Cincinnati Bengals: Players to watch vs. Bills in Week 5

1. Andre Smith

This shouldn’t be a surprising statement, but the biggest weakness of the Bengals is their offensive line. Due to the poor play of the guys up front — and in spite of loads of talented skill position players at their command — Cincinnati took a month to get themselves a single victory.

The team did at least have a plan of some sort to try and prevent this very thing from happening, one which began two full seasons ago. Unfortunately, that plan was to draft two tackles, Cedric Ogbuehi and Jake Fisher,  in back-to-back selections in 2015. That has turned out horribly wrong because those two players are still far from being capable contributors.

This team was so hell-bent on those guys being somewhat passable-at-worst bookend starting tackles that the Bengals have left themselves without any real viable options beyond letting them play through every issue.

They let Andrew Whitworth leave in free agency, didn’t draft any tackles despite owning over a dozen draft picks in April. They cut NFLPA president Eric Winston, who was no longer being a good player, but was at least a veteran who wouldn’t bring to the table the youthful blunders Ogbuehi and Fisher can’t escape.

Things have become so desperate that in the past two weeks, it’s essentially been musical chairs at the offensive tackle spots for the team. Against Cleveland, Smith spent time at both tackle spots, and it seems like with the offense finally finding some rhythm that they’ll stick with what works.

That means Smith should be seeing another start this week. On which side is hard to say, though. Opposite the right side of the line, Buffalo’s second-year pass rusher Shaq Lawson will use the explosiveness which got him drafted in the first round of the 2016 draft to burst around his opposition. Opposite the left, Jerry Hughes (38.5 career sacks with six or more in three of the past four seasons) is having a good start to 2017 (three sacks) and could do to Cincinnati what the Bengals’ Carl Lawson did to Green Bay a couple weeks back.

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Assuming Smith plays a significant amount of time, those snaps will be key regardless of which challenge he is asked to face. Even slightly slowing the deadly pass rush will be a lifesaver for Andy Dalton (whose performance, as often noted, falls off a cliff when faced with pressure). If he doesn’t play well, Cincinnati’s best hope is for the sort of game they lost in Week 2: barely 20 points combined, with a single big play deciding the outcome.

If he does keep pressure off Dalton, however, this offense will have a little more margin for error; with it, they may be able to actually utilize their skill position weapons a bit closer to how they did in Week 4 instead of what we saw through the first three weeks of the season.