Bengals Looking like 2021 Again

Prime-time win over Miami was good vibes all around

The Who Dey feelgood flowed. It wasn’t hard to see 2021 on the riverfront Thursday night. Amazing what a couple wins will do for a town and a team still not entirely sure of its football self.

The Bengals players might argue with that. “Relax,’’ Joe Burrow said at 0-2. But a franchise’s psyche is fragile, especially when it’s still discovering how to win. And the fans, well, you don’t have to be told what losing has done to Cincinnati fans over the years. Does the name “Chicken Little’’ mean anything to you? Of course it does.

Confidence is a work in progress most places. In this town, it’s a life’s work. The Bengals added a brick in that belief wall Thursday. It wasn’t that they beat a very good team. Miami is OK when Tua Tagovailoa is behind center. He wasn’t Thursday night, for two and a half quarters. The Dolphins are where the Bengals were last year at this time. They’re not ready to step up yet.

The win honored the magic of the Hall of Fame evening by showing what a unified, confident team can achieve together. No one was spectacular. Burrow was an A-plus game manager, spreading the ball around, hitting a couple of deep homeruns, throwing no interceptions. But he wasn’t quite a fantasy player’s dream.

The running game lacked, again, and Zac Taylor insisted on feeding Joe Mixon the ball, especially near the goal line. If the Bengals are to reprise last year this year, they need more than a 2.5-yard average on 24 Mixon carries.

And truthfully, the game was far closer than the 27-15 final. Miami was driving when Vonn Bell intercepted Teddy Bridgewater with three minutes to play in a 5-point game. The Dolphins were at Cincinnati’s 26 when that happened.

But we quibble. The defense was very good. So good, in fact, that Taylor decided to let his defense win or lose the game. Kick a field goal in the 4th quarter from inside Miami’s 1-yard line, when the visitors are leading 15-14?

That’s not exactly Zac-like.

But the D made him look smart. “We’re playing off each other,’’ said Bell, who had two picks. “Great team football.’’

That sounds like some of the ‘21 mojo is returning. Or as Burrow put it, describing the offense, “we’re finding our stride.’’

I asked him what that meant, and how it has come about in the two weeks since 0-2. “Not turning the ball over,’’ he said. “Staying in front of the chains,’’ which is football-speak for putting your offense in 2nd- and 3rd-down and short yardage situations. The playbook opens wide then. Much less is forced.

The O-line was superb Thursday night. The front five looks to have kicked off the rust. The getting-to-know-you phase of the program is ongoing. But Thursday, you couldn’t notice. The Dolphins sacked Burrow once, rarely pressured or hit him. Burrow did his part by mostly keeping his throws short, especially in the first half.

Then, when the Dolphins dared to play more man coverage after intermission, Burrow went for 43 yards to Tyler Boyd and 36 to Ja’Marr Chase. That followed a 59-yard TD bomb to Tee Higgins in the 2nd quarter.

You could suggest the game changed for good with 5:43 left in the first half, when Josh Tupou sacked Tagovailoa, a clean hit fierce enough to cause the Dolphins emerging-star QB to be wheeled off the field on a gurney, head tightly stabilized. To that point, Tua’s quickness and keen ability to play-fake was causing the Bengals some problems.

When Bridgewater replaced Tua, the Bengals jammed the box and dared Bridgewater to beat them via the air. He couldn’t. For the fourth game in a row, the Cincinnati defense faced less-than-stellar QB play. That won’t be the case in Baltimore a week from Sunday.

We’ll save that worry for another day. There is something to be said for mojo and karma, for a town and a team that has lacked both way more often than not. There’s a lot to be said, actually.

The Bengals partied like it was 2021 Thursday night. They looked like their old selves. We mean that in the nicest of ways.