The Cincinnati Bengals had a two-touchdown lead on the New York Jets Sunday with less than seven minutes to play. Given the fact that the Jets were winless and also the Jets, the game should have been over, right?
Nope, the Bengals’ defense put their fingerprints on the game and managed to blow it, losing the game 39-38 at home as you probably already know. Naturally, the post-game press conferences featured a lot of questions about Al Golden’s unit.
But, head coach Zac Taylor didn’t want to be too quick to just blame the defense, even though the offense put up almost 40 points.
“Well, I think there was three drives there we didn’t score in the second half,” Taylor told reporters after the game. “And they’re all frustrating, all disappointing. The first drive, the second half, you know, that was a chance for us to create a lot of separation there in the game… that was the opportunity for us to put the game away, quite frankly, and go down there and create a three-score lead and start to run away with this.”
He’s not wrong, but still…they scored 38 points. This is a team that lost six games last season when scoring 25 or more points. Six. I think the offense has earned a pass at this point.
Cincinnati Bengals defense couldn’t stop a terrible Jets offense
The Jets offense is so bad that they had to start a backup quarterback. Not the regular backup, Tyrod Taylor. No, Justin Fields was so bad that he got benched the week before and Taylor was going to be the starter. Then, Taylor was on the injury report and missed the game with a knee injury. So, Fields was the starter again.
All within a week’s time. The Bengals lost to this team.
So far, the Jets are 19th in the NFL in total yards on offense. You might think that’s not terrible, but consider that six of the teams ahead of them have already had their bye week. Those teams have more yards than the Jets and they’ve played one less game.
Should we look at total points scored? Why not? The Jets are 24th in the NFL in points scored and 11 of the teams ahead of them have already had their bye. I knew the Jets played in New Jersey but I didn’t realize it was at Newark Airport.
Bengals offense is perfectly fine
The Bengals’ offense has scored 24 or more points in three of the last four games, one of which was even started by Jake Browning. No one looks at this team and thinks the offense is why they are 3-5 (except for a few of those Browning starts, but that problem has been rectified).
Except Taylor apparently. He really wanted to make it clear that this isn’t on the porous defense that is putrid even when they have a guy with 17.5 sacks last season.
“So, you know, you’ve asked me a lot of defensive questions,” Taylor said, deflecting blame and trying to spread it around. “There’s a lot. But there’s still things on offense obviously, that, you know, we want to score a higher percentage of our drives than we just did.”
Like Heavy Sports’s content? Be sure to follow us.
This article was originally published on Heavy Sports
The post Bengals’ Zac Taylor Points Finger in Stunning Direction appeared first on Heavy Sports.