However the Bengals’ game ended, it was going to be a bigger game for perception than it was for reality.
Let’s review the pregame landscape in the AFC North. The Bengals are 5-3, including wins against the Ravens and Steelers but also featuring a loss to the woebegone Jets in their most recent outing. Despite that loss, their record lands them half a game behind the Ravens – against whom they have a head-to-head tiebreaker advantage – in the division race. Should the Bengals win on Sunday, they’ll boast a 6-3 record with wins against all three of their division rivals. If the game between the Ravens and Vikings in Baltimore goes in the latter’s favor, the Bengals will have emerged from a bad loss to appear as the team to beat in the division.
Alternatively, if the Bengals lose, they’ll drop to 5-4 on the wrong side of a tiebreaker against the 5-4 Browns. The Steelers could bury them beneath the division with a win against the Bears on Monday night. With consecutive losses against teams perceived to be non-threatening, dropping them from first in the conference to last in the division, questions about the Bengals’ standing as a contender would come flying in from all across the media.
In reality, the Browns’ 25-point margin of victory belied the fact that the Bengals lost on a handful of monumental plays. That won’t be reflected in the standings, and it won’t stop the questions about the Bengals’ playoff viability from coming. In reality, though, the result of this game just brought us back to where we were regarding the AFC North weeks ago. In short: they’re all good. Any of them could be the division champion – Cincinnati included – but it might be a while until they separate themselves.
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Notes
Offense
- One interesting statistic from this game is that the Bengals ran the first 20 offensive plays from either team. That tells three stories, but in summary: the offense sandwiched a crushing interception to Denzel Ward at the goal line with a pair of long and effective opening drives. This set the Bengals up to be down 24-10 at halftime despite strong first-half showings from several offensive players. Joe Mixon took his first 10 carries for 56 yards and a touchdown at the end of the second drive. Tee Higgins turned his first 6 targets into 5 catches and 67 yards.
- The deciding matchup in this game was Ja’Marr Chase against Ward, ended up roundly getting the best of him. Chase was the intended target on both interceptions from Joe Burrow – the first of which Ward returned the length of the field for a touchdown, the second of which he deflected into the hands of John Johnson III. Other members of the Browns’ secondary defended Chase well in key moments, including first-round rookie Greg Newsome II and Johnson (who forced a fumble from Chase to end another drive), but Ward emerged from a questionable designation on the Browns’ injury report to have what was clearly the most impactful individual performance of this game.
Defense
- Neither defense looked dominant in the first half, but the worst individual look for a Bengals player was Eli Apple trying to chase down Donovan Peoples-Jones on a 60-yard touchdown pass. Aside from another 26-yard pass to Peoples-Jones after the game had already been decided, the Bengals held the Browns’ passing attack sans Odell Beckham Jr. to a low enough total to win the game. Baker Mayfield threw only 21 passes, completing 14 of them for a modest 218 yards. If his first 60-yard grab hadn’t been completed, Peoples-Jones would’ve been one of three players to lead the Browns with 26 receiving yards.
- Unfortunately, as a team, the Bengals’ defense struggled enough trying to contain Nick Chubb to lose the game on their own. Through his first seven carries, Chubb wracked up 40 yards and a touchdown to complement 2 catches for 26 yards receiving. On his eighth carry, Chubb scored a second touchdown from 70 yards out. By the end of the game, Chubb had racked up 137 rushing yards on 14 carries to go with his pair of touchdowns.
- Chubb’s touchdown, in addition to those by Ward and Peoples-Jones, made the Browns the first team to score touchdowns on a run, pass, and interception return that each went for over 60 yards since the 1967 San Diego Chargers. That fact neatly encapsulates that the Bengals lost on a handful of big plays in a way that NFL teams rarely do.
– Andy Hammel is the Managing Editor for the Bengals at Full Press Coverage. Follow @Andy_Hammel