Looking back at the Cincinnati Bengals’ Week 2 loss to the Houston Texans and determining why they came away with an uninspiring 13-9 loss to drop to 0-2.
It certainly hasn’t exactly taken long for the excitement found before the regular season began to fully dissipate, has it? A Cincinnati Bengals team which appeared to have a strong offseason came into the year with playoff aspirations. Now the team has seen those aspirations quickly morph from seemingly plausible to being a complete pipe dream.
Another non-playoff season isn’t guaranteed just yet, but based on what we’ve seen so far, there’s little reason to expect much else until some seismic changes come to pass — a process which already has begun with the firing of offensive coordinator Ken Zampese the day after this game.
We can’t yet know if that and/or other potential changes yet to come can act as a cure-all, but we can continue to evaluate just what happened in the Bengals’ most recent outing to determine what exactly went wrong. Once the issues are known and sussed out, measures towards attempting to fix them can be taken; from there is where Cincinnati will have any chance of turning this season around.
So why did Cincinnati actually lose to Houston? Here are a few reasons I came across after watching the game and analyzing what ended up occurring.