Cincinnati Bengals: 3 Reasons for loss vs. Jaguars in Week 9
By Kenn Korb
Looking back at the Cincinnati Bengals’ Week 9 loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars and figuring out why they fell in the eventual 23-7 defeat.
After surviving against an upset-seeking Indianapolis squad, the Cincinnati Bengals had a prime opportunity to announce themselves as playoff contenders with a win over the much-improved Jacksonville Jaguars. They announced themselves as something alright…but it wasn’t anything positive.
Rather than sparking an upset or at least putting up a game effort against one of the AFC’s surprise teams, Cincinnati instead put up what I would consider their most pathetic showing of the 2017 season.
Here’s why things ended so poorly.
3. Green’s Ejection
In case you’ve been living under a rock, you know that A.J. Green is the best player on Cincinnati’s offense. He’s their quiet leader, never making a fuss despite an offense ripe with problems and a team which has no choice but to hope he is dominant to give them hope of staying in games. Just quickly glancing at the team stat sheet will show you how integral he is to their success.
The frustrations of this Bengals’ season apparently can wear even on someone as placid and even-keeled as Green, however, and they boiled over in a big way before halftime.
Who knows what Ramsey said or did leading up to this play (probably plenty, based on his reputation for jawing and physicality since he entered the league), but let’s just say, at best, this is a major overreaction from Green.
Regardless of why exactly he completely lost his mind on the play, the end result was simple and swift: Green got himself (and, ridiculously, Ramsey as well) ejected. With his ejection, he took any hopes of a Cincinnati victory with him.
Cincinnati wasn’t exactly gangbusters on offense in the first half with Green, but they did have at least a little success to work with. They had three drives before this, with each picking up at least 25 yards; on one of them, they even marched 80 yards for a touchdown. In the half, they finished with 132 yards of offense.
With no Green in the second half, things were impossibly bad. The Bengals ended up running more plays in the second half than the amount of yardage they accrued (20 plays, only 16 yards). Only one of their six drives in the half picked up more than five yards, and the good work on that drive (26 yards) was completely undone by drives which went for -15 and -1 yards later on. Only one of those six drives didn’t end in a punt: a kneeldown by Andy Dalton to end the game.
If Green doesn’t lose his cool, Cincinnati probably still doesn’t win in my mind. Without him though, they may have well called it right then and there.