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Jaguars at Bengals - Good, Bad, & Ugly

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tibor75 Pro Bowler

tibor75

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Good

A win

No major injures (Hopefully, Mixon is known for lingering injuries)

Burrow understanding that scoring too quickly is a real problem for teams when they have the ball in final minutes of a game

 

Bad

Incompetent punt return game (looking at Wilson Phillips)

Rushing 3 against a rookie QB on 3rd down

 

Ugly

Incompetent goal line officials (even though both calls helped the Bengals)

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membengal Hall Of Fame

membengal

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Finally back home, what a great trip. Denher's and Morrison's articles today are great reads - gonna go ahead and paste them in here - 

 

First - Dehner:

 

How the Bengals grew to be a 'connected,' winning team out of the rubble of a 6-25-1 record – The Athletic

Quote

 

CINCINNATI — The final, anticipated player expected in the postgame conference room early Friday morning following the Bengals’ 24-21 victory over the Jacksonville Jaguars was tight end C.J. Uzomah.

 

The sixth-year Bengals lifer enjoyed perhaps his best night as a pro, with 95 yards receiving, two touchdowns, a one-handed toss of Jaguars safety Rayshawn Jenkins en route to one and the game-clinching jailbreak screen.

 

The bumping of locker room party music shook the walls and came through louder as the door opened.

 

In walked Uzomah, draped in a blue suit with lime green accents, a Grateful Dead t-shirt underneath with green Grateful Dead Dunks sneakers the star of the show. He strutted up to the podium and instantly posed, pulling his left foot up behind him and firing a “Zoolander” Blue Steel pose for the cameras.

 

“These are custom from my boy Ethan,” Uzomah said. “Shirt, spilled a little drink on it. That’s all right, it happens.”

 

Smile and personality have always been part of the dress code for the 28-year-old, but both shine brighter these days. Much like his sneaks.

 

That’s because two-plus years of emphasizing character, charisma and culture fits — as well as gutting those who don’t — finally birthed an atmosphere that, for coaches, players and fans, feels undeniably different than anything seen recently in this organization.

 

It’s to the point only a month into the 2021 season that talking about last year or recent runs of losing 10 consecutive one-score games doesn’t even register with somebody like Uzomah, the longest-tenured player on offense or defense.

 

“This is just a new team,” he said. “Honestly, it’s like an afterthought. The past is the past right now. I am just focused on this team and the culture, and the people we have on this team are completely different than any team that I’ve had since I’ve been here. So we just know. If it’s a tight game we know in our heads we are going to win and we have to go out there and execute. We know we will.”

 

Especially with Joe Burrow at the center of it all, the alpha leader already unlike few the city has ever seen. Uzomah rips off an impression of Burrow’s calm, straight face describing the tense final plays of Thursday’s win, confident wink included.

 

The quarterback is the muscle, but winning serves as a performance-enhancer for the good vibes through the first four games. Zac Taylor made a bet on culture fit upon his hiring and nearly went broke trying to turn the corner.

 

Everyone agrees and it’s not hard to see, the corner turned and the culture of competitiveness and player-driven accountability is as obviously at the forefront of what’s making a difference in this group as its quarterback.

 

“You can’t change overnight,” Uzomah said. “When coach Taylor and the staff come in and say this is who we are, this is what we are going to be, people have to understand it’s very tough to say, ‘All right, we are flipping a switch; this is how it’s going to be.’ This being his third year now, all right, cool, we got some pieces. We got some guys in free agency, which is something I hadn’t really seen since I have been here either. We got good culture guys who bought in and just good players. They are buying into the system and what we are trying to do.”

 

Players are still polite and don’t want to throw former teammates or coaches under the bus who are no longer in Cincinnati. The names don’t need to be said, the turnover on the roster tells enough of the story. But these phrases get dropped upon occasion that tell the story of why this team feels so different beyond the obvious of winning.

 

“We just got guys that are not selfish, are going to put their body on the line,” Tyler Boyd said, minutes after diving for a block that would spring Uzomah’s game-winning screen. “That’s how you become a championship team.”

 

It was stated to me in the early days of ripping off the culture Band-Aid inside Paul Brown Stadium, back when reporters were still allowed in the locker room, that a vast majority of teams in the NFL are the same talent-wise. It’s the chemistry and energy of the groups that are always the difference between winners and losers.

