3 questions the Bengals must answer in Week 3 vs Steelers

1. Who does this offense want to be?

Week 1 vs the Vikings saw the Bengals offense play very conservatively, and rightfully so. Joe Burrow, in his first game back, needed a minute to get his legs under him (bad pun unintended).

The result?

A dominant game by Joe Mixon and a steady, efficient season debut by Burrow.

Coming into Week 2, the Bears sported the 32nd ranked secondary in the league. Granted, one week is a small sample size to truly determine how good or not a defense is, but one would expect that sample size, small or not would help dictate the potential game plan.

Unfortunately, that didn’t seem to be the case on Sunday. Not only did the game plan lack creativity, but there was also no sense of urgency or excitement. This falls squarely on Zac Taylor.

What is this offense?

Is this a ground and pound attack that is going to play ball control and win the time of possession battle? If so, Sunday’s game plan was an abysmal failure because, despite 20 carries by Joe Mixon, the Bengals still lost time of possession by almost three minutes.

The game plan was vanilla and lacked imagination. Too many times on second and long the ball was stuck in Mixon’s belly, resulting In the expected result, third and long.

Can anyone guess what a defense will do, especially against a mediocre offensive line like the Bengals? If you guessed blitz, you would be correct.

Burrow took another bone-jarring five sacks on Sunday, and while they all weren’t solely the line’s fault, this question will have to be answered this week or the Steelers will live in the Bengals backfield.