Cincinnati Bengals: Takeaways from Week 15 Win vs Raiders

Turnover Luck Has Been Everything

The idea that turnovers make the single-biggest difference in games of any stat is anything but new. Often it proves as right as one should hope an endlessly repeated anecdote would: so far this season, teams are 131-39 when they win the turnover battle.

For Cincinnati this year, the trope definitely appears to have been as alive than ever. There have been five games where the Bengals have outright won the turnover battle and five games where they have lost it. In the games they forced more turnovers than they committed, the team has gone 4-1. On the other hand, they’ve been 1-4 in the opposite scenario.

That all makes perfect sense, but here’s what really makes a statement: when the turnover battle is even, Cincinnati has gone 1-3 this year. This is where the biggest issue of the 2018 Bengals shines through, and that issue has essentially been tied to a lack of quality talent — particularly on defense.

Part of Cincinnati’s talent issue can’t really be a fault of the team, to be clear; they’ve lost 15 total players to injured reserve, including seven from the defense. They’ve also had every one of their expected starting linebackers miss significant time to injuries and suspension.

Unfortunately, even at their best this defense leaves much to be desired at every level, and against quality offenses this issue showed up at every opportunity. To be successful on that side of the ball, this team has needed to take it away from their opponents. If they could not — even if their own offense didn’t give up the advantage themselves — then the Bengals would find themselves on the wrong end of the scoreboard by the completion of their games.

Check back on those four games and you’ll understand just how close the margins can be between a win or loss. Against the Colts, it took a late turnover (evening Cincinnati up 2-2 in the turnover battle) returned for a touchdown to beat Andrew Luck in his first regular season game in over a year.

No turnovers either way against Pittsburgh left Cincinnati hanging on for dear life while the Steelers leisurely sealed up a close game in the final two minutes. Kansas City blew the Bengals out of the water early. A turnover or two before this was completely out of hand could’ve saved the day (or at least made an outmatched team appear competitive).

A close game against the Chargers never flipped Cincinnati’s way because they couldn’t get that one turnover advantage to make the difference.  This team, more than most, needs the turnover advantage to win, especially at this point in the year with so many key bodies missing so much time.

We got to see just how much of a difference turnovers can make against the Raiders.

Jeff Driskel completed less than half his passes for a measly 130 yards. Tyler Boyd got a touchdown, but ended up getting hurt. Outside of him, the other Cincinnati pass-catchers combined for less than 100 receiving yards and no touchdowns. Oakland had a sack and eight tackles for loss.

That all seems to spell a poor outcome for the Bengals, but because of turnovers by the Raiders, Cincinnati was able to get out to a three-score lead in the first half and never really looked back. On the first, Sam Hubbard caused a fumble on a sack of Carr when Oakland was in Cincinnati territory, stopping a possible scoring drive. The second came later on, with Darqueze Dennard forcing the ball out of Jalen Richard’s hands and taking the possession; afterwards, Cincinnati would kick a field goal to go up 17-0.

That early lead let a team now with a deficient passing game lean all-in on their running back throughout the rest of the contest, giving them a relatively secure path to their first victory in over a month. Winning the turnover battle was integral to allowing that to take place.