 

Watch the sideline after a big play. Defensive players run on the field to congratulate a receiver for a big catch. Joe Mixon runs everywhere to be the first to hug a defender coming off after a big play. Everyone mobs Evan McPherson.

 

“The culture in the locker room is huge,” Uzomah said. “I think this isn’t a job where we’re like ‘Oh, we’re going to work. We’re going to play football.’ It’s like we’re the homies. We’re brothers in there having a good time.”

 

It’s partially a product of winning, but also the reason why they’ve proven capable of winning in a multitude of ways. Like holding on in overtime after blowing a significant lead against the Vikings. Or when coming off a disappointing loss to the Bears, they bounced back with tenacity versus a division rival by dominating from start to finish. Also, the reason why when trailing 14-0 at halftime against the Jaguars, the Bengals are now capable of calmly mounting a comeback.

 

“They just trusted that we were going to come together,” Taylor said. “This team is so connected right now. The brotherhood is so tight and it’s so awesome to watch these guys celebrate with each other. They believe in each other. We’ve done it a lot of different ways at this point through three victories. That’s going to help us as the season moves on.”

There’s that word again: connected. Understanding the importance of connectivity when you see it is easy. Finding a way for it to organically blossom inside a franchise without a playoff victory since Jan. 6, 1991, would be worth a master’s thesis.

 

How did this happen so quickly?

 

“I think we’ve identified the right people that should be in the building,” Taylor said. “And that’s through guys who have been drafted here before I got here, that’s through guys who we brought in in free agency, and that’s the guys we’ve targeted in the draft. You just feel like you’ve got 69 of those guys right now, and it’s fun to watch. It’s fun to watch them. They love each other. They love playing for each other. They’re not selfish, they don’t need their own stats and their accolades and their own game balls.”

 

Instead, when Uzomah walked into the locker room as one of the final players off the field after his big game, the entire team awaited him with a raucous greeting of part bliss, part youthful exuberance, part Gatorade. “You just watch when you give out the game balls after a game, the reaction of the team, they’re just so happy for the guys that get them,” Taylor said. “It’s just awesome. Awesome to see.”

 

Equally awesome to see was a coach who you would think had legally changed his name to Hot Seat if judging by sports talk radio over the last year as he was standing outside the tunnel after Thursday night’s win. Every player who came by received some combination of bro-hug, half-hug or bear hug. It played out like a sweaty, orange receiving line at a wedding.

To be fair, love was in the air.

 

“It’s just kind of where I found myself standing at the end of the game,” Taylor said. “When you just love these guys, seriously, every one of them coming off the field. It’s just an awesome group of guys that you love to coach and are happy for and they have now found three different ways to win games for you. They’re playing hard for their coaches, they are playing hard for each other, they are playing hard for the city of Cincinnati. It’s really cool to see.”

 

 

 

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membengal

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And here is Morrison's piece:

 

There’s a lot to like about Joe Burrow and the Bengals now: 32 thoughts on win over Jaguars – The Athletic

Quote

 

The Bengals are alone in first place in the AFC North Division for the first time since Week 5 in 2018, after beating the Jaguars 24-21 on Thursday night.

 

There was a lot to like about their performance before a national audience but also plenty to scrutinize.

 

Here are 32 notes, quotes, stats and grades from the game, one for every pass Joe Burrow threw in rallying the Bengals from a 14-point halftime deficit:

 

1. On last night’s Hear That Podcast Growlin’ walkout episode, I assigned myself some homework to look up the last time the Bengals scored on four consecutive drives. I didn’t have to go back far, which at first seemed deflating in terms of finding a good stat. But a deeper dig uncovered one.

2. The Bengals also scored on four consecutive drives in four games last year — Week 16 win at Houston, Week 7 vs. Cleveland, Week 6 at Indianapolis and Week 4 vs. Jacksonville.

3. Prior to that, the franchise had only done it 31 times from 2000 to 2019. That’s 31 times in 320 games or 9.7 percent of them. Burrow has done it four times in his first 14 starts (28.6 percent).

