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The reason why the 2021 success of Joe Burrow and the Bengals is 100% sustainable has been in plain sight all season. In the offseason, Cincinnati blew up its offensive line and started over with a new set of veterans (and one rookie) playing alongside left tackle Jonah Williams, while defenses across the league cooked up ways to deal with everything they brought to the table in their run to a conference title.
So maybe the bumps the Bengals endured in September were inevitable.
What wasn’t, and what isn’t, in the NFL is the matter-of-fact way in which Burrow and the franchise’s young core responded to dig its way out of an 0–2 hole.
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“Yeah, I think every year, every team is trying to figure out who they are,” Burrow told me from the Bengals’ locker room Sunday. “It’s not going to be the same, even if you have the same guys. Defenses play different. Your guys are playing different. So it took us a little bit. But the last two and a half weeks we’re really finding our stride.”
The Bengals have evolved and, clearly, will keep evolving as long as Burrow’s in stripes.
The result has been four wins in five weeks—with the loss being the Sunday-night nailbiter in Baltimore—and on Sunday afternoon a lot of different things came together for the defending AFC champions. Joe Mixon led a run game that churned out tough yards. The defense held a difficult-to-deal-with Atlanta run game in check. And Burrow looked every bit the star he has been, throwing for 481 yards, three touchdown passes and a 138.2 rating.
And it happened, as Burrow said, because Cincinnati’s kept it moving on offense and tried to learn from what defenses are throwing at them: things that actually look a lot like what they would throw at Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs early last year, with a steady stream of two-deep looks to combat the Bengals’ ability to get the ball down the field to Ja’Marr Chase, Tyler Boyd and Tee Higgins.
“They’re playing us that same way, like you’re talking about, and the key is just starting fast so teams aren’t as confident doing that and they become more aggressive,” Burrow said. “And our running backs have done a great job turning check-downs into eight-, nine-yard gains that make defenses get a little more aggressive after that.”
Indeed, against the Falcons, Burrow hit two underneath throws and a run play before delivering a 60-yard touchdown strike to Boyd—who was running a deep post—for the game’s first score.
“They played their normal Tampa [scheme] that we’ve been seeing all year, and TB [Boyd] did a great job of getting over the Tampa Mike [middle linebacker],” Burrow said. “We held them with a play-fake, the line held up, did a great job and it was a big play for us to start it off.”
From there, Burrow went back to working the Falcons with his short game, piloting an 11-play, 71-yard touchdown drive to make it 14–0—and achieve that fast start he hoped would get the Atlanta coaches off their game—then chipping away some more to move the Bengals 43 yards in the final five plays of the first quarter to set up the next shot.
That one was the picturesque basket throw of a bomb to Chase down the right sideline, which was the result of more work Burrow had done on what he’s been facing.
“Safeties have been cheating over to him the whole year, and at the beginning of the year, I think I let that kind of dissuade me from throwing his way,” he said. “But I just have to take those chances sometimes and try to throw a safe ball and expect him to become a defensive back if the coverage ends up being too tight. He made a great play for us.”
That great play turned into a 32-yard touchdown and put the Bengals up 21–0 one play into the second quarter. And the two had a 41-yard touchdown coming on their next possession after Atlanta answered, to make it 28–7. (“The safety was really far off the hash on that one,” Burrow said. “We were able to get a big-time back-shoulder throw. That’s a throw we work all the time, something that we’re really comfortable with.”)
And from there, the Bengals cruised to a 35–17 win over a pretty tough Atlanta team.
That they got the big home win and are over .500 is obviously really good news. What might be better, though, is what this one could signify in getting the Bengals back to the level they were at last year—and beyond.
“We’re hitting our stride. We’re excited about where we’re at,” Burrow said. “We’ve had moments like that all year; it’s just about consistency and spreading that out over an entire game. And the last two weeks, we’ve been able to do that.”
With more, presumably, to come.
