Cincinnati Bengals: What we learned in Week 2 loss to Bears

The Cincinnati Bengals are now 1-1 after dropping their first game of the year to the Chicago Bears. It was a frustrating game, to say the least, as the Bengals didn’t look motivated at all until it was too late to do anything about it.

We’ll get more into the fourth quarter of the game in this post but let’s take a look at what we learned about the stripes in their first loss of the 2021 season.

The offensive line still has a long way to go

Despite putting some effort into rebuilding the offensive line this offseason, it’s not anywhere close to being where Cincinnati needs it to be. The left side had a really rough game in Chicago, as Jonah Williams and Quinton Spain got pushed around throughout the matchup.

We all knew that the o-line was one of the team’s biggest weaknesses entering the season and so far, it hasn’t been very good. Joe Burrow has been sacked nine times through two games and the poor o-line play even forced Zac Taylor to call a more “conservative” game until the fourth quarter.

Burrow is tremendous at throwing the ball deep but it’s hard for him to do that when he’s getting pressured on every pass. This o-line has to be better if the Bengals want to come anywhere close to sniffing the playoffs.