The 2024 Bengals Simply Aren’t Good Enough
Credit: Sam Greene - via Imagn Images
They simply aren’t good enough.
That is the cold reality of the 2024 Cincinnati Bengals season, a team that had high expectations but became as confounding as they were difficult to watch. The culmination of this realization happened in painstaking fashion on Sunday — in primetime, for all the world to see. The Los Angeles Chargers continued the newfound tradition of sounding the death knell for the dreams of Bengals fans at SoFi Stadium. Their last-minute touchdown drive to go-ahead for the 34-27 win was the season summed up in a few minutes of real-time.
The @Chargers got the ball with 45 seconds left.
Four plays later, they called game. #CINvsLAC pic.twitter.com/C7cOEzNt1A
— NFL (@NFL) November 18, 2024
While many pundits will analyze the defeat ad nauseam, dissecting all the things that went wrong this season, there is a much simpler problem that perfectly explains the recent batch of Bengals woes. It’s cold, it’s dark, and it does not offer any consolation or hope, but it is — as the team has shown time and time again — the truth.
They simply aren’t good enough.
Joe Burrow’s 3,028-yard stare — captured repeatedly on the sideline Sunday night — is not a man experiencing frustration. That was the look of someone who knows that no matter what he does, he is trapped in a defeated situation with his current roster. Not just on offense, but all three phases of the game. Burrow is not without his share of the blame, of course, but on a night when he took more physical abuse than Rocky Balboa, the blank stare on his face was so disheartening one can only wonder if he could pull a Carson Palmer if things don’t change.
Why? Because the Bengals simply aren’t good enough.
Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins showed Sunday night that outside of Burrow himself, they are the most crucial elements of the offense. Unfortunately, their drops in critical moments proved to be a major part of the Bengals’ motif of missed opportunities and inability to rise on the biggest moments. The stud WRs received assists from the ghost-like performances of Andre Iosivas and Jermaine Burton, the latter of whom has turned into the Bengals version of Chase Claypool in a three-week span.
Of course, having five tight ends on the roster means you have none, and last night’s performance brought that reality into brutal focus in both the passing and blocking game.
Either Burrow was being protected by turnstiles with white-striped jerseys draped over them — save for perhaps Cody Ford, filling in for Orlando Brown Jr. — or blocking was not on the agenda in LA Sunday night. Burrow missed a completely wide-open Chase in a key moment late in the game where he could have done the Griddy for 20-plus yards into the end zone. Considering that Mick Foley’s Hell in a Cell match with The Undertaker was less punishing than what Burrow went through Sunday night, it’s understandable why Burrow was trying to get rid of the ball as quickly as possible. (Taking 14 hits in addition to three sacks will do that to you.)
All this adds up to one thing: They’re simply not good enough.
The defense was a sieve for much of the first half Sunday night, letting Chargers QB Justin Herbert carve them up with the precision of a hibachi chef when it mattered, going 6-for-6 passing with two touchdowns on his first three drives, and 2-for-3 for 55 yards on the final one. Germaine Pratt, who only seems to make impactful plays against the Kansas City Chiefs, tried his best to fire up his teammates in the first half. His impassioned speech seemingly worked in the second half. But then again, the Bengals’ coaching staff benching the embattled Cam Taylor-Britt might have been just as responsible. But Trey Hendrickson had a critical roughing the passer penalty and Sam Hubbard was seemingly MIA, with no stats turning up in the game’s box score.
Once D.J. Turner II — in the midst of having arguably his best performance of the season — went down with a collarbone injury, the Bengals reverted to their old ways. Injury-prone J.K. Dobbins ran wild against the Bengals in the second half. So did Ladd McConkey, whom I simply knew would have the two critical receptions to set up the game-winning touchdown. I can prove it, too. No, it’s not because I’m clairvoyant. The answer is much simpler.
They’re simply not good enough.
Of course, no discussion of the Chargers debacle would be complete without mentioning Evan McPherson. Much like his counterpart in Baltimore, Justin Tucker, McPherson has seemingly turned into the football-playing lovechild of Charlie Brown and Chuck Knoblauch overnight. The fact he missed not one, but two field goals in critical moments was almost poetic in its tragedy, especially with the Bengals’ season on the line.
Yes, the officials missed calls again last night, just like they did against New England in Week 1 and just as they did in Baltimore the previous week. Yes, Chase and Higgins did make remarkable grabs in key moments. Yes, the Bengals played phenomenally well in the second half… But despite it all, the team failed themselves in all three phases of the game. They didn’t block, they didn’t catch, they didn’t tackle, they got little pressure on Herbert and they didn’t kick.
The Bengals’ immediate future is abundantly clear: They are not making the playoffs. Despite the hopes of a possibly season-defining comeback with everything on the line, the Bengals instead defined their season by falling short in prime time, once again exposing their many flaws to the world. It will take an absolute miracle for this team to rally together and make the playoffs.
But that miracle isn’t coming, and we all know why: Because they simply are not good enough.
Up Next