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The biggest reason the Panthers aren’t conducting a fire sale hasn’t been raised much. And it’s there in plain sight: There’s an internal belief the roster is in a spot where you could drop a good quarterback in and the team could really take off. Now, as Carolina itself has shown, that’s far easier said than done.
That said, let’s look at the guys who have trade value on that roster. Brian Burns, Derrick Brown and Jeremy Chinn are 24; D.J. Moore is 25; Jaycee Horn is 22; and Ickey Ekwonu is 21. Say you’re the next coach—would you rather have those guys, who are established building blocks on your roster, or a hollowed-out team with a bunch of draft picks? And, sure, Christian McCaffrey is only 26, but it’s fair to look at the position he plays, his mileage and injury history, and trade him from that group because it’s hard to say what he’ll be when the next rebuild is done.
Here's more on how, and why, the McCaffrey trade went down like it did …
• The 49ers were the first team to call, on Friday, Oct. 14, when they made their first offer. The Bills checked in later on that day, too. At that point, the Panthers told San Francisco, Buffalo and other teams that would subsequently call, that a first-rounder alone might get it done, and that a first-rounder and a later pick would get it done.
• Last Monday, GM Scott Fitterer pulled McCaffrey aside to give him the landscape, tell him that he planned to listen to offers and also that he’d be comfortable hanging on to him. The talk lasted about five minutes, and McCaffrey told Fitterer that he appreciated the heads-up.
• More calls poured in Tuesday, with some teams just fishing—offering a third-rounder or a fourth-rounder to see whether a discount was in the offing. The Broncos and Eagles were among those teams (both have GMs who like to investigate pretty much everything). The day clarified who was really in and who wasn’t.
• In the interim, Fitterer, in conjunction with owner David Tepper, assistant GM Dan Morgan and cap chief Samir Suleiman, huddled to come up with a blueprint for what they wanted out of a deal, and the first-round value was central to that, in giving the team a piece of capital it could use to get a quarterback and augment the existing young core.
• By Thursday, the 49ers and Rams had emerged as leaders, but neither had a first-rounder in 2023, which would force those two to be creative and find a way to generate a return that would satisfy the Panthers.
• Coming to the final price required compromise. The Panthers’ initial proposal used the draft value chart by slotting the 49ers’ pick in each round as the 32nd pick. Conversely, San Francisco was using the chart with its picks slotted 14th, which is around where it is now (with the team 3–3 heading into Week 7). Obviously, that created disparate proposals. So they found a middle ground in the 20s.
• That’s how the Panthers and 49ers came to the final deal—second-, third- and fourth-rounders in 2023 and a fifth-rounder in ’24. In the end, the tiebreaker between the 49ers’ and Rams’ offers was the fact that the Rams didn’t have a fourth-rounder in ’23. That one’s gone, thanks to last year’s Sony Michel trade. And the final point value of the package, as the 49ers and Panthers calculated it, wound up between 31 and 34 (very low first- and very high second-round picks).
• The Rams’ final offer: second- and third-rounders in 2023, fourth- and fifth-rounders in ’24 and Cam Akers. The Bills were also in it until the end—sort of. Buffalo called early, as we said, and kept tabs on the situation throughout, which was easy enough with the strong ties between the Bills’ and Panthers’ front offices. In the end, the asking price never came down to the point where Buffalo was compelled to make a hard offer.
• The 49ers are now without their slotted picks in the first four rounds of the 2023 draft. But they have one third-round comp pick coming in April for Mike McDaniel’s hire in Miami and comp picks for the hires of Robert Saleh by the Jets and Martin Mayhew by the Commanders. And they should have later comp picks coming for a couple of departed ’22 free agents, too.
• Obviously, the 49ers’ connections here made them comfortable. And they run deep. John Lynch and Ed McCaffrey were teammates at Stanford in 1989 and ’90 and, at one point in that second year, hooked up for a long connection in a game when Lynch was still playing quarterback. And Lynch’s nephew actually plays for Ed McCaffrey at Northern Colorado. Which, of course, only adds to all the links you’ve already heard about.
