Looking back at the Cincinnati Bengals’ win over the Oakland Raiders in Week 15 and observing some notable takeaways from the game.
The Cincinnati Bengals have long been essentially out of the 2018 playoff race, but the season isn’t over yet and the team (those who are actually still able to suit up, at least) hasn’t completely given up on making some sort of statement with what remains of the year.
That’s shown up in their efforts the past couple outings. Two games ago, they gave the Los Angeles Chargers all they could handle before losing in a surprisingly close outing. Last weekend, they faced another AFC West opponent and actually came away with a victory!
Of course, the soon-to-be (in a couple years or so) Las Vegas Raiders have been anything but a competitive squad this year, but they had just beaten Cincinnati’s hated rivals from Pittsburgh the week prior so there had to be some possibility of these injury-ravaged Bengals handing over another victory to their opposition in a season where that has been a painful habit.
Fortunately (for those hoping to see some sort of positive effort from their favorite team) or unfortunately (for those who are looking to the future — especially the draft positioning), Cincinnati came away with a 30-16 home win.
Here are some takeaways from this mostly meaningless game for the Cincinnati Bengals to remember going forward.