4. When you throw in the “gotta have it” aspect, where the team is trailing or tied at the start of a second-half drive as the Bengals were Thursday night, ripping off four consecutive scoring drives has happened in only two other victories since 2000 — at Houston, 2020 (Brandon Allen); at Baltimore 2004 (Carson Palmer).

5. “Franchise is back there just dealing dots and knowing and understanding what the defense is doing,” Bengals tight end C.J. Uzomah said of Burrow on the final, game-winning drive. “I went on to the field and was like, ‘Welp, we won.’ I didn’t know if we were going to score a touchdown or a field goal, but we 100 percent won this game.”

6. Uzomah caught five passes for a career-high 95 yards and two touchdowns (also a career-high). He’s just the fourth tight end in franchise history to have at least 95 receiving yards and two touchdowns in a game, joining Bob Trumpy (159, three, in 1969), Rodney Holman (99, two, in 1985) and Tyler Eifert (104, two, in 2015).

7. Asked during his Friday press conference about Uzomah’s second touchdown (above), coach Zac Taylor went into great detail on how it happened and why it worked.

8. “We identified man coverage, so we get to a man beater,” Taylor said. “They tried to pass it off, and so they ended up double covering the guy that we were trying to target because they maybe didn’t accurately communicate the pass off. One guy tried to pass it over and the other guy stuck with TB. So now C.J. is uncovered. There is no one covering him, but unfortunately Joe couldn’t see him, because one of their droppers — I think 41 (Jaguars defensive end Josh Allen) — dropped right underneath C.J. I could see it, I see C.J. wide open, give him the ball. I see the replay on the big screen that Joe has 41 right in his vision and he can’t find C.J. That’s what makes Joe move. He’s kind of signaling to C.J. to get out of that space I can’t get it to you. The line did a great job protecting. C.J. got in phase as Joe went left. C.J. worked back across the field in phase with the quarterback. We never want to work away from Joe, we want to work with him, and ended up making a great play.”

9. Not surprisingly, Uzomah earned the team’s top offensive grade from Pro Football Focus with an 88.2. Rounding out the top five were Burrow (87.7), wide receiver Tyler Boyd (84.1), left tackle Jonah Williams (81.9) and left guard Quinton Spain (80.3).

10. “I should’ve had three touchdowns if I made that guy miss on the freakin’ screen,” Uzomah said of his 25-yard reception on the jailbreak play with 1:09 remaining, the one that set up Evan McPherson’s game-winning field goal.

11. Boyd also had a big night, catching nine passes for 118 yards, his most in a non-overtime game since Week 2 in 2019. And it was his block that really sprung Uzomah on the jailbreak screen, as captured perfectly by Cincinnati Enquirer photographer Kareem Elgazzar.

12. And then there was, once again, rookie Ja’Marr Chase, who with his 44-yard catch on the second play of the second half became the first player to have four receptions of at least 34 yards in the first four games of his career since 2014, when Allen Hurns and Martavis Bryant both did it. The only other player to accomplish the feat since 1991 was Chris Sanders with five in 1995.

13. Remember when the Bengals couldn’t score in the third quarter, when they were blanked in eight of the final nine games last year and everyone was screaming about “halftime adjustments?” They’ve scored in the third in every game this year, and it’s their highest-scoring quarter with 34 points.

14. Only the Rams, Cardinals and Chiefs are averaging more third-quarter points than the Bengals (8.4).

15. The Burrow versus Trevor Lawrence rivalry is going to be a fun one to watch over the years, but the odds of a rematch in the 2022 regular season are slim. The only way it happens is if the Jaguars finish in the same position in the AFC South as the Bengals do in the AFC North.

16. Burrow is averaging 9.2 yards per attempt, which ranks fifth in the league among quarterbacks with at least 45 attempts (Russell Wilson 10.4; Matthew Stafford 10; Kyler Murray 9.9; Baker Mayfield 9.8).

17. From Week 15 last year until today, no team has won more regular-season games than the Bengals. Yes, they’ve had the luxury of playing one more game than everyone else, but any time you’re at the top of any list with the word “wins” in the title, you should take it.