Again, the Panthers are positioned nicely now to finally find a quarterback and keep building on a pretty good young core of players. Carolina has more than made up picks lost in trades for Matt Corral (third-rounder), Stephon Gilmore (sixth-rounder) and Laviska Shenault (seventh-rounder) over the past year.
There’s a fear among a certain corner of NFL owners that things are setting up for Commanders owner Daniel Snyder to come out of this mess in possession of his team. And here’s how they fear it’ll go down. The NFL’s investigator, Mary Jo White, will have inconclusive findings on the charge that Snyder was hiding ticket revenue, which will then allow the league to tie that to the fact that the workplace culture in Washington has improved and effectively move the goal posts, letting the Commanders’ owner off the hook.
This fear is founded in part on an old school–new school split that seems to be emerging inside ownership ranks.
The older-school group, led by families who have had their teams for decades, are more concerned with the light under which this puts the larger group and the damage that Snyder’s done to the league’s image in general. The newer-school group, made up of more recent additions to the club, are more myopic about the topic and concerned with the fallout looming if they try to remove Snyder as owner.
The concern, as I see it, is threefold for those against removing Snyder. First, there’s a fear the precedent of voting him out would set—and what that could mean for owners in the future, even in the case of past transgressions. Second, there’s inevitability that such a move would lead to an enormous legal fight with the notoriously litigious Snyder. Finally, there’s the glass-houses dynamic that ESPN detailed in its exposé into the situation a week and a half ago.
All of this makes White a pivotal figure. Colts owner Jim Irsay’s impassioned plea to his peers to consider ridding the group of Snyder came a couple of hours before the late-afternoon, owners-only, privileged session Tuesday at the league’s fall meeting. There, with Irsay’s words on the record, commissioner Roger Goodell told the owners it’d be best for everyone to remain quiet on the subject until White’s report was completed.
But that didn’t stop the owners from talking in small groups among themselves during breaks and in other corners of the hotel about the future of the Commanders. And it didn’t slow fear that, in the end, the league is going to give Snyder a path to slither out of all this.
In dealing with all this, Ron Rivera’s team has shown a good amount of resilience. And that focus the Commanders have brought—over the past two weeks in particular, as it seemed so much was crashing around them—might’ve been most apparent in the eyes of Terry McLaurin at one point Sunday.
Early in the third quarter, after McLaurin beat star Packers corner Jaire Alexander for a 37-yard touchdown down the right sideline, the Commanders took the lead (for good, as it turned out). After scoring, McLaurin returned to the sideline and, on the way there, told Rivera, Coach, just keep giving me the ball.
When it mattered most, the Commanders’ staff obliged. The first example came with 2:43 left, Washington leading 23–21, and in second-and-6. Taylor Heinicke felt an overload blitz from his blind side, turned and saw Preston Smith coming free. Knowing McLaurin was in the vicinity, he floated to the flat, where McLaurin collected it, turned on the jets, lowered his shoulder into Alexander and, smartly, fought to stay inbounds.
The second came three players later, on third-and-9 just before the two-minute warning. The Packers brought pressure again, and Kenny Clark got loose to deliver a big hit on Heinicke, just as the quarterback was letting go of a back-shoulder throw for McLaurin. McLaurin beat Alexander out of his break and came back hard to chase the ball—affected by the Clark hit—and gathered it while taking a hit of his own from safety Rudy Ford.
First down. Game over, for all intents and purposes.
“It’s one of those things; that’s why you get a Terry McLaurin and you extend him,” Rivera told me from the locker room postgame. “Because he, first of all, wants to play. He wants the ball. And that's just a plus for us. And Taylor, with his ability to improvise, he can figure those things out. So that was pretty impressive. It really was.”
