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September 12, 2024 11 mins
Robvert on his Bengals/Chiefs column
Mark as Played
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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Football Inminnetti wrote to you in part by blood Light
and by Skyline Shilly on the official home of the Bengals,
Cincinnati's ESPN fifteen thirty.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
All right, twenty three after five o'clock. This is ESPN
fifteen thirty. Our guy, Robert Wintrop joins us every Thursday.
Writes a weekly Bengals column for Cincinnati Magazine. You could
read his latest at Cincinnati Magazine dot com. Robert last
week wrote a column and nobody wanted to read it.
Nobody wanted to hear us talk about it because he

(00:32):
was he was sounding he was sounding alarms, He was
being cautious. He was reminding us that this team might
have some questions, might have some words. So how does
it feel to be right?

Speaker 3 (00:44):
Listen?

Speaker 4 (00:44):
I take no pleasure in it. Okay, this is not
a victory lap.

Speaker 3 (00:47):
I'm not happy about it.

Speaker 4 (00:49):
But I thought it was playing as day Frankly, and
maybe a lot of people.

Speaker 3 (00:53):
You know, I think there's a bit.

Speaker 4 (00:54):
Of boiled frog syndrome coming out of Cincinnati where people
who were close to it, you know, there was a
constant drip of bad news and bad juju coming out
of training camp, and you know, maybe you just don't
see it because it's not a catastrophe like Burrow getting
hurt last year. But it was you know, I thought
pretty apparent, Hey, it's week one and stuff weird. Stuff
always happens in week one, not necessarily indicative of the

(01:16):
rest of the season.

Speaker 3 (01:17):
So you know, that was one aspect of it.

Speaker 4 (01:20):
And you know, all the guys who got hurt even
though they didn't really play in preseason, and obviously to
Higgins with the contract drama and then winds up getting
hurt on the cusp of the season, and the Jamar
Chase hold injury, as I like to say, you know,
you don't even know if he's going to play until
the day of the game, and then of course he's
not the same Jamar Chase we expect.

Speaker 3 (01:39):
And over everything else, the rust.

Speaker 4 (01:42):
Of Joe Burrow not having played for nearly a year,
you had to expect he wasn't going to be, you know,
walk right back onto the field and.

Speaker 3 (01:49):
Be the MVP we know and love.

Speaker 4 (01:50):
So you know, you add all that together, and the
Patriots were going to play a style that minimized mistakes, and.

Speaker 3 (01:57):
They executed that to a game plan.

Speaker 4 (01:59):
Let the Bengals be themselves, and they were, you know,
really sloppy, as they.

Speaker 3 (02:03):
Tend to be in weak ones.

Speaker 4 (02:04):
Going through the whole zach Teler era, you could just
see the handwriting was on the wall. But you know,
as we like to say, as Don Draper once said,
move forward. It will shock you how much this never happened.

Speaker 3 (02:17):
So let's just move on.

Speaker 4 (02:18):
We're onto Kansas City, as somebody sort of yes, set
and you know, let's let's forget all about that debacle
on Sunday.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
We'll do our best. You reference in your piece experimentation
on offense last week, what what from that can carry
over to Sunday? And are there areas where maybe they
should try some experiments this week?

Speaker 3 (02:40):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (02:40):
Well, you know what I was thinking about is that,
and we talked about this before this season never really started,
was that they have so many players of you know,
sort of unknown quantity or of equal quality that you know,
how they align their personnel was going to you know,
be a really interesting facet especially in the first month
of the season. And I think this is the time
that a lot of teams, not just the Bengals, use

(03:03):
to sort of mix and match guys and see what
works and what doesn't work. We know, eventually Burrow's going
to be Burrow, and passing out of the shotgun in
three wide receiver sets is something they do well. But
you know, maybe they can do some other things well.
And one thing they actually did well on Sunday was
run the ball out of two tight end sets with
Drew and Eric all on the field at the same time.

(03:23):
And I think, you know, going forward, I want to
establish a lot more of a physical presence than they
did on Sunday. For sure, that was like playing Patty
Cake and the Patriots were in a slap fight.

Speaker 3 (03:33):
You know, they just seeded the physical battle right away.

Speaker 4 (03:37):
And one way to get around that is by putting
two tight ends in the field and commit to playing
much more AFC North quote unquote football than they showed
this weekend that they've showed really for a while now.
You know. Part of it is also the fact that
a lot of their big bodies that they were, you know,
everybody talked about the trenches, the trenches all off season.
You know, it's like we were going from the AFC

(03:58):
North to the Western Front War one.

