There are two very distinct lenses through which to regard the Cincinnati Bengals at the quasi-halfway point in the season. Trust one, and you just might save what’s left of your sanity:
1. In early September, you looked at this roster and where it was in its development and saw 7-8 wins. You understood that while the talent jump was impressive, it was new talent, or talent that just arrived from some other NFL outpost. Burrow’s career was at nine games. Combine that with a still-green coaching staff. There would be just as many highs as lows. The idea was to improve significantly in prep for 2022. Have the Bengals done that? You can’t say they haven’t.
2. The other way to look at it was the more traditional, NFL fan way: Get bent every time they lose/high-5 the ceiling every time they don’t. These are the folks who, after the Men won in Baltimore, were checking flight schedules to LA and clearing their schedules in the first week of February. How you feelin’ now, friends?
Moderation matters when it comes to drinking Kool-Aid and wanting Zac Taylor fired. Even after the past two Sundays, the rational take is, calm down and see what the next eight games bring. And know I’m here for you, Mobsters. It’s just what I do.
Without further ado. . .
TEN THINGS ABOUT 16-41.
1. Call the experts on this, but the eyeball test suggests the offense is getting predictable and opponents are taking advantage. Way back when Bob Bratkowski was the OC, I’d amuse myself by calling the plays beforehand. If I’d been picking games in Vegas, I’d have made some money. Burrow has 7 picks in the last 5 games. Coincidence? Which leads to. . .
2. An over-reliance on Ja’Marr Chase? Thirteen targets yesterday, almost three times as many as anyone not named Higgins. That quick out from the Browns 3 – the one Ward pick-sixed – was poorly thrown, slightly behind Chase. Ward jumped it easily. It was also predictable. Chase had an off game. It threw the whole attack off balance. With all those weapons, that shouldn’t happen. Which brings us to. . .
3. Tyler Boyd, who used to play for the Bengals. Pretty good slot guy. Good hands, fairly fearless. He had 23 catches in the first four games, 15 in the last five. I’m sure the Bengals would tell you different guys have different roles and importance depending on the opponent and the situation. But really now. Boyd caught one of Burrow’s 40 throws Sunday; he was targeted twice. He had 1,000-yard seasons in ’18 and ’19. He’s in his prime. Please remove him from milk cartons.
4. Sunday was officially the last day I want to hear about how great the locker room is. One, clubhouse closeness was supposed to fix what ailed them after the Jets L. It didn’t. And (A), How much does it really matter if everyone gets along? Some, definitely, but it’s no substitute for talent and focus. The Browns were an OBJ-inspired mess all last week. Focus and talent owned their day Sunday. If you accept responsibility for a bad game, great. What does it mean if you have another bad game? The “we got this’’ mindset sounds good when you got this.
5. Point taken, Mobster Greg O., re your question about no follow-up to Sam Hubbard. Hubbard declared postgame the Bengals “have got a great team (and) a great locker room’’ and no media heathen challenged him on that. I will say only that postgame NFL pressers are weird things. Ten minutes after an embarrassing L, a coach/player has to draw a shade over his emotions and answer often stupid questions from pencil-necks who – all together now – never played the game. There is an art to asking the right question at the right time. You can wade into the storm and ask a tough-guy question which might impress your friends but won’t get a decent answer. Or you can pick your spots, try not to be adversarial and possibly get a reasoned reply. But yes, Hubbard – who seems to epitomize the “new culture’’ of accountability and professionalism Taylor espouses – should have been pushed on that one. Especially after that performance.
6. How much talent, really? Without consulting Pro Football Focus or Beano Cook who’s no longer among us, how many Pro Bowl Bengals do you see as of today? Chase and. . . There have been lots of players who’ve made good impressions. Ogunjobi, Awuzie, Hendrickson. Hilton, whose name you almost never hear and that is what you want from a corner. Uzomah, Logan Wilson. If the Pro Bowl were tomorrow, how many votes do they get?