Squint hard enough and, in this 23–21 stunner over a Packers’ team that desperately needed a win, you could see what Rivera’s spent three seasons looking to build.
On offense, the Commanders rushed for 166 yards behind young backs Brian Robinson Jr. and Antonio Gibson, which allowed for a tidy, efficient effort from Heinicke, who was making his first start of the year in Carson Wentz’s place. Heinicke brings years of experience in Norv Turner and Scott Turner’s system with him from Minnesota, Carolina and the past two-plus years in Washington.
On defense, facing Aaron Rodgers, Rivera and coordinator Jack Del Rio set out to stop the run (they allowed 38 yards on 12 carries), maintain pass-rush discipline to prevent off-schedule plays and change the coverage picture on Rodgers constantly (which contributed to Rodgers’s having to play a more conservative game).
“We were hoping to get them to be almost one-dimensional, and we were able to do that. Kudos to our front,” Rivera said. “And running the ball effectively, it allowed our play-action to be meaningful. And when you can do that, it’s a quarterback’s best friend.”
But maybe most impressive was how the locker room withstood the veritable bleep-storm that gathered around it the past two weeks, from ESPN’s reporting on Snyder, to everything that came out of the owners meeting, to losing a starting quarterback for an extended period.
That doesn’t mean, by the way, that they’re going to win the division or go to the Super Bowl or anything like that. But it does position them for the grind of the season.
“That’s exactly it, Albert,” he said. “It’s a group of young men that want to be able to keep the focus on the football field; that’s kind of what I’ve been preaching to them: Let’s pay attention to the important thing, and the important thing is the next game we’ve got to play. We got to stay focused on that. We can’t get caught up in things that don’t really concern what we do in football.
“I know it’s a situation, that’s what it is, but that’s something that we can’t control. So we’re going to focus on what we can, and that’s what we do on the football field.”
Getting the right result there, and against Rodgers no less, makes it much easier to do that.
While we’re in the NFC East, there was a really nice nuance to how the Giants closed out the Jaguars on Sunday. The team’s last defensive call, from ultra-aggressive coordinator Wink Martindale, was a max-coverage look—with the thought being that the Jaguars would be in a hurry anyway, so there was no need to send rushers. So as the ball was snapped, if you take a look, just three Giants rushed, leaving eight guys to cover the five Jaguars skill players, essentially allowing for doubles on everyone.
So when Trevor Lawrence zinged the ball to Christian Kirk short of the goal line, the Giants had numbers—corner Fabian Moreau got the initial hit, knocking Kirk back at the catch point, with Julian Love and Xavier McKinney then flying in to wrestle him to the ground. And as this played out, a couple things were overtly apparent:
- The Giants continue to be a really good fundamental team, and as such tackled well on the final snap of a game played in the Florida humidity.
- The Giants played with great awareness, too, very clearly knowing where the goal line was behind them, and doing all they could to defend it.
This, of course, sounds like little stuff, but it’s not. Brian Daboll’s coaching staff has shown itself to be a pull-out-all-the-stops kind of group (see: Daniel Jones’s 11 carries and 107 rushing yards, Saquon Barkley in the Wildcat, tight end reverses, etc.), and that’s a big reason they’re 6–1. But that stuff only gets you so far unless you’re doing the basics well, too, and Daboll seems to be crushing it in that area, too.
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The Ravens are who we thought they were. The Browns might not be. Baltimore’s rounded into form with its normal, punishing, option-based ground attack (44 carries, 160 yards against Cleveland) fueling an edgy group that’s getting healthier (and better) on defense, too. The Browns seem to be another story. They can still do one thing really well—run the ball on offense—and seemingly nothing else consistently.
Now the problem really is they’ve got four games left until Deshuan Watson returns, and making it through that stretch won’t be easy. Here’s how it sets up …
• Oct. 31 vs. Bengals
• Week 9 Bye
• Nov. 13 at Dolphins
• Nov. 20 at Bills
• Nov. 27 vs. Buccaneers
A 2–2 split would put the Browns at 4–7 with their quarterback returning, which means they’d need to be near perfect from there to make the playoffs. So it’s looking more and more like it’ll be Ravens and Bengals from the AFC North.
