Revisiting the Cincinnati Bengals’ Week 5 victory over the Buffalo Bills to help understand why they were able to come away with the 20-16 win.
So much can change in two weeks. Following Week 3, the Cincinnati Bengals themselves sitting at 0-3, with their first strong effort of the season wasted in a collapse to the Green Bay Packers. Their division-mate Pittsburgh Steelers and Baltimore Ravens each lost as well, but still sat at 2-1. Any hope or expectations for a return to the playoffs were effectively dashed. Or so it seemed.
Following a shellacking of Cleveland in Week 4, these supposedly dead-on-arrival Bengals came away with easily their strongest outing of the season, taking down a Buffalo Bills team which came in as one of the most impressive through the first month of the season. With the win, Cincinnati elevated itself to 2-3 as they enter their bye week, surprisingly placing them just one game back of both Pittsburgh and Baltimore
As we do each week, we’ll be taking a look at how things turned out the way they did for Cincinnati in their previous contest. Here are the biggest reasons why the Bengals were able to beat Buffalo:
3. Passing Advantage
Cincinnati’s offense has been a problem in the spotlight this season, especially the issues revolving around the passing game.
Coming into the week, the Cincinnati passing game came into the week ranked No. 24 in Football Outsiders’ Offensive Passing DVOA. Their quarterback Andy Dalton ranked 25th or worse among passers with 60+ attempts in numerous FO’s statistics, including Yards Above Replacement and Defense-adjusted Yards Above Replacement (or YAR and DYAR), individual Defense-adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA) and QBR.
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This all was happening despite a supposedly great collection of receiving talents and the Dalton-led passing attack coming off an excellent Week 4 showing. That Cleveland defense is clearly well below what Cincinnati faced in their previous three matchups, however. And in Buffalo, the Bengals were set to face another high-end pass defense. Suffice it to say, things seemed primed for a rough outing.
Fortunately, it didn’t take long for the Cincinnati passing game to make it known they would play a positive role in Cincinnati’s hopes for victory though.
An offense which had barely averaged 200 passing yards in the previous four games (would rank No. 22 league-wide right now) managed to garner 328 passing yards on 9.1 yards per attempt on the afternoon against a Buffalo pass defense which had averaged 213 passing yards allowed per game (would be No. 12 today) and 5.6 yards per attempt (would be No. 2 now).
The group (in particular, A.J. Green) did have their stumbles (two Dalton interceptions and a fumble, all of which were directly caused by or on plays to Green), but big plays came consistently enough to overcome those problems. On 11 different passes, Cincinnati garnered 10+ yards. On four of those, the plays went for 20+ yards. For all the damage caused by Green’s blunders, he did have the two biggest plays, a 77-yard catch-and-run touchdown to kick of the scoring, in addition to a 47-yard reception on Cincinnati’s second touchdown drive.
It wasn’t a perfect outing, but this sort of performance against stout opposition alludes to the promise which was expected of Cincinnati’s offense coming into the season.