Curse is dead?
After multiple, quite frankly, embarrassing season openers, the Bengals finally got it together and won the first game of the season. Did playing in the preseason help the offense? Not really! The Bengals much maligned defense ultimately made the plays to help secure the first opening week win since the Super Bowl season.
Offense
First off, this was an ugly game. After a fantastic opening drive capped off with a Chase Brown rushing touchdown, the Bengals did not do much of anything on offense. Towards the end of the first half, Joe Burrow hit Noah Fant for a touchdown, but in the second half, the Browns held the Bengals to 7 net yards. The Browns always muck it up with the Bengals, but this was especially bad.
The Offensive Line gave up three straight sacks late in the 4Q deep into Bengals territory, and Joe Burrow nearly was forced into a safety. The offense has a lot to figure out after being the talk of the city, locking up Tee Higgins and adding more weapons like Dalton Risner, Noah Fant, and even more. Truly…inexcusable play on O.
Defense
This win, believe it or not, belongs to the defense. We can, fairly, talk about the Browns kicking issues all we want, and it is a big reason the Bengals won this game, but we choose to be positive here. They looked like they were going to get nickel and dimed to death quite often, but they turned it on in the second half. For the game, they allowed 46 rushing yards, which is a far cry from who they have been the last couple seasons. The pass rush should improve, and Trey Hendrickson and BJ Hill showed up late, but it has to be better. Joseph Ossai, Shemar Stewart, and TJ Slaton popped, but Kris Jenkins and Myles Murphy still leave a lot to be desired. Elsewhere, we need to have a talk about Cam Taylor-Britt, because today was bad.
Bottom Line
What truly matters today is that we saw progress in the defense. The offense was lackluster, but it really seems the Burrow needs to take some lumps before getting into game mode. Regardless of how bad this team may have looked, I think we can all agree, 1-0 is a lot better than 0-1. Especially since there were ZERO injuries other than Lucas Patrick, who was likely going to lose his starting spot to Dalton Risner as time went on anyway. WHO DEY!
