The Bengals Must Adapt To Beat the “Finesse” Rap
Credit: Albert Cesare/Imagn Images
Dropping the ball in Week 1 against the New England Patriots has left the Cincinnati Bengals shell-shocked, and the hot takes are coming in strong. After watching the defense fail to slow down a not-very-good Patriots offense, and the offense struggle to move the ball on Sunday, former QB and analyst Dan Orlovsky was fed up. He used a dreaded word, the one where you want to call a team “soft” without actually saying it.
“There’s nothing physical about the Bengals,” Orlovsky said. “On offense or defense. It’s all finesse. I’m going to say the same stuff about the Bengals offense that I’ve said for the last year. I’m shocked that there was nothing different about this offense. It’s efficient, and that’s it. That’s the only thing there… I expected different.”
Is he right or not? It doesn’t matter. A high-profile pundit making the accusation is enough to get the “soft” rap to stick to a team. The question is whether Cincinnati can do anything to dispel that reputation.
It won’t go away if the defense plays the way they did on Sunday. The stats from Week 1 were appalling. Rhamondre Stevenson is a solid running back, but the Bengals’ defense made him look elite. Stevenson ended the game with 120 rushing yards, with an NFL-leading 75 yards after contact in Week 1. Cincinnati genuinely looked like they forgot how to tackle at times.
That wasn’t the only area where the defense had trouble finishing plays. Heading into the season, the Patriots had a ton of offensive line questions, so the hope was the Bengals would spend a lot of time in the backfield. They did – the Bengals had a pressure rate of 48.3%, which was the top in the NFL. It amounted to just one sack.
As the pass rush showed, you can do a lot of things right, but it doesn’t matter if you can’t finish plays. Whether it’s bringing a runner down on first contact, or translating pressure into sacks, Cincinnati is going to have to end these plays strong to beat the “finesse” rap.
Enough picking on the defense for now. Let’s turn to the offense, the target of Orlovsky’s most scathing criticisms. Looking at the stat sheet, you can understand why. While New England was able to pound the Bengals on the ground for 170 yards, the Bengals got just 70 rushing yards on their own. Take out Joe Burrow’s 15 yards of scrambling, and it looks even worse.
Still, it doesn’t seem fair to put the blame on the players. As a team, the Bengals rushed only 16 times, and they only dialed a running back’s number for 12 of them. Zack Moss leading with 44 yards on the ground doesn’t seem impressive, but when that all comes on nine carries? That looks quite a bit better.
Especially when Moss was able to do something most feared Cincinnati couldn’t – pick up the tough yards. Moss had five attempts where he needed five or fewer yards to pick up the first down or touchdown. He succeeded on four of those, only falling short on a second-and-two play (where he still gained a yard). It’s hard to fault Moss, or even the offensive line.
The bigger problem for the Bengals was that they all but ditched the running game in a one-possession game. I get it, this is real-life football, not Madden, but mayyyyyybe Zac Taylor should feed a running back averaging 4.9 yards per carry more than nine carries in a game. If Taylor can’t trust his new backs, maybe the Bengals should have made some different moves in the offseason. When Joe Mixon was on board, Taylor clearly trusted him. If the coach isn’t leaning on Moss at a time he’s cooking and the passing game isn’t, what’s the point of having him?
You also can’t blame the offensive line for Burrow’s bad day. While keeping their franchise QB upright has long been a problem, it wasn’t on Sunday. According to Next Gen Stats, Burrow was pressured at the third-lowest rate of his entire career in Week 1. But despite getting great protection, Burrow only averaged 5.6 yards per attempt. That’s barely more efficient than Moss running the ball! Just six of his 29 attempts went more than 10 yards in the air.
Is that a case of a team being soft, or is any offense going to look this bad when their coach refuses to run the ball and their quarterback isn’t pushing the ball downfield?
The bad news is, the “soft” and “finesse” narrative tends to stick. But the good news is that the Bengals aren’t powerless to flip the script. There is a ton of room for improvement on both sides of the ball, and those fixes don’t have much to do with getting tougher.
Simply put, the execution has to get better on defense and the play-calling on offense has to get better. Moss has proven that he deserves more carries, and last year Chase Brown had 127 of his 179 rushing yards come after contact. Joe Mixon is gone, but there is no reason for Taylor not to trust the two top backs he has. And if the offensive line performance we saw in Week 1 is for real, that’s going to go a long way to proving the Bengals are more than a finesse team. Once Burrow can shake off the nerves, rust, or whatever was going on in his first game back from last year’s injuries, he should start airing it out like we know he can.
This team has Super Bowl aspirations, and Taylor needs to start believing his players can get it done. This team might appear finesse and weak right now, but they have things in place to prove those charges wrong. With a few tweaks to the playcalling and a little more trust from the players, this team can turn things around in no time.
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