7. Not sure how a team goes from a sure tackling team to a team of whiffers. Even I noticed the bad angles on multiple Nick Chubb jailbreaks and the way he got to the 2nd level of the Men’s D so often. Tackling is like rebounding, as much will as skill.
8. I have no proof that the Browns play especially hard for Baker Mayfield, especially when Beckham isn’t around dominating the ego-space. But they did yesterday. I’ve always liked Mayfield, for that reason. Yesterday he played with a wrecked left shoulder and owned the Bengals. He has a perfect QB Rating into the 3rd quarter. Beckham on the other hand was nowhere to be found. In his last nine Browns games, OBJ had 24 catches for 315 yards and zero touchdowns.
9. After the bye, The Men play at Vegas. It has been suggested, after Raiders rookie wideout Henry Ruggs killed a woman on The Strip last week, in a drunken car wreck, that Las Vegas might not be the optimal spot for team-building and character growth. Peter King:
What if the city that rarely sleeps is really a detriment for team-building, and a detriment for young players flush with cash for the first time in their lives? Are young players in Cincinnati or Minneapolis or Green Bay or Seattle driving 156 mph in the streets at 3:30 on a Tuesday morning during the season? Or being tempted in other ways in a city that is awake at all hours?
10. It was great to see PBS full on Sunday. I don’t remember the last time 65,451 folks were there at one time. Maybe for a concert.
Now, then. . .
KUDOS TO UC, BUT. . . Anyone who ever observes (and gripes about) how much money a university spends on its football program needed to see what occurred Saturday morning at UC. ESPN Gameday was a three-hour advertisement for what’s cool about the place.
Major props to the kids who turned out in the middle of the night chill to secure turf within camera-angle range of the Gameday stage. And to your (mostly) appropriate signage and enthusiasm. You never know when a CEO of a company seeking to relocate is watching stuff like that, not to mention a blue-chip 17-year-old still deciding where to sign. Money couldn’t buy what the Bearcats produced Saturday morning. Then the game happened.
They won, yes. But it’s time for all UC lovers to face the fact that sexy wins matter. Big, sexy wins over big-time opponents really matter. Since ND, UC has neither. The committee is looking for any reason to keep UC’s nose pressed against the glass, begging for admission to Big Boy School. UC’s three most recent Ws have given the committee members just that.
It helped that Michigan State lost to Purdue and that Wake Forest fell. Alabama only beat LSU by 6, but that probably won’t matter to the 'Bama bootlickers on the committee.
Oklahoma will move up, even as it didn’t play. If the unbeaten Sooners win out, they’re in. Unlike the Bearcats, they play ranked opponents the rest of the way. So do Ohio State (Michigan State, Michigan, likely Wisconsin in the Big 10 game) and Michigan (Penn State, OSU).
WELL, KERSHAW MIGHT BE AVAILABLE if the Reds are interested. LA didn’t extend the future HOFer a qualifying offer of $18 mil, so he’s a free agent. The Reds could sign him. More likely, quoting Madonna from an ancient Saturday Nigh Live skit: “And monkeys will fly outta my butt.’’
I can think of lots of words to describe who the Reds are becoming. Disappointing is the best. The Big Man laid his cards completely on the table last week. Given the choice between baseball and financial success, he chose the latter.
That is completely within his rights. The Reds lost a lot of money in ’20. (So did everyone else in the game.) And no one knows if there will even be a season in ’22, or how many games it might contain.
But the dumping of Wade Miley made Bob Castellini’s wishes clear. And Luis Castillo might be next out the door.
Way back when he bought the team, Castellini should have declared, “We’re going to try to bring championship baseball back to Cincinnati.’’ Or, perhaps, “Losing is unacceptable, in some cities.’’ Or, “We really hope we’re not going to lose anymore.’’
Disappointing.
TUNE O’ THE DAY. . . Haven’t played this one in awhile. Deserves a second spin. Lots of songs symbolize the molar-crushing greatness of Led Zeppelin, and the meat-and-potatoes drumming of John Bonham. None do both any better than this tune, a top-5 Zep pick for me. Skip the first 50 seconds or so. Not sure what they were doing there.
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