Cincinnati Bengals: 3 Reasons for loss vs. Vikings in Week 15
By Kenn Korb
1. YAC Attack
Enough about the offense. By now, we should understand their clear, inherent weaknesses and realize that when this team has found success in 2017, it has by and large been due to the efforts of the defense.
As the season has aged though, what was once an underrated, dominating unit has devolved into an injury-plagued mess that deserves no kudos for their efforts any longer. The game against the Bears was the first true indicator; this game versus the Vikings was the final nail in the coffin for any notion of this unit ending the year on a positive note against a powerful unit.
Minnesota’s offense now has become exactly what Cincinnati’s defense began this season as: surprisingly good. They are seventh in Offensive DVOA, seventh in Weighted Offensive DVOA, and sixth in Pass Offense DVOA. All those areas I mentioned earlier about Cincinnati’s offense being terrible? Minnesota is in the top 10 in all but one of them. Behind the efforts of journeyman quarterback Case Keenum, a running duo of Latavius Murray and Jerrick McKinnon, explosive receiving corps led by the duo of Stefon Diggs and Adam Theilen, and an improved offensive line, the Vikings have become a force to be reckoned with.
A big part of that power they’ve managed is directly related to another stat: yards after catch (YAC). For a team led by a clearly limited quarterback (see: Keenum), having the players around him step up and make plays themselves is essential just to sustain a functional offense, much less create one that can actually be a dominant unit. That’s exactly what has happened this entire year. Minnesota is seventh in team YAC this season, and they have two of the league’s top 20 players (as well as four of the top 60) in the statistic.
Cincinnati ended up being yet another victim of this YAC machine. Keenum threw 23 passes, completing 20 of them for 236 yards on the afternoon. Of those 236 yards, 186 were picked up by his teammates after they caught the ball.
Cincinnati kept giving away easy completions to a quarterback who would be severely limited without it, and a team which has invested heavily (through the draft and big-money contracts) in their secondary watched their players fall well short of making the quick tackles needed to stop this gameplan.
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From every angle, this team deserved to lose this game in the extreme fashion which happened.
Just two games remain in this lost season; here’s hoping it ends rather painlessly. With playoff-vying opponents in each however (Detroit and Baltimore), it’ll probably be more of the same. At least games like this one have already helped prepare us for the inevitable unsightly outcome.