Tua Tagovailoa’s numbers were great (21-of-35, 261 yards, TD, 92.7 rating), his team won, and seeing him out there, and healthy, was fantastic. But he had close to a handful of dropped interceptions, so this one was a little more up-and-down than the box score might indicate. Which is why it’s good that Mike McDaniel provided some postgame perspective on just where Tagovailoa is right now.
“It’s not an easy thing to do,” Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel said. “We were on a Thursday night game in Cincinnati when he last played. Those games, you don’t have full-speed practices. So his last full-speed practice was before the Buffalo game, which was the third game of the season. It’s to his credit.”
It’s to Tagovailoa’s credit, too, that the Dolphins got their first win since he went out with a concussion, outlasting a Steelers’ team that, like their division rivals in Cleveland, now have a pretty sizable hole to dig themselves out of.
It’s time to be concerned about the Bucs and Packers. And it’s interesting, too, to see the divergent approaches that the two future Hall of Fame quarterbacks those teams have are taking.
Here’s Tampa Bay’s Tom Brady on his team: “No one feels good about where we’re at, no one feels good about how we’ve played or what we’re doing. We’re all in it together. We’ve gotta go pull ourselves out of it.”
And here’s Green Bay’s Aaron Rodgers on if the playoffs still seems plausible: “You’re goddamn right it does,” Rodgers said when asked if it seems plausible for the Packers to still make the playoffs. “I’m not worried about this squad. In fact, this might be the best thing for us. This week, nobody’s going to give us a chance going to Buffalo on Sunday Night Football with a chance to get exposed. Shoot, this might be the best thing for us.”
I’d be a tad more optimistic about the spot Green Bay’s in because they’re relying on promising young players (such as Romeo Doubs and Christian Watson) who should ascend as the year goes on. That’s not the case with the Buccaneers, who are suddenly getting old all at once, even though I’m well aware it’s not smart to bet against Brady under any circumstances.
(Being in the NFC, by the way, should help both guys.)
Wherever the Raiders are going the rest of the year, they’re going on the back of Josh Jacobs, who I’ve come to regard as underrated. We can argue until we’re blue in the face about the merits of taking a tailback in the first round like the Raiders did in 2019. What you can’t argue is that then-GM Mike Mayock got the right one.
Las Vegas is turning its season around, and it’s happening with an offense centered on Jacobs—he rushed for 144 yards and two scores two weeks ago in the team’s first win over the Broncos. He had 154 yards and a score on 21 carries against the Chiefs in a down-to-the-wire loss. And, finally, he ran for 143 yards and three touchdowns on 20 carries in Sunday’s win over the Texans.
Remember, the new Raider regime declined Jacobs’ fifth-year option in May, and had him play in the Hall of Fame game in August as a disciplinary measure. It sure looks like the tough-love approach has worked. And Jacobs’ response has helped give Josh McDaniels’ first Raider team a real identity.
While we’re there—the team’s schedule is pretty workable over the next month (at Saints, at Jaguars, Colts, at Broncos), so it’s not hard to see where they could go from 2–4 to back in the thick of things in a hurry.
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You want some quick hitters? We have some quick hitters. Ten of them, in fact …
• How the official who was standing right there missed Dolphins cornerback Noah Igbinoghene’s feet being in bounds on Miami’s game-clinching interception was flat-out weird. It was clear from the first shot they showed on TV that he was in, with control of the ball, and the game was over. And it’s happening way too often that the refs are the last ones to figure this stuff out.
• Breece Hall was so much fun to watch—so it’s a shame the Jets’ rookie star (80 carries, 463 yards, 5.8 average, four TDs) will be shelved the rest of the year with a torn ACL. It’s a pretty big blow for the team, too, losing its best home-run threat on offense.
