Five Takeaways From the Cincinnati Bengals' Win Over the New Orleans Saints

For the first time this season, the offense was the Bengals unit that lifted this team to victory. Cincinnati scored 30 points this season while the defense gave up 26 points. Prior to this week, the defense’s worst outing was giving up 23 points to the Steelers in Week 1, which included a defensive touchdown. The best performance that the offense managed was 27 points against the Jets and the Dolphins. The Bengals may not have looked like a complete team yesterday with the defense being an issue, but this is the first time on the season that they have looked this good on offense.

The Bengals had two snaps from under center this week. One was a quarterback sneak and the other was a kneel. Now that they've realized they can effectively run the ball from the shotgun, they have no need to get under center in their offense. There seemed to be a schematic change last week when the Bengals' shotgun runs went for 6.3 yards per carry. This week against a tougher run defense, the Bengals averaged 5.4 yards per carry. Joe Mixon’s EPA per run was 0.29, which is nearly double the best season long EPA per run. 

The Bengals have found an extremely effective way to pound the rock and they can do it from the gun. With this newfound gap running game, they can punish teams for playing soft two high defenses against them. Eventually, teams will cave in and get to single high to stop the run and that’s when the Bengals can strike for big plays.

For the majority of the game, the defense got shredded by the Saints' run game. They only forced one punt but it came at the perfect time. Down late in the fourth quarter, on the second to last drive of the game, the defense finally forced a punt and got the ball back for the offense. After the offense quickly scored, the defense stepped up and forced a turnover on downs as the Saints tried to put together a game-winning drive. It was essentially the reverse of what they had done all season. Every week before this one, they played exceptionally well but would give up the game-winning kick. This week they played poorly but put it together when it mattered to prevent a walk-off score for the opposing team.

Burrow had by far his best performance of the season this week. He threw for 300 yards and three touchdowns for the first time this year. He also ran in a touchdown and finished with 25 rushing yards. 

This was his best performance by passer rating (126) and his second best performance by yards per attempt (8.1). Regarding some of the advanced stats, Burrow averaged 0.31 EPA per play which was only topped by the 0.33 EPA per play he posted against the Dolphins. His Completion Percentage Over Expected also hit a season high of 6.4 this week. Finally, when you watched him this week he looked extremely sharp. The first touchdown to Chase was a perfectly placed dart. He was able to make defenders miss in the backfield for big plays either scrambling or extending a play and throwing for the first down as well. He made good decisions, was efficient with the ball, and took what the defense gave him. Hopefully, this continues into next week and we see the return of 2021 Burrow for the rest of the season.

This was another good performance for the Bengals' offensive line. This week they allowed three sacks, but 2 of those came at least partially from the running back in pass protection. They also have been maulers in the run game with back-to-back weeks of over 5 yards per carry for the ball carriers. This offensive line finally looks like the unit that they were expected to be in the off-season. It took some time, but they seem to gel with each other and everyone has knocked the rust off. Now it’s just a matter of consistency and whether or not they can remain relatively healthy.