Cincinnati Bengals: 3 Reasons for win vs. Lions in Week 16

1. Sustainable Drives

Nothing has frustrated me more about this Cincinnati season than the indomitable ability of this team to be completely inept at sustaining drives with their offense.

I’ve mentioned their shortcomings here often, but it has been awful enough all season that it should be recounted yet again. They are dead last in the NFL in Yards Per Drive (24.80), Plays Per Drive (5.12), Time of Possession Per Drive (2:26). Only the Andrew Luck-less Indianapolis Colts have been worse in terms of Football Outsiders’ Drive Success Rate (.633). They are no better than 20th in Points Per Drive, Turnovers Per Drive, and Fumbles Per Drive.

Here’s the most damaging aspect of their offensive ineptitude though: they are dead last in punts per drive, with a .500. That means exactly half of their drives this season entering this contest against Detroit have ended in punts. That’s abnormally, abysmally pathetic from a group with as much perceived talent on that side of the ball as Cincinnati entered this season having.

This has often shown up in the form of three-and-outs (around a quarter of their total drives have ended this way), but about as often we’ve seen the team get that initial first down in some manner only to sputter out immediately after.

With so many drives ending in this quick, depressing fashion, it is no wonder the team is where it is at this point in the season. There was no reason to expect the same wouldn’t happen in this game, too.

Shockingly, the Bengals stumbled into some longer drives this time around. Things began as expected (two of the first three drives — and three of the first five — went three-and-out), but along the way in that first half there were already improvements being shown. While three early drives only lasted three plays, two others managed to last for 10+ plays (and another lasted eight).

Those long drives made a big difference. Two of those three first-half ones became field goals, keeping Cincinnati in the contest despite an early turnover. This trend continued into the second half, with Cincinnati having no three-and-outs in the half and two more drives of 10+ plays. These long drives combined not only added 12 points to the Bengals’ tally, but they accounted for over 20 minutes of clock time; because of this, a team always on the wrong end of the time of possession battle actually won it for once, by nearly a five minute margin.

Next: NFL 2017: 20 Bold predictions for Week 17

This should be the best reminder of the frustrations this team provided in 2017. They had the talent to win by a decent margin and steadily control a game against a team firmly in the race to the postseason, but almost always would fall well short of their ceiling and never manage to find the consistency needed to even keeps games close some weeks.

Had these Bengals managed to find this kind of effort more often, their season wouldn’t be ending this coming weekend. Maybe 2018 will bring them better consistency.