Bengals vs Steelers: Winners and losers from Week 1 loss

Losers

Joe Burrow

This feels too easy. It isn't fun putting Burrow on the losers list but the guy threw three interceptions and lost a fumble in the first half and then added a pick in the second half, giving him four on the afternoon. It's hard to win games when the quarterback coughs up the football five times and when it was all said and done, the Bengals lost the game. The turnovers helped lead the stripes to their first loss of the season, that's for sure.

Burrow's stat line otherwise looks okay, as he threw for 338 yards and two touchdowns while dashing for 47 yards on six carries. Those four interceptions proved costly though and the performance was not acceptable. He has to be better moving forward.

Offensive Line

The Bengals front office spent a lot of money trying to ensure that the offensive line would not cost the team a Lombardi Trophy this season. After a long wait, fans finally got to see the new-look offensive line in action and it did not go well.

Burrow was sacked seven times and constantly under duress during this one. It was ugly and not the kind of performance fans were hoping to see from this unit. Rookie Cordell Volson struggled mightily in his first-ever start, getting manhandled by Cam Heyward. It wasn't pretty.

While Volson could have had his own entry, I put the entire offensive line here because three of them were paid big money to come in here and protect Joey Franchise. They didn't do that on Sunday. La'el Collins was one of those guys making big bucks and he struggled tremendously against T.J. Watt (though, in his defense, most people do).

Jonah Williams also had a rough go of it and he was the only veteran on this unit. If anyone should have been solid and ready to go, it should have been Williams.

This unit should get better as the season goes along but it's okay to be critical after one game because this group was downright awful against the Steelers.

Mitchell Wilcox

It's hard to put too much blame on Wilcox considering the situations he was put into but football isn't a game about what's fair and what's not. The fact of the matter is that Wilcox was asked to snap the football on two plays and neither play went according to plan.

It was a tough spot to put Wilcox in but Zac Taylor mentioned in a press conference following the game that he had practiced snapping the ball "all the time" before so this wasn't new territory. All of the blame can't be placed on Wilcox but it's hard not to group him in with the losers this week.

One game is in the books and the Bengals are 0-1. They have plenty of time to learn from this and bounce back. After witnessing what they accomplished last year, fans know that they can do just that.