Taylor rose through the ranks through an uninspiring strain of the West Coast Offense championed by his father-in-law while Burrow wants to be Drew Brees operating basketball on grass, dinking and dunking defenses to death until they give up from sheer boredom or someone drops a pass and the offense has to punt.
With the NFL having adapted to pass-happy schemes with an endless supply of great pass rushers, more athletic back sevens and a greater commitment to playing two deep safeties to prevent big plays at any cost, this doesn’t work without elite players at quarterback, offensive tackle and receiver. Even then it requires a very high degree of execution, mostly by repeatedly completing 3-yard passes that analytics people will falsely tell you are just as good as a 3-yard run.
We saw the Bengals offense operate more efficiently last season after Burrow went down with a season-ending injury because they actually attempted to be balanced, including going under center more, because that creates more opportunities for big plays down the field. Some wondered if that would pay dividends this season upon Burrow’s return, but it comes as little surprise that it didn’t in Week 1 because Burrow doesn’t like going under center, and the coaching staff apparently lacks the will to convince him of the value of doing so.
Other observations from Sunday:
- Building an offense around elite receivers really doesn’t work when one of them (Tee Higgins) is hurt 40% of the time and the defense can focus on the other one no matter how versatile he is. Of course the Ja’Marr Chase hold-in was a factor, but that has already been covered extensively, and he was still out there Sunday.
- They are still very average at running back, which means nothing to the Bengals coaching staff but should. Obviously they aren’t going to actually decide they want to prioritize the running game at any point in the Taylor-Burrow era, but it would be interesting to see what would happen if they fell into an elite back who could do something with the terrible situations they drop their current guys into running only when it is entirely predictable and linebackers can get a running start at them.
- Cincinnati’s oversized receivers playing tight end really let them down Sunday. This is another position the Bengals pay no serious attention to making good in the offseason, and it showed again Sunday when Mike Geisicki, who can’t do anything but catch jump balls, couldn’t hang onto a jump ball in the end zone then Tanner Hudson lost a critical fumble while displaying the type of ball security I saw Saturday afternoon at a reserve peewee football game in Enon.
- The defense is still a one-trick pony. This unit was helpless early in the Lou Anarumo era without an elite run-stuffing defensive tackle, so of course they let D.J. Reader go and didn’t replace him in the offseason. Anarumo’s reputation as a great defensive coordinator is mostly a result of one great half against the Chiefs in the AFC Championship Game three years ago when he preyed upon KC’s reluctance to take what the defense is giving and watched Andy Reid and Patrick Maholmes implode. Since then the Chiefs have evolved and won two more Super Bowls while the Bengals have fallen behind while showing no interest in doing the same.
- The Chiefs also did something the Bengals are trying to do: Go young on defense and hope it works out. For them, it has. For the Bengals, it hasn’t yet, but there is still time. It might help if they had a defensive coordinator who knew what to do when the opponent isn’t playing from behind and eschewing the run with the willingness his own team shows, but for now they are stuck having to face the reality that stopping the run still matters in the NFL, especially in a division where they are likely to finish in last place again if things don’t turn around fast.
And yet… this is the NFL.
We call it overreaction Monday for a reason. There is time to fix things. They have shown the ability to adapt within the season before (though why that seems to be necessary every year remains a mystery…), and the schedule is still full of bad teams they should be able to beat if they come to their senses on some of these issues.
Perhaps the Bengals even surprise in Kansas City this weekend, beat Maholmes and crew and turn all these well-earned negative narratives on their head.
The possibility of that is one of the things that keeps bringing us back every week, right?
But seeing the same old flops for the same old reasons is also the source of growing frustration.
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