Speaker 3 (04:00):
But you know, they drafted three guys to be big bodies.

Speaker 4 (04:03):
None of whom played, So that was a bit they
were a bit shorthanded when it came to that. But
you know, I think overall, you might see a transition
this season from the wide open, three wide receivers running
down the field and Burrow chucking it everywhere team that
we all conjure up when we think of the Bengals,
and they might transition a little bit to much more
of a power team or somewhat of a power team.

(04:23):
And you get Amarus MEM's back in there, and you
run behind him with a couple of tight ends and
you can look a lot different and be a lot
more in games.

Speaker 3 (04:30):
And let's face it, against Kansas City, they're gonna have
probably have to win that way. They're gonna have to
play like the Patriots played against.

Speaker 4 (04:36):
Cincinnati again this week with with that high flying offense
on the other side of the field. They're gonna have
to try and create a game where they shortened it,
minimize possessions for the Kansas City and hope they beat themselves,
which you know they're capable of doing two and minimize
those mistakes.

Speaker 3 (04:52):
One way to do that is by going to more
of twelve personnel.

Speaker 2 (04:55):
In my mind, when they did throw it last week,
not not to keep hard marketing back to last week,
but when they did throw it last week, all the
short passes, they were completed, but they didn't result in
yards after the catch. Usually guy would catch a pass
gud tackled almost instantly, sometimes right before the sticks in
a critical situation.

Speaker 3 (05:16):
Why why was that?

Speaker 2 (05:17):
Why couldn't anybody, anybody get open? And why the rather
startling lack of yards after the catch?

Speaker 4 (05:25):
Yeah? Well, first and foremost, I think you do have
to give some credit to New England. They played a
very good game defensively. Their secondary was excellent, they covered well,
they rallied to the ball, and they played a lot
of too deep safety, which we talk about a lot.
And when the Bengals played their three wides, it's incumbent
upon them to be able to run the ball. So
you can run them out of those two high safety

(05:46):
looks and get them in a position where they can't
all just race to the football as soon as somebody
catches it.

Speaker 3 (05:52):
And the Bengals were not able to do that.

Speaker 4 (05:53):
They didn't respect their run and so they could play,
you know, in their classic sort of picket fence style,
wait for the shorts and then all race to the
ball and make.

Speaker 3 (06:02):
The tackles that the Bengals did not.

Speaker 4 (06:04):
The Bengals had fourteen miss tackles and I think the
Patriots had two. That's part of the story of the
game right there. You know, guys were open and Burrow,
like we talked about, whether it was rust or not
trusting his wrist yet or whatever the case was, he
was jittery. He didn't take a lot of chances down
the field, he didn't step in the.

Speaker 3 (06:21):
Throws a lot, and his eyes were down instead of up,
which is something we're not used to seeing.

Speaker 4 (06:26):
So I think in a lot of cases, it was,
you know, sort of a one off. It wasn't necessarily
something that you're going to see down the line. Assuming
Burrow returns to being Burrow and the way he normally plays,
he'll take chances a lot, he'll throw the ball in
the tight windows, as we know, he'll you know, throw
guys open, things that he didn't do really much of last.

Speaker 3 (06:44):
Week, and that was part of the game plan.

Speaker 4 (06:46):
Apparently they wanted to play it safe a little bit
for week one and it came back to bite him.
But you know, I think that'll change a little bit
of going forward as well.

Speaker 2 (06:53):
Robert Wintrob his weekly Bengals column Read It Now Cincinnati
Magazine dot com. The Chiefs are interesting, always interesting. But
from this perspective, you know, when this Mahomes run started,
watching them as a blast because it was just guys
streaking down the field and him using his arm strength
to take advantage. And then in recent years it's it's

(07:14):
been a little bit different. And in fact, you know,
there have been times where it's taken maybe a while
for the players to adjust where their offense was a
lot more tight end oriented, short pass oriented and sort
of dependent upon maybe Patrick having to improvise. It feels
like now they've meshed the two. It feels like a
pick your poison offense, which is scary for anybody. It's,

(07:37):
in particular, I think, a scary proposition when you consider
the retooling in the secondary. We've all been talking about this,
right Like, at some point those guys in the secondary,
Dax Hill, maybe in particular, they're gonna be tested, gonna
be tested on Sunday. Do you think they're up to
the task.

