CINCINNATI — Sunday lined up as a game about truth. A day to sift through a weird combination of fluky results, impactful injuries and weird scheduling to find out just how good the Cincinnati Bengals are. For a team that’s been tough to figure, this was a day to gain a sense of their true place in the NFL hierarchy.
The Eagles removed any uncertainty. More precisely, they pounded the belief out of the 2024 Bengals.
Philadelphia’s 37-17 bullying of Cincinnati will leave a significant dent this year and possibly beyond.
GO DEEPER
Barkley, Hurts key dominant second half in Eagles’ 37-17 win vs. Bengals: Takeaways
What message did Sunday deliver to those inside the home locker room about where they stand?
“We’re not good enough,” Joe Burrow said, repeating for emphasis. “We’re not good enough. We got to get better.”
Joe Burrow speaks to the media. https://t.co/pUrLEjNLra
— Cincinnati Bengals (@Bengals) October 27, 2024
It’s officially fair to question if they are capable of doing so.
For all the stars and recent history of playoff runs and late-season streaks to dig out of scuffling Septembers, this club feels and looks different.
They spent Sunday learning what life after Tee Higgins could look like and relying far too much on Burrow to perform miracles on a team that spent the second half unable to rise to the level necessary to compete.
That goes for offense, defense, coaching, special teams and every corner of the organization that got demoralized en route to an 0-4 start at home. They’re also 0-4 against teams with winning records while 3-1 against those without.
Burrow sat at his postgame press conference and pondered the new math out loud.
“I think 10 wins usually gets you in,” he said, after a long, contemplative pause. “We got to win seven out of nine. That’s doable. That’s doable.”
It sounded more like he was talking himself into it because Sunday sure didn’t look like it. Not with this group.
The Eagles ripped off four touchdown drives of at least 70 yards and only punted once. The Bengals’ lack of pass rush in the first five games of the season supposedly righted itself the last two weeks, but it turns out that looks more like a mirage from facing the Browns and Giants than the arrival of a healthy, disruptive group.
On the biggest play of the game, a 45-yard bomb from Jalen Hurts to DeVonta Smith, Trey Hendrickson was run 14 yards behind the line of scrimmage by backup left tackle Fred Johnson. Sam Hubbard was blocked up by tight end Jack Stoll and nobody else was in the vicinity in the 4.5 seconds Hurts patted the ball for launch.
Fred Johnson runs Trey Hendrickson 14 yards (!) behind the LOS and Sam Hubbard gets held up by TE Jack Stoll to help buy all the time in the world for Hurts to launch. https://t.co/OnXIu6lcBB
— Paul Dehner Jr. (@pauldehnerjr) October 27, 2024
It served as a microcosm of the Bengals’ day. The Cincinnati defense didn’t record a sack, hit the quarterback only one time, allowed 4.9 yards per carry for Saquon Barkley and 11.8 yards per attempt for Hurts. They gave up an easy 17-yard completion to A.J. Brown to convert a critical third-and-16 and three different receivers caught passes of at least 28 yards.
“Third-and-16, s–t, we got to get off the field some way, somehow,” cornerback Mike Hilton said. “It should not be a conversion on a third-and-10-plus. We are better than that. We got to be better than that for us to have any shot. We just didn’t play well today.”
If not now, then when will that day be coming? Against offenses with any bite this year, the Bengals have been swallowed whole.
“We can play with anybody,” Hilton said. “We just have to find ways to close games out. We went into halftime feeling good. We liked where we were and we knew we were going to come out in the second half and be able to compete. We didn’t make plays when we needed to and didn’t get off the field when we needed to and it came back and bit us in the ass.”
Their failures put in motion a series of impatient, poor decisions from the head coach and quarterback that served up the game’s defining sequence.
Trailing by seven nearing the end of the third quarter facing a third-and-1 at his own 39, coach Zac Taylor called for a Zack Moss run up the middle out of a heavy formation that went nowhere. The play accentuated the inability to convert in short yardage that’s been ongoing for the last two years in Cincinnati.
Taylor opted to be aggressive rather than punt to force the Eagles to go the length of the field. Considering the inability to stop Philadelphia on what was at that point three consecutive touchdown drives, he chose to go for it on fourth-and-1. It was the correct play analytically, gaining a 5.1 percent win probability, via the Fourth Down Decision Bot.
The play call, however, was wretched. The only thing worse than the execution was the predictability. Taylor went to the same back-and-forth motion he’s used in the past with minimal success and another critical fourth down thrown short of the sticks, which also changed the dynamic of a loss to New England earlier this year.
Eagles corner Cooper DeJean blew up a play to Ja’Marr Chase that never had a chance.
“Just one call I wish we could’ve took back and changed to something else,” Chase said. “But we called it, and it happened.”
Taylor agreed.
“That’s 100 percent on me,” he said. “Any time it doesn’t go well, obviously you’re gonna think long and hard about that decision.”
The decision highlights more continued themes from this season. The offense’s inability to consistently drive the ball against the league’s better defenses and what’s now become a liability of a running game.
Chase Brown and Moss combined for 17 carries for 43 yards. The longest run was 5 yards. They didn’t create explosive runs and they left all the onus on Burrow to salvage conversions on third-and-long. Sometimes he did, but the degree of difficulty (and likelihood of being added to his career highlight reel) were high.
Plus, he had to do it all without Higgins (quad) and, for most of the game, left tackle Orlando Brown (knee). Evan McPherson missed his third consecutive field goal from 50-plus. The defense couldn’t stop a thing. That’s partially why he forced — and shorted — a deep ball to Chase that ended up intercepted for Philadelphia’s first turnover since Week 3.
Burrow can play quarterback at an elite level. Chase can help him. They’ve done so for large stretches of this season. They can’t do it alone.
All of this is unsustainable. Yet, all of this is the Bengals’ reality.
The Bengals thought they built a team capable of making another run to the Super Bowl.
Sunday made clear this is a team built to ask too much of its franchise quarterback.
Do as much optimistic math and schedule judging as you want, the time arrived Sunday for the Bengals to show they could dig out of the hole they created.
They confirmed, as Burrow said, “We’re not good enough.”
By the looks of it, they might not be good at all.
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(Photo: Sam Greene / Imagn Images)
