it comes down to,” Brown said. “It is frustrating. We put a lot of pride in (fixing) pre-snap penalties, post-snap penalties. We’ll figure it out, man.”

Ja’Marr Chase, after an extended if not animated sideline conversation with Zac Taylor, did an admirable job of biting his tongue after Monday’s debacle. But he issued some pretty damning words of indictment on the effort and focus of the team right now without Joe Burrow.

“Tough to say right now. Sometimes we go out there and lay an egg sometimes,” Chase told me. “Urgency is there but you’ve got to want it. Today, it didn’t look like we wanted it.”

Logan Wilson, another captain on defense, can’t stay on the field and has had his playing time cut down by rookie Barrett Carter. He took another horrendous angle on a fourth-quarter run by J.K. Dobbins, who ran through the Bengals on the edges like Swiss cheese to the tune of 101 yards on just 16 carries.

The Bengals couldn’t execute the basic function of getting 11 men on the field efficiently and effectively several times. It was a Chinese fire drill, capped off by the final touchdown of the night when Geno Stone went in on pressure and there was no one back to defend RJ Harvey on an uncovered 12-yard touchdown by Bo Nix that provided the perfect summation of futility and failure that have been the Bengals the last two weeks.

“The last two weeks just feels like never really had momentum,” Joe Burrow backup Jake Browning said Monday after completing 14-of-25 passes for 125 yards. “(We) haven’t really been explosive, have one or two good plays and then and then we’ll get into the first-and-20. And then you’re fighting a hard battle with one arm behind your back when you end up in longer situations, second-and-long, first-and-long, leading to third-and-long. Good offenses don’t do that, so we need to clean it up.”

Per OptaSTATS, consider that the Bengals:

Lost their last two games by more than 25 points

Had under 200 total yards

Had under 60 rushing yards

Were outrushed by more than 100 yards

Has taken at least three sacks

No other NFL team in the Super Bowl era has done that in back-to-back games. When you make David Shula blush, let’s just say you’re not headed in the right direction.

Ordinarily, two losses – as bad as they have been – would not be this much of a concern for a team that is 2-2 and could stay afloat long enough for Joe Burrow to return in mid-December. But the Bengals look again like a franchise where the players aren’t getting the coaching and messaging from the staff. The coaches aren’t on the same page as the front office and ownership isn’t willing to change the way the front office works to match the more functional and accomplished organizations around the NFL, like the Eagles, Chiefs, Ravens, Steelers and Buccaneers. Even teams like the Bears and Giants, as woeful as they are on the field, have functional front offices that know the importance of winning in the trenches and building around a young quarterback. Both of those franchise are not only charter members of the NFL, they have championship DNA in their past that lives on today.

All of the above have players accountable to coaches, coaches accountable to the GM and a GM accountable to ownership. And it’s ownership in all of these instances that establish an expectation of professional proficiency that has been sorely lacking – truth be told – with and without an injured Joe Burrow for all four regular season games. You lose back-to-back games by a score of 76-13 and you’re doing something very wrong or you’re not very talented, or most worrisome, both.

We were told by the Bengals that they had done enough to address the interior offensive line in the offseason. And perhaps Dylan Fairchild and Jalen Rivers will grow into terrific NFL players. But you went into a game in Denver Monday night with two rookie starting guards, one making his first NFL start. But the window is now and the Bengals, as has been their history, act like the future is more important than the present. Take a look at how Howie Roseman builds his roster in Philadelphia. He’ll take a hit in roster building to have the best roster for now.

The Bengals hardly ever do this is and it’s biting them square in the backside. Yes, they signed the names they had to in order to appease the fans (Joe Burrow), and Burrow (Ja’Marr Chase, Tee Higgins and Trey Hendrickson). But their offensive line is a mess. Their defense can’t get on the field, and once they do they look like they have no idea where they’re supposed to be.

But everyone knows the Bengals’ history following success. They plummet like a nuclear submarine to the abyss of NFL mediocrity after tasting some success. In 1981, they reached Super Bowl XVI. Two years later, they had a losing record and didn’t return to the playoffs until 1988. That year, they returned to the playoffs, after almost getting their head coach Sam Wyche fired with a 4-11 mark in 1987. They reached Super Bowl XXIII and lost a heartbreaker. Three seasons later, they began the worst 15-year stretch in franchise history, with failed picks along the the offensive and defensive lines and at quarterback.

In short, and this has been suggested countless times over the last four decades, the Bengals need to do an internal audit of why this franchise almost completely falls of the map every time it rises to the top of the NFL. It starts with ownership showing a desperation to win now and making moves that show that. Signing your best players is a bare minimum. Creating depth, spending to the cap and getting creative with contracts and hiring a coaching staff that instills the fear of job loss if you don’t do your job is critical. Zac Taylor may very well feel he just doesn’t have enough behind his starters in the trenches to send that kind of message.

This roster is not good enough. The coaching has not been good enough. The drafting has had far too many upper round misses (2024 third-rounders Jermaine Burton, McKinnley Jackson and Myles Murphy, first round 2023). They can’t protect their $275 million quarterback. They can’t run the football.

Without Joe Burrow, they look like a team that doesn’t do anything at a level becoming of a fringe playoff team, let alone a Super Bowl contender. They are a galaxy away from that.

Forget beating Detroit this Sunday at Paycor, another franchise that brought in a coach in Dan Campbell with fire in his belly and players who respond to and match that. Yes, they got shocked by Washington in the Divisional Round last season. But they’re back on the horse and look to be another wagon in the NFC North to battle with Philadelphia, Green Bay and Tampa Bay. Forget beating the Lions. How about just not embarrassing yourselves like they did the last two weeks?

Hard to think they’ll rise to the occasion at this point considering the effort and execution they put forth Monday night after losing by a franchise-record 38 eight days earlier.

Talk is cheap. And yes, all Bengals fans – as Marvin Lewis famously said – see better than they hear. What they see now is a Bengals franchise careening down a road to irrelevance and wasting the career of their now-injured quarterback.