18. The Bengals are 5-2 in that span, while the Bills, Buccaneers, Chargers, Packers and Ravens all are 5-1.

19. After giving up 10 sacks in the first two games, the Bengals have allowed just one in the last two as Jacksonville’s Adam Gotsis was the first to get to Burrow in a collapsing pocket early in the second quarter. ”

20. The bottom five offensive players graded by PFF were right guard Jackson Carman (29.8), tight end Drew Sample (52.2), center Trey Hopkins (57.5), running back Samaje Perine (58.4) and wide receiver Mike Thomas (62.1).

21. As great as Burrow and the offense were in the second half, none of it would have mattered had it not been for the goal-line stand on fourth-and-inches late in the second quarter.

22. As has been the case all season, the defensive line was the dominant group, accounting for four of the top five PFF grades. Defensive end Trey Hendrickson led the way with a 77.9, followed by cornerback Eli Apple (76.9), defensive tackles B.J. Hill (75.6) and D.J. Reader (75.1) and linebacker Logan Wilson (74.0). Wilson recorded his second career sack and finished with 10 tackles, the second-highest total behind last week’s 14-stop performance at Pittsburgh.

23. “Truthfully, the tackles and stats don’t (matter to me),” Wilson said. “I’m not a big stats guy. I just want to win, truthfully. At the end of the day, we got the win. We’re 3-1 and we’ve got a little victory Friday, so that’s the most important thing.”

24. The bottom five consisted of cornerback Mike Hilton (48.4), defensive tackle Josh Tupou (50.4), cornerbacks Darius Phillips (51.3) and Trae Waynes (55.2) and defensive tackle Larry Ogunjobi (57.7).

25. Waynes played 53 snaps (95 percent) in his Bengals debut, finishing with four tackles. Waynes was targeted twice and allowed receptions on both for a combined 62 yards, including a 52-yarder by Laviska Shenault that gave the Jaguars first-and-goal at the 10. That led to the goal-line stand.

26. “Trae’s mindset was he was going to play the whole game,” Taylor said. “Fortunately it wasn’t an 85-play game because a guy who hasn’t really gone through that in a long time, that’s not easy. Fortunate the play count was what it was, Trae managed it well. He’s only going to improve every single game as he gets out there and gets more comfortable. That’s a step in the right direction for us out there in the secondary.”

27. While Waynes returned, running back Joe Mixon suffered an ankle injury on the second play of the game-winning drive. Taylor said after the game he thought it was minor, and he repeated that Friday, saying “All those guys will have a chance” to play next Sunday against the Packers in reference to safeties Jessie Bates and Ricardo Allen, wide receiver Tee Higgins, cornerback Chidobe Awuzie, right guard Xavier Su’a-Filo and Mixon. “It just remains to be seen Monday and Wednesday where all those guys are at,” he added.

28. Since 1990, there have been 246 teams who started 3-1. The average finish among those teams was 10-6, with 64 percent of them making the playoffs.

29. “It only gets harder from here,” Taylor said. “It doesn’t get any easier. We all know that. It’s going to get harder as we move forward. It’s hard to stay consistent and keep working and just say, oh, we are a good team, we are 3-1. That’s not the way it works. I’ve seen plenty of 3-1 teams not handle success the right way, early success the right way and there are a lot of lessons to be learned by other teams that have been in this position the last couple years we can draw on. I’m encouraged that we have the right leadership that is going to keep raising the standard, keep pushing us in the right direction.”

30. By finishing September 3-1, the Bengals posted their first winning month since going 3-1 in September 2018. The last time the Bengals had a winning October was 2015 (3-0).

31. Prior to Thursday, the Bengals had been 1-17-1 under Taylor when trailing at halftime.

32. The Bengals’ streak of winning the pregame coin toss extended to a remarkable seven in a row. The odds of that are 1 in 128 or 0.8 percent.

 

 

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claptonrocks

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3 hours ago, tibor75 said:

Good

A win

No major injures (Hopefully, Mixon is known for lingering injuries)

Burrow understanding that scoring too quickly is a real problem for teams when they have the ball in final minutes of a game

 

Bad

Incompetent punt return game (looking at Wilson Phillips)

Rushing 3 against a rookie QB on 3rd down

 

Ugly

Incompetent goal line officials (even though both calls helped the Bengals)

Nailed alot of the problems and JB's clock manage skills ..apparently better than ZT's late in the game..

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