They wisely refused the overtures of the Dolphins for the ability to draft Joe Burrow. And, once it became clear that Mike Brown’s stubbornness had given them a keep, they seemed to accept that, to get the most out of their franchise quarterbacks, things had to change.
They seemingly did. After years of intransigence, Brown sold the naming rights to the stadium that had been named for his father, the legendary Paul Brown. Then, after Burrow completed only three NFL seasons, the Bengals busted the juke-a-box, giving Burrow a market-level contract.
So they’ve changed, right? Right?
Maybe not. And we’ve got three (likely soon to be four) reasons for it.
First, safety Jessie Bates III. They drafted him, developed him, tagged him, and intended to replace him with first-rounder Dax Hill. The problem is that: (1) Bates has gotten even better in Atlanta; and (2) Hill has struggled to fill Bates’s shoes, to the point where he’s already been moved to a new position. And they did it because they didn’t want to pay Bates what he deserved.
Second, running back Joe Mixon. Like the Giants, the Bengals underappreciated their workhorse tailback. They were going to cut him. They ended up trading him (the existence of trade interest should have been a clue/warning). He’s performing very well in Houston. And the Bengals don’t have the rushing attack to complement Burrow and the passing game.
Third, receiver Ja’Marr Chase. They’ll eventually give him a market-level deal. But they wanted to kick the can to 2025, because that meant paying one of the best receivers in football a measly $4.8 million in 2024. And while the structure of his rookie deal kept him from holding out ($3.8 million was paid in the form of a roster bonus due early in camp), the failure to give him a new contract prompted him to hold in, to miss most of camp and all of the preseason, and to seriously contemplate not playing in Week 1. Behind the scenes, it was uglier than anyone realizes, with fights over fines and a belief by Chase that they’d broken their promise to pay him by offering a contract that looked good on the surface but that had a very bad structure.
Look at how Chase played on Thursday night. What would he have done in Week 1 against the Patriots and Week 2 against the Chiefs if he’d been fully prepared and committed and ready to roll?
Fourth, receiver Tee Higgins. They’re continuing their proven habit of using the franchise tag for one year before letting the player walk away. (The only player whom the Bengals tagged and then gave a multi-year deal was Carl Pickens, and then they cut him after the first year of it.) And Higgins has missed five of 10 games due to injury. The injuries are real, but he has no reason to play at anything less than 100 percent when he has no financial security beyond this year, because the Bengals used their CBA-guaranteed mechanism for keeping him from getting fair value on the open market.
Next year, he will. And Andrei Iosivas will become the new Higgins. Four years, maybe a fifth, and out the door.
Lather, rinse, repeat. The way they’ve always done it.
So, yes, they’ve changed as to Burrow. Otherwise, they haven’t. And there’s nothing Burrow can do about it until 2030, at the earliest.
Last night’s renewal of the most compelling current rivalry in football delivered for Amazon Prime.
Bengals-Ravens averaged 13.63 million viewers, a 42-percent increase over last year’s Week 10 Thursday night game (Panthers-Bears) and a 100-percent increase over 2022’s Falcons-Panthers game in Week 10.
The streaming number beats the Week 8 Monday night game on ABC/ESPN/ESPN2 between the Giants and Steelers, which registered only 13.4 million viewers. Of course, that game was competing with a World Series contest between the Dodgers and Yankees, which attracted 13.6 million viewers.
It was Amazon Prime’s third most-watched game of the year. The package is currently averaging 13.08 million for 2024.
When it comes to not getting calls, Joe Burrow needs to act more like Tom Brady. Burrow apparently doesn’t want to do that. His coach has vowed to do it for him.
“They call it like they see it,” Zac Taylor told reporters on Friday, via Ben Baby of ESPN.com. “I just got to keep fighting for some of that stuff. You don’t want to lose him on a [hit] that’s well after the play’s over. . . . I’ve got to fight harder for Joe to get some of that. Because he doesn’t want to do it. He doesn’t want to disrupt from his flow in the game, but that’s just things I got to talk with him about.”
Brady gladly disrupted from the flow of the game to complain about non-calls. He made it part of the flow of the game. From a strategic perspective, post-whistle lobbying of the officials is no different from pre-snap diagnosis of the defense.
“I feel like I have never gotten those calls,” Burrow said after the game. “So I don’t really expect that. I feel like there were a couple that were close. Again, I don’t expect those.”
Burrow shouldn’t just accept it. He needs to let them know when they mess up, so they’ll be more careful to not mess up in the future.
On last night’s final drive, blowing a gasket after a blown face mask of Burrow might have prompted referee Clete Blakeman to throw a flag for roughing the passer on the failed two-point conversion.
Maybe it’s just not Burrow’s way. Maybe he’s just too nice. But we all know what happens to nice guys.
The Bengals have added some depth at receiver and on special teams after claiming Isaiah Williams on waivers a day after the Lions waived him.
Williams is a rookie out of Illinois who played only sparingly in Detroit this year, with two catches for six yards and one kickoff return for 36 yards.
Lions head coach Dan Campbell spoke favorably this season about Williams’ talent, but the Lions ultimately decided they just didn’t have a role for him in their offense.
The Bengals will hope he can help down the stretch as they attempt to make a late run into playoff contention. Williams’ most likely immediate role would be as a punt returner or kickoff returner.
The question of whether to go for two after a late touchdown from a team trailing by seven points has come up four times this week.
On Sunday, one coach who opted to pass on going for two (and lost in overtime) was asked about the coach who decided to go for two (and lost in regulation).
“It’s very interesting,” Patriots coach Jerod Mayo told reporters. “You’re always going to have people on either side, and I understand it. If it works, you’re a genius. If it doesn’t work, then you leave yourself open to criticism. It’s part of it.
“But again, there are so many factors that go into it. Whether you’re talking about analytics — all right, but analytics doesn’t take into account other things. What’s the weather? How’s the game flow going? What are the matchups? There are so many different things. I would say last night, [Bengals coach Zac Taylor] probably felt that was the best thing to do for his team. It’s easy to second-guess it, but it’s interesting. It is interesting.”
Mayo said more about Taylor’s decision than Mayo said about his own. And the biggest difference between Mayo on Sunday, Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald on Sunday, Buccaneers coach Todd Bowles on Monday, and Taylor on Thursday is that the Patriots scored their touchdown with zero minutes and zero seconds on the clock. This removed from the equation the factors arising from the remaining time.
Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford would have had 51 seconds to put his team in field-goal range. Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes would have had 27 seconds to engineer a game-winning field goal. Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson would have had 38 seconds. The Titans would have had nothing.
Patriots convert, they win. Patriots fail, they lose.
What would have happened after a successful two-point conversion with time remaining never gets discussed. Look at how the Ravens were moving the ball in the second half. Jackson could have pulled it off. (Of course, once-automatic kicker Justin Tucker might have missed the kick.)
So when Zac Taylor says the Bengals wanted to win the game, there’s no guarantee they would have won. The Ravens still could have pulled it off.
Then there’s the question of whether the Bengals would have won in overtime. If the Bengals had won the toss, would they have hot-knife-through-buttered their way through the Baltimore defense? Considering what Joe Burrow and Ja’Marr Chase had done in regulation, maybe they would have.
On that note, and as Rodney Harrison mentioned during Friday’s PFT Live, Burrow didn’t even look Chase’s way on the two-point try, even though the Ravens had only one man on him.
Mayo is right. There are plenty of factors. In four specific cases in the past five days, four teams scored touchdowns in the final minute. Three went for one. One went for two. None of them won.
