CINCINNATI — We’re about to find out a lot about the rest of the Bengals roster.
With Joe Burrow sustaining a right wrist injury Thursday night that puts his availability for the rest of the season in serious question, the Bengals will have to pick themselves up and re-start their emotional engines, knowing a third straight AFC North title is out of the question and the playoffs are hanging by a thread.
The team went through this same scenario – also in Week 11 – three seasons ago when Joe Burrow tore his ACL at FedEx Field, just 35 miles south down I-95 from M&T Bank Stadium, the scene of the crime in Thursday’s 34-20 loss to the Ravens.
The Bengals fell to 2-7-1 that day with a 20-9 loss. Right now, they’re still 5-5 but every team remaining on their schedule is .500 or better, the toughest remaining slate in the NFL.
The Bengals, with Brandon Allen and Ryan Finley finishing out the slate, combined to match Burrow’s two wins in six starts, including Finley’s epic performance against the Steelers on Monday night football and Allen’s career-passing day of 371 yards and two touchdowns in a 37-31 win over Houston.
Ja’Marr Chase was not on that 2020 Bengals team, of course. Thursday, he was held to two catches on seven targets for 12 yards, including a 2-yard TD reception in garbage time.
“It’s part of the league, man,” Chase told me when I asked him if it’s hard coping with the reality of injuries. “I’m not used to losing. I’m not a loser, so I love winning. So, when I lose, I don’t like the feeling, you know what I’m saying? So as of right now, we’ve got to adjust, make changes, move forward, and take it a day at a time.”
“We are not going to let one game define us,” Zac Taylor insisted when referencing Thursday’s disaster. “This was certainly a big game for us. Our guys were excited about [playing] on the road. It didn’t go our way. In a long season like this, what you’ve got to do is be able to regroup. We know what kind of guys we have in the locker room. We’ve done this kind of situation before. We’ve got to rally here at the end of the season, the last seven weeks.”
This is clearly not 2022, when the Bengals stood 4-4 and rattled off 10 straight wins (including two in the postseason). The defense is getting diced and sliced and allowing way too many explosive plays. It happened on the opening drive Thursday when Zay Flowers broke free for a 32-yard gain on a crosser.
The defense was getting better every week last season. That’s not the case right now. It’s spotty at best in the secondary with too many receivers and tight ends roaming free and unguarded.
"It's tough. He's a top 2 quarterback in the league. It makes it tough but that's no excuse." Mike Hilton pic.twitter.com/jKprTTZMLZ
— Mike Petraglia (@Trags) November 17, 2023
Offensively, the run game showed signs Thursday but not enough consistency and it may have finally caught up to them when Jadeveon Clowney broke through with two others and drove Burrow to the ground, with his right hand getting apparently pinned.
But Zac Taylor is forced to sound an upbeat, somehow positive tone when talking about the seven games that remain. That is, after all, his job: Motivate and coach up professionals to be professionals and prepared for whatever challenge comes across their path.
“Great opportunity at home against Pittsburgh to get started on that track,” Taylor said. “So, you know, not to let the guys forget we’ve had a nice stretch there, four games winning, we were in a good area. We lost [by] a last-second field goal, and then we lost a tough game Thursday night on the road to a really good team, so don’t get it twisted on what kind of team we have.”
Fans don’t feel the same way. They see a team that is very, very different with Jake Browning calling the shots instead of their freshly minted $275 million quarterback. If Burrow is watching from the sideline for the rest of the season, these final seven games won’t define the 2023 Bengals. The first 10 already have. They’re a team that showed great potential at times but only good enough to be a .500 team, nowhere close to a Super Bowl-caliber squad.
The players know they’ve been disappointing too often this season. But still, with the disappointment of a 34-20 loss that dropped them to 0-3 in the AFC North for a second straight season, Mixon – an offensive captain – spoke for Burrow.
“I’m a leader in this locker room and a captain for a reason. I’m here to do whatever I can to keep this ship here going and keep everybody together. I’m going to do my best, you know, do whatever I can, make that happen and build on this performance.”
Mixon had his moments in the first quarter and a half. He finished with 69 yards on 14 carries and led the team in receptions with five on five targets for 31 yards and his touchdown that served as potentially Joe Burrow’s final pass of the season.
Joe Mixon addressed the team after the game "everybody stick together" pic.twitter.com/827edsQBAW
— Mike Petraglia (@Trags) November 17, 2023
“We’ve got a chance to regroup,” Taylor said. “All the things that we really wanted to do are still in front of us. We’re going to have opportunities to do that. We control our own destiny at this point by just winning these games that are in front of us, starting with Pittsburgh. I know our guys are going to be fired up with the right mindset to be able to do that.”
If Jake Browning can reprise Ryan Finley on Monday night football from three years back, that’d be a good start.
On top of the brouhaha created when the Bengals social media team posted photos of Joe Burrow deplaning in Baltimore with something on his right wrist, Prime Video football cameras Thursday spotted Burrow walking off the team bus with some sort of wrap or shield on his right wrist. The NFL is reportedly looking into the matter with the Bengals. Burrow was not on the injury report leading up to the Ravens game on a short week, leading some to speculate that the Bengals could be in the same hot water that landed the Falcons in trouble last month for not reporting Bijan Robinson’s illness in a game against Tampa Bay.
Cam Taylor-Britt indicated after the game that he feels his nagging quad won’t keep him from making a run at playing in the Steelers game a week from Sunday. He came out of the game Thursday when he slipped on a touchdown pass to Rashod Bateman just before halftime.
Spoke with Cam Taylor-Britt after the game, and confirming what @RapSheet reported, the standout CB felt confident that with treatment of recurring quad soreness, he should be ready for Pittsburgh on Nov. 26. Has been dealing with this for several weeks.
— Mike Petraglia (@Trags) November 17, 2023