Speaker 4 (07:53):
Well, before I think about that, I really think about
the pass rush first and foremost, because you know, there's
always the debate what's more important in pass defense, the.

Speaker 3 (08:02):
Pass rush or good secondary play.

Speaker 4 (08:04):
And I usually come down on the pass rush side,
especially when you don't really have any outside of Trey Hendrickson,
and I think that was a big element of the
game last week as well.

Speaker 3 (08:14):
Hendrickson was phenomenal.

Speaker 4 (08:15):
Actually, he had a forty pass rush win rate, which
is very high to the mathematically challenged, but he was
just you know, millisecond bay from Sex on multiple occasions
with any one of them that he gets. Maybe the
Bengals pull that game out force to turnover, who knows.
But the main issue was the fact that nobody else
got any pressure. And you can't beat Pat Mahomes that way.

(08:36):
As we know, he's gonna have to get in the
space more. Somebody besides Hendrickson is going to have to
get to him. Joe Sai has to step up his game,
Sam Hubbard, you know, Sheldon Rankins they brought in to
be this pass rusher on the inside, and he was
dominated by Michael Jordan of all people, this guy that
we couldn't make out of town.

Speaker 3 (08:54):
It's terrible. He did a good job against rank and deal.

Speaker 4 (08:57):
Hopefully a veteran like Sheldon will step it up next week.

Speaker 3 (09:01):
But your point is made. I mean, yes, they will
be tested.

Speaker 4 (09:04):
Kansas City does have an explosive offense.

Speaker 3 (09:07):
They always have. They had got away.

Speaker 4 (09:09):
With sort of as you mentioned, sort of less firepower
of an offense, kind of the way the Bengals. They
won the way the Bengals played on Sunday, a lot
of short passes, a lot of timing the differences they
made other guys miss and they made crucial plays on
third and fourth down.

Speaker 3 (09:25):
And short when they had to. And that's, you know,
sort of Pat Mahomes is brilliance.

Speaker 4 (09:29):
He gets all the credit for being this high flying,
bombs away quarterback, but he makes the little throws.

Speaker 3 (09:34):
And extremely consistently.

Speaker 4 (09:36):
And you know, I think the secondary surely is capable
of at least holding down that.

Speaker 3 (09:42):
Offense and staying with their guys.

Speaker 4 (09:45):
But if you give Mahomes a lot of time to throw,
I don't care who you're putting out there, Dick Knight,
Train Lane and dal Revias as your cornerbacks, They're going
to be deep eventually because you know, there's just too
much time to throw. So to me, it's more about
getting heat on ma Homes than were think too much
about the secondary. I don't think they'll. Yeah, they weren't
particularly out of position, which is what we saw a

(10:05):
lot last year.

Speaker 3 (10:06):
This year they played on Sunday. They played much more
of a positional game. You know.

Speaker 4 (10:11):
You can credit Von Bell in part to that and
Geno Stone at the safety positions. The newcomers. So I think,
you know, that'll only get better and more cohesive as
they get you know, time together. But they got to
get some pressure on the quarterback. It's just it can't
all betray. That's gonna be a thing to watch going
forward all season.

Speaker 2 (10:29):
Robert appealing to the younger audience with a contemporary reference
of Dick Knight train Lane.

Speaker 4 (10:36):
But last week it was all about Trey Flowers. This
week I'm going to the Hall day seventy years ago.

Speaker 2 (10:43):
I'll take it.

Speaker 3 (10:45):
We'll do it again next week.

Speaker 4 (10:46):
Thank you as always, Absolutely mo looking forward to it
hopefully off a w.

Speaker 2 (10:50):
Take care that would be great, I tweeted out linked
to Robert's peace go get it now at moleg or
it just goes straight to cincinnatimagazine dot com. If you're
also on X you can vote for our poll question
Bengals' biggest rival at Moegar thanks to United Heartland Insurance.
Twenty six away from six o'clock, Taylor Twelman is scheduled

(11:11):
to join us in just about ten minutes. He's behind
the mic for Apple TV Saturday Night FC Cincinnati versus Columbus.

Speaker 3 (11:17):
This is the Ortho Cinc.

Speaker 2 (11:19):
Moegar Show on ESPN fifteen thirty, Cincinnati Sports station.

Speaker 1 (11:23):
You've been listening to Football Ininneti, brought to you by
Cincinnati Tax Resolution, powered by TORF Sheldon, on the official
home of the Bengals, Cincinnati's ESPN fifteen thirty

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