• While we’re there, just a bizarre situation involving Jets receiver Elijah Moore, who demanded a trade last week and didn’t make the trip with his teammates to Denver this weekend. Moore’s request came despite the fact that, at the time, he was leading all receivers on the roster in snaps played and had more snaps through his first 17 NFL games than Cooper Kupp or Stefon Diggs did through their first 17 NFL games.
• Seeing the way J.C. Jackson went down in the Chargers game should only further call into question how safe FieldTurf is for players.
• Congratulations to Steve Wilks for getting his first win as Panthers interim coach. Couldn’t have been easy to keep the team where it needed to be mentally after Matt Rhule was fired Oct. 10 and his most prominent player was traded Thursday. But Wilks found a way to do it. And with the defensive talent they have, and even their Christian McCaffrey–less run game, I wouldn’t write them off altogether yet.
• I can say, after asking around, that there are scouts who think Matt Ryan’s arm is shot. And it definitely looks like he has to work harder to get the ball where he wants it to go. That said, the Colts’ quarterback is fighting his tail off.
• McCaffrey’s having 10 touches (and 62 yards) Sunday, 48 hours after first touching down in the Bay Area, is pretty wild—that offense isn’t easy to pick up, even if you’ve played in similar ones. And you could already see glimpses of what McCaffrey will look like in it Sunday.
• Christian Kirk (32 catches, 458 yards, five TDs through seven games) probably wasn’t such a free-agent rip-off after all (even if he couldn’t quite get past those Giants DBs for the game-winner on Sunday).
• Isiah Pacheco is going to be one heck of a back, and maybe within the next few weeks.
• Through seven weeks, with all due respect to the Eagles, the Bills and Chiefs, when they’re at full throttle, are clearly the class of the NFL.
THREE FOR MONDAY
- Such great symmetry that Patriots coach Bill Belichick would pass the legendary George Halas on the NFL all-time wins list with a win over the Bears—which is what could happen Monday night. Belichick’s a student of history and said last week that he holds Halas up there with Paul Brown in the highest regard among coaches. Getting to 325 wins, especially with the demands on coaches these days, is pretty incredible. It’d also put Belichick 23 behind record-holder Don Shula, with 10 games left this season. Which would mean Belichick has a shot to get there probably at some point in the 2024 season (he’ll be 72 then).
- Monday’s also a great chance to see the development of two young quarterbacks. Mac Jones has had an uneven start to his second year as a pro—running a revamped system, playing for a revamped staff, carrying some turnover issues early on and then getting hurt. We’ll see if three weeks on the shelf gave him a chance to reset. And on the other side, Justin Fields’s circumstances over the past couple years have very clearly held him back, and the Bears’ new staff has come under fire for not using his 4.4 speed more in both the run and pass game, to shorten his learning curve. Could we see some change on that front in prime time?
- A Patriots’ win could accelerate the Bears’ approach ahead of the trade deadline and, in that regard, I’ve got my eyes on 32-year-old pass rusher Robert Quinn. I think teams such as the Eagles, Titans, Ravens and Rams probably will, too.
ONE THING YOU NEED TO KNOW
There’ll be a lot of trade talk, and rightfully so, over the next eight days, and it’s worth paying attention to how the market’s changed. And specifically in a case involving the Panthers’ Brian Burns.
When I mentioned this week that it’d take multiple first-round picks, baseline, to pry Burns from Carolina, some scoffed. But that just reflects the change in how young, star vets are valued by teams. Jalen Ramsey commanded two first-round picks, and so did Khalil Mack. Minkah Fitzpatrick netted a first-rounder, a fourth-rounder and a seventh-rounder. And all those players, if you go back and see how the picks shook out, were worth the price.
Burns is similar to Ramsey and Fitzpatrick, and he’s only 24. Good luck getting him.
