Bengals' defense was even worse than it looked in loss to Commanders

CINCINNATI — Ring of Honor night was supposed to be about celebrating history at Paycor Stadium.

Instead, the Cincinnati Bengals defense made history of its own. Cincinnati’s 2024 season might not be far behind.

As boos rained down on them during Monday’s 38-33 loss to the Washington Commanders, the Bengals defense turned in the worst performance in team history, failing to make a single stop and allowing five touchdowns and a field goal on six possessions, two others ending in Washington taking a knee.

Excluding drives ending in knees, the Bengals allowed 6.3 points per drive against Washington. The previous team record was 5.6 in Week 10 of 2018 against the New Orleans Saints. Marvin Lewis fired defensive coordinator Teryl Austin after that game.

There almost certainly won’t be firings in the aftermath of Monday’s nightmare, but there will be an entire team wondering what changes will come at a stunning 0-3 record.

“It’s tough,” linebacker Logan Wilson said. “You still got to go about your work. Find ways to get better. Our defense will be better. We have to be. It sucks.”

It’s hard to imagine the Bengals being much worse. In a week in which cornerback Cam Taylor-Britt pinned comments on the Washington bulletin board calling Jayden Daniels and Kliff Kingsbury’s group “a nice college offense,” it looked like that college was Alabama against Old Dominion.

.@AustinEkeler goes 24 yards for the TD!

📺: #WASvsCIN on ABC
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— NFL (@NFL) September 24, 2024

No matter how bad it looked as frustrated Bengals voiced their feelings of disbelief, it kept getting worse.

There were just 16 games in the Super Bowl era in which a defense didn’t force a punt or turnover and allowed at least five touchdowns. Now there are 17.

Incredibly, there were only 32 games in NFL history in which a defense failed to force a punt or turnover all game regardless of touchdowns allowed, and the Commanders have now done it in two consecutive weeks.

Only, they kicked seven field goals last week against the New York Giants. They were a perfect 3-for-3 in the red zone Monday.

That’s partly why frustration was directed by the staff toward Taylor-Britt, who only further riled up an already impressive unit.

“That’s not what we do,” head coach Zac Taylor said. “That’s not what we do. We praise our own team. We praise the other team. We don’t need to take shots like that. That team hasn’t punted in two weeks. They’ve scored on every single possession the last two weeks.”

Respect filled the Bengals’ locker room for Daniels, who looked every bit the peer with Burrow on a night when both LSU Heisman winners were dealing. They really had no other option.

On third and fourth downs, Daniels was 6-of-7 for 81 yards and a touchdown. That was if the Bengals could even get them to third down. Washington reached third down only twice in the first half, as it posted three touchdowns on three drives.

Every time the Bengals tried to get off the field through the first three quarters, it was third-and-1.

Try this one on for size: In the first three quarters, the Bengals forced just one third or fourth down of more than 2 yards.

Just one.

And guess what: On that play — a fourth-and-2 from the Cincinnati 32 — Daniels hit rookie Luke McCaffrey for 30 yards.

Jayden Daniels & Luke McCaffrey pick up the 4th down conversion!

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— NFL (@NFL) September 24, 2024

TruMedia only goes back to 2000, but the previous low for any Bengals game was four instances — once again the 2018 New Orleans debacle resurfacing.

“Every time we made a good play, we were giving up too much,” defensive end Sam Hubbard said. “They were in third-and-manageable. We never really got a chance to pin our ears back. That’s on us. Solely on the defense not getting a stop.”

Cincinnati’s defense came into the game feeling good about itself. It had limited Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs last week while forcing three turnovers. Trey Hendrickson was a menace. Taylor-Britt was making plays instead of headlines. Even in an awful loss to the New England Patriots in the opener, it didn’t allow an explosive play. The explosives were the Bengals’ biggest issue last year, and it had turned into a strength, it appeared.

Then Daniels connected for three passes of at least 27 yards, Austin Ekeler busted a 24-yard touchdown run and Daniels hit five more passes for double-digit gains.

So much of this came by virtue of a defensive line that got dominated. Missing two starting defensive tackles — Sheldon Rankins and B.J. Hill, both with hamstring injuries — and with Hubbard struggling to create pressure opposite Hendrickson, too many dropbacks involved Daniels standing in the pocket with enough time to recite his Heisman speech.

Seven times Daniels held the ball for at least 3.2 seconds. On those plays, he went 6-of-7 for 117 yards.

When the Bengals finally got pressure with a zero blitz from Geno Stone on third down late in the game, Daniels threw a high-arching dime to Terry McLaurin for a touchdown behind Dax Hill.

That’s one play to tip your hat. The rest caused fans to throw theirs.

“It was not a good performance,” Hubbard said. “Not what we expected. Not reflective of who we want to be as a defense.”

They need to be more than Hendrickson and little else. Joseph Ossai has done little to take advantage of his opportunity with Myles Murphy injured, twice getting juked by Daniels on zone-read plays, one for an easy touchdown.

The Murphy injury looks even more consequential now with Hill and Rankins out, because he was going to be counted on to add missing juice off the edge. There aren’t many answers other than the health of the aforementioned trio to think it will get better.

Not everyone will be as electric as the Washington offense has proved to be the past two weeks, but Andy Dalton and the Carolina Panthers just dropped 34 on the Las Vegas Raiders as he awaits another chance to take out his former team.

All the shell-shocked Bengals defenders can do is go to work this week, fix the mistakes and hope things look better in Week 4 — or at least stay out of the history books. They might not want to crack those history books, either, because they will point out that only 2.4 percent of teams since 1990 have made the postseason after starting 0-3.