CINCINNATI — When the season began, the Cincinnati Bengals and Joe Burrow were expected to return to a spot they occupied every healthy year of the franchise quarterback’s career.
Instead, they left the field on Sunday and trudged to a despondent home locker room under the lights of a 41-38 overtime loss to the Ravens trying to wrap their brains around a 1-4 start in which each defeat felt more improbable than the previous.
This one came as Joe Burrow threw for 392 yards and set a career high with five touchdown passes. The Bengals scored touchdowns on four consecutive possessions while the defense throttled the dominant Baltimore running game most of the day. They held two separate 10-point leads in the third and fourth quarters, making the Ravens play a style outside of their downhill comfort zone.
The Ravens even gifted the Bengals with an overtime fumble and defining turnover that historically decides these AFC North MVP-level quarterback showdowns.
Joe Burrow speaks to the media following Week 5 vs. Baltimore. https://t.co/gtwuPbBUhQ
— Cincinnati Bengals (@Bengals) October 6, 2024
Yet, the Bengals blew opportunities to finish the win on offense, defense and special teams and are tied for the worst record in football.
“This one, sickening,” running back Chase Brown said. “For real.”
“We should have won these games,” receiver Ja’Marr Chase said.
“It’s shocking,” kicker Evan McPherson said.
Burrow, coming off one of the best games of his illustrious career, sat at his postgame news conference still staring into space processing the path from 105 combined points in three weeks to being tied for the worst record in football.
One feeling he wasn’t experiencing was disbelief. Not even a little.
“No, I know exactly how we are 1-4,” Burrow said. “We are not making the plays at the end of the game to go and win it. It’s definitely not disbelief, I know exactly what’s happening.”
What’s happening is they are making losing plays at winning time.
The Bengals are an incomplete team. In a league consistently decided by the final moments, a group that so often during Burrow’s tenure found ways to finish the game has bumbled away the defining moments.
“We are not a championship-level team right now,” Burrow said, bluntly. “We are not. I like to think that we’ll come back and improve throughout the season to get to that point. But right now, we are not. And we have to get better.”
The same story through five weeks is playing on repeat.
“I’m sick to my stomach for our guys in there,” head coach Zac Taylor said. “They fought, I’m proud of them, but we’ve got to find a way to win. We can’t keep coming up one play short.”
That doesn’t merely point the finger at an embarrassing defense that allowed 520 yards of offense to Baltimore, ninth-most by any NFL team in the last two seasons (with Cincinnati’s home loss to the Texans last year also on that list). However, there’s no other place to start than a side of the ball now going on 22 games dating back to last year as an organizational liability.
Lamar Jackson is a two-time MVP and made plays that weren’t from this planet. Dropping a snap, picking it up, avoiding one tackler, stiff-arming 270-pound Sam Hubbard to the ground, rolling to the sideline, and heaving a pass 20 yards for a touchdown while taking a hit from Germaine Pratt qualifies as tip-the-hat territory.
ONLY LAMAR. WOW.
📺: #BALvsCIN on CBS/Paramount+
📱: https://t.co/waVpO8ZBqG pic.twitter.com/KenO7criwG— NFL (@NFL) October 6, 2024
“How do you make that up?” Hubbard said. “There’s nobody in the world that moves like him. Two-time MVP.”
Those are fine. But the rest of it involves receivers repeatedly running wide-open. Jackson had six passes gaining at least 18 yards to five different receivers.
Need a stop on four possessions after the break to allow the offense to put the game away? Give up three touchdowns and allow a 38-yard drive for a game-tying field goal.
Get a holding penalty to cause first-and-20? Can’t even force third down.
The defense only forced Baltimore to see third down on four snaps in the entire second half. The Ravens converted three of them.
In overtime, desperately needing a stop on a day they’d handled the run game? Derrick Henry breaks free for 51 yards down the sideline.
“Too many explosives,” Hubbard said. “Until we eliminate them, that’s the problem.”
Losing plays at winning time.
Despite all the offense did on Sunday, they deserve criticism as well. For the third time this year, they had a chance to drive for the win and failed.
Against New England in the season opener, Burrow got the ball with 3:04 left down six. The drive netted five yards on three ugly plays.
Against Kansas City, they had a chance to run out the clock but the drive only netted 17 yards on seven plays with a punt giving Patrick Mahomes the ball back for a game-winning field goal drive.
Yes, the Bengals scored touchdowns on four straight drives and looked unstoppable in the second half. But the last three times they touched the football on Sunday they produced an interception, three-and-out and then three rushing yards in overtime before a missed field goal.
On the interception, Chase said he “ran a sh—y route,” as Ravens cornerback Marlon Humphrey stepped in front for a game-changing pick.
Humphrey picks off Burrow!@Ravens take over with 3 minutes left trailing by 3.
📺: #BALvsCIN on CBS/Paramount+
📱: https://t.co/waVpO8ZBqG pic.twitter.com/iekORIBMbb— NFL (@NFL) October 6, 2024
When Burrow gets the ball with the way they had been moving up and down the field and the Bengals have three timeouts plus 1:35 left, it should be over. Yes, the defense is a liability. But this offense was humming and this was the team’s strength given a golden opportunity to finish a huge win.
A sack that came right up the middle on first down crushed their hope before it even got started.
“That’s the big one,” Taylor said. “That changes you a little bit.”
It forced them to eventually play for overtime with a give-up draw.
Losing plays at winning time.
The most sickening straw for the Bengals came after Jackson’s overtime gift. Taylor opted to get conservative thinking Evan McPherson was in field goal range and ran the ball three times. Confidence in his kicker led to failure to play to his strength.
Criticism of the conservatism play-calling has its place, but when the last two times you were in winning time and dropped back there was an interception and sack, that’s a tough lane to choose while already feeling like that game is in range.
Either way, that should have been more than enough for McPherson, who has made a lucrative career and the Money Mac nickname off nailing game-winners. Do you know who hasn’t? Rookie punter/holder Ryan Rehkow.
“I really do feel like (I felt) the adrenaline maybe too much, just trying to get it down too quick,” Rehkow said.
From seventh-round pick Daijahn Anthony’s fourth-and-16 pass interference to undrafted Rehkow’s mishandled snap, these are rookies doing rookie things in big moments. Field a young team keeping 12 rookies (11 to play) and ask them to perform in huge moments and you get young mistakes.
Losing plays in winning time.
They might have the best offense of Burrow’s career — and be wasting it — but they are what their record says they are: A team that can’t finish. Time is running out to prove they can change that reality.
“People can write us off if they really want to,” Taylor said. “I’m not dumb enough to do that.”
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(Photo: Sam Greene / Imagn Images)
