Cincinnati Bengals: 3 Reasons for win over Bills in Week 5
By Kenn Korb
1. Forcing FGs
Every week, the difference between a touchdown and a field goal ends up playing a major role in many of the weekly games across the league. Sure there are some blowouts here and there, but ultimately the scoreboard tends to lean in the favor of the group who can find their way into the end zone rather than trying to put the ball through the uprights. In this game, the contrast between the two played out spectacularly to form.
Buffalo punted seven times and turned it over once. Cincinnati found themselves on the wrong end of the turnover battle (-2 margin on the afternoon with three total turnovers) while seeing six other drives either end as punts or end-of-half endeavors. The teams basically had the same number of drives (13 for Cincinnati; 12 for Buffalo), and each ended up scoring on four of them.
The difference comes in how those scores happened.
Cincinnati kicked off the game’s scoring with a touchdown, and would later score a second. Paired with two field goals, it gave the team a lead they wouldn’t relinquish. Buffalo, meanwhile, only turned one scoring drive into a touchdown while settling for three field goals. Those field goals would be a major key in how the game played out it the second half.
Their first field goal saw a 10-play drive sputter out at the Cincinnati 13-yard line. With it, a possible 7-7 tie was averted, allowing Cincinnati to hold onto a 7-3 advantage. The second came at 10-10 in the second half following Green’s fumble. Despite being gifted a defensive pass interference penalty along the way, the Bills stalled out at the Bengals 20-yard line before taking a 13-10 lead.
The final field goal must be the most frustrating from Buffalo’s eyes. A 40-yard punt return (plus 12 more yards added due to unsportsmanlike conduct by the Bengals) put the Bills at the Cincinnati 12-yard line. This was incredible field position, and the perfect chance to flip a 17-13 deficit into a 20-17 lead in their favor. After an incompletion to rookie wideout Zay Jones, a four-yard rushing loss by LeSean McCoy, and a six-yard dumpoff to McCoy, an expected touchdown became a sigh at another field goal to leave Buffalo down 17-16.
The game wasn’t over yet — Buffalo would get one more drive and almost certainly would be able to, at worst, tie things up — but the situation was heavily impacted by the team’s earlier failures at putting the ball in the end zone.
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Had Buffalo managed to score a touchdown on even one of those three field goal drives, that final drive doesn’t need to be a touchdown. Rather, we would have been looking at a 20-20 tie that allowed Buffalo to only need to maybe get around the Cincinnati 30-yard line to possibly win things with, of all things, a field goal.
Kudos to the Cincinnati defense for making the plays necessary to keep that possibility from even being on the table. If they are going to truly re-enter the playoff picture in 2017, more of this will be a requirement.