Coming off back-to-back wins and easily their best one this season over the Falcons, the Cincinnati Bengals' spirits are high as ever. For the first time this season, they boast a winning record.
While the offense has started to click these past two games, there are still plenty of things the Bengals need to improve upon if they want to be true contenders in 2022.
Offensive Line
The Bengals' O-Line has improved considerably following an abysmal start to the season, but we need to see more from this unit. The Falcons came away with three sacks this game, and it felt like they were in the backfield much more than that. To be fair, Burrow can take some of the blame for the Grady Jarrett sack as he should've just thrown the ball out, but still, the offensive line needs to step it up more.
Bengals O-Line gave up 7.8 Sacks/g last season
— Eli (@EliBPLR) October 25, 2022
Bengals O-Line gave up 6.5 sacks/g first 2 games this season
Bengals O-Line gave up 3.5 sacks/g last 5 games
That’s what you call growing pains coming around. Team is gonna be scary coming weeks.
Joe Burrow currently sits as the fourth-most sacked quarterback in the league, taking 21 sacks in total. 13 of those came from the first two games, and if not for Burrow's ability to extend the play with his legs, he would no doubt hit the ground more often.
I don't want to sour on the O-Line too much since they definitely have improved after a rocky start to the 2022 campaign and are finally starting to look like a more cohesive unit. That being said, it's going to take more than this to get this team to the promised land.
Play-calling
Like the offensive line, Zac Taylor has done marginally better these past couple of games in this department than he did to start the season. Whether that's him getting more acclimated to this duty or if it's the input from everyone else, either way, we have seen some improvement in the last two weeks.
However, that doesn't mean the play-calling has been flawless. In fact, there are still questionable decisions being made even in the Bengals' dominant victory over the Falcons.
The one that comes to mind immediately is Taylor's decision to go for it on a fourth down. Now, this didn't end up mattering as the Falcons would be held scoreless by the Bengals' stout defense for the rest of the game, but that 4th-and-1 decision? Not a fan.
The Bengals were already up 11, and besides, why would you throw the ball down the field instead of handing it to Mixon, who was consistently getting five-yard runs up until this point?
Again, since it didn't end up hurting Cincy I won't harp on it too much, but when the Bengals face better opponents, decisions like these are going to come back and haunt them.