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September 13, 2024 10 mins
Robert Weintraub writes a weekly Bengals column for Cincinnati Magazine. Robert joined me this week to discuss  this week's column on the Bengals needing to answer their doubters this week in Kansas City.

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, twenty three after five o'clock. This is ESPN
fifteen thirty. Our guy, Robert Wintrop joins us every Thursday,
right say 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

(00:22):
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 2 (00:33):
Listen? I take no pleasure in it. Okay, this is
not a victory lap.

Speaker 3 (00:36):
I'm not happy about it. But I thought it was
playing as day Frankly, and maybe a lot of people.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
You know, I think there's a bit of.

Speaker 3 (00:43):
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

(01:04):
Week one, not necessarily indicative of the rest of the season,
So you know.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
That was one aspect of it.

Speaker 3 (01:09):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
Say, you know, you don't even know if he's.

Speaker 3 (01:24):
Going to play until the day of the game, and
then of course he's not the same Jamar Chase we expect.
And over everything else, the rust 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 be the MVP we know and love.
So you know, you add all that together, and the
Patriots were going to play a style that minimized mistakes,

(01:46):
and they executed that to a game plan. Let the
Bengals beat themselves, and.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
They were, you know, really sloppy, as they.

Speaker 3 (01:52):
Tend to be in weak ones going through the whole
Zach Tayler era. You could just see the handwriting was
on the wall. But you know, as we to say,
as Don Draper once said, move forward. It will shock
you how much this never happened.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
So let's just move on.

Speaker 3 (02:08):
We're on too, Kansas City, as somebody sort of yes,
and you know, let's let's forget all about that debacle
on Sunday.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
We'll do our best. You reference in your piece experimentation
on offense last week, what from that can carry over
to Sunday? And are there areas where maybe they should
try some experiments this week?

Speaker 3 (02:29):
Yeah? 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

(02:50):
that a lot of teams, not just the Bengals, use
just sort of mix and match guys and see what
works and what doesn't work.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
We know eventually Burrow is going to be Burrow and.

Speaker 3 (02:58):
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. And I think,
you know, going forward, I want to stabish a lot
more of a physical presence than they did on Sunday.

Speaker 2 (03:18):
For sure.

Speaker 3 (03:19):
That was like playing Patty Cake and the Patriots were
in a slap fight.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
You know, they just seeded the physical battle right away.

Speaker 3 (03:26):
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.

Speaker 2 (03:38):
You know.

Speaker 3 (03:38):
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 North to
the Western Front in World War One.

Speaker 2 (03:49):
But you know, they.

Speaker 3 (03:50):
Drafted three guys to be big bodies, 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

(04:11):
or somewhat of a power team.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
And you get Amarius MEM's back in there, and you.

Speaker 3 (04:15):
Run behind him with a couple of tight ends, and
you can look a lot different and be a lot
more in games. 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 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

(04:35):
possessions for the Kansas City and hope they beat themselves,
which you know they're capable of doing two and minimize
those mistakes.

Speaker 2 (04:41):
One way to do that is by going to more
of twelve personnel.

Speaker 1 (04:44):
In my mind, when they did throw it last week,
not not to keep harkening 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 get
tackled all most instantly, sometimes right before the sticks in
a critical situation. Why was that? Why couldn't anybody, anybody

(05:08):
get open? And why the rather startling lack of yards
after the catch?

Speaker 3 (05:14):
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

(05:35):
looks and get them in a position where they can't
all just race to the football as soon as somebody
catches it.

Speaker 2 (05:41):
And the Bengals were not able to do that.

Speaker 3 (05:43):
They didn't respect their run and so they could play,
you know, in their classic sort of picket fence style,
wait for the short pass and then all race to
the ball and make the tackles that the Bengals did not.
The Bengals had fourteen missed 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

(06:04):
trusting his wrist yet or whatever the case was, he
was jittery.

Speaker 2 (06:07):
He didn't take a lot.

Speaker 3 (06:08):
Of chances down the field, he didn't step into throws
a lot, and his eyes were down instead of up,
which is something we're not used to seeing. 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 into tight windows,
as we know, he'll you know, throw guys open, things

(06:31):
that he didn't do really much of last week, and
that was part of the game plan. 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 at going forward
as well.

Speaker 1 (06:42):
Robert wintrob his weekly Bengals column Read It Now Cincinnati
Magazine dot com. The Chiefs are interesting. They're 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

(07:03):
been a little bit different and in fact, and 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,

(07:26):
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 3 (07:42):
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 past defense the
pass rush or good secondary play.

Speaker 2 (07:53):
And I usually come down on the pass rush.

Speaker 3 (07:55):
Side, especially when you don't really have any outside of
Trey anddricks and I think that was a big element
of the game last week as well.

Speaker 2 (08:03):
Hendrickson was phenomenal.

Speaker 3 (08:04):
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.

(08:25):
As we know, he's gonna have to get in this
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.

Speaker 2 (08:37):
And he was dominated by Michael.

Speaker 3 (08:39):
Jordan of all people, this guy that we couldn't make
out of town.

Speaker 2 (08:43):
It's terrible.

Speaker 3 (08:44):
He did a good job against rank and hopefully a
veteran like Sheldon will step it.

Speaker 2 (08:48):
Up next week. But your point is made.

Speaker 3 (08:51):
I mean, yes, they will be tested. Kansas City does
have an explosive offense. They always have. They had got
away with sort of as you 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

(09:13):
and fourth down and short when they had to. And that's,
you know, sort of Pat Mahomes is brilliance. He gets
all the credit for being this high flying, bombs away quarterback,
but he makes the little throws.

Speaker 2 (09:24):
And extremely consistently.

Speaker 3 (09:26):
And you know, I think the secondary surely is capable
of at least holding down that offense and staying with
their guys. 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 Revas as your cornerbacks,
they're going to be eventually because you know, there's just
too much time to throw. So to me, it's more

(09:47):
about getting heat on Mahomes than worrying too much about
the secondary.

Speaker 2 (09:51):
I don't think they know.

Speaker 3 (09:52):
They weren't particularly out of position, which is what we
saw a lot last year. This year they played on Sunday,
they played much more of a positional game.

Speaker 2 (10:00):
You know, he can credit Von Bell in part to
that and Geno Stone at the safety positions. The newcomers.

Speaker 3 (10:06):
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 1 (10:19):
Robert appealing to the younger audience with a contemporary reference
of Dick Knight Train Lane.

Speaker 3 (10:26):
But last week it was all about Trey Flowers. This week,
I'm going to the hall seventy years ago.

Speaker 1 (10:33):
I'll take it. We'll do it again next week.

Speaker 2 (10:35):
Thank you as always, absolutely no looking forward to it.
Hopefully off a w Take care,

Mo Egger News

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