Bengals Booth Podcast: Learn To Fly

the Cincinnati Bengals. And here's a quick reminder that you can have the latest edition of this podcast delivered right to your phone, tablet, or computer by subscribing on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, or pod Bean. It's the greatest thing since my job. I've dreamed of broadcasting NFL games for as long as I can remember, and trust me, I never take the privilege of being one of thirty two

NFL team radio voices for granted. Despite Sunday's finish, it was a joy to be back in the Booth with Dave Lapham and our great crew on Sunday and we can't wait to do it again on Thursday night. Now, let's get to this week's three point loss to the Chargers. The highly anticipated start of the Joe Burrow era got off to a bit of a shaky start offensively, as the Bengals had to punt on their first three drives, but the fourth ended with Joe's first NFL touchdown empty

backfield five wides. As Burrow waits for the shotgun snap on second and ten from the Chargers twenty three, he runs a narterback drawn Hopkins with a great native touchdown as Joe burrows first NFL touchdown comes out of twenty three yard run on a beautifully called quarterback draw and

Burrow made the call. He looked at the Chargers defense and audible to the QB draw to give the Bengals a seven nothing lead, But they weren't able to add to the athlete in the first half despite consistently having great field position. Their average drive start on six first half possessions was the thirty seven and a half, and yet they only came away with seven points. Here's Zach Taylor. Yeah,

that's the most disappointed part of the game. As our defensive special teams, we're winning the field position battle for us. We didn't capitalize on In an offense, we had some opportunities again in the third quarter that we didn't hit, and you know, that's just what it comes down to. The Chargers kicked a pair of field goals in the second quarter, and at the half the Bengals led seven six. Burrow was sacked three times and hit six times in the first half, but he wasn't hit at all over

the final two quarters. Here's Jonah Williams. Yeah, I think we settled down. Obviously, you know, we weren't protecting like we need to and like we should have in the first half. You know, obviously they have great rushers, but it really comes down to us just not doing our jobs. And so I think, you know, as a game we're on, we kind of settled in and started to understand, you know,

how to beat this specific front. And you know, it wasn't perfect the whole game, but I did get a little bit better as we got, you know, more comfortable

with better protection. Burrow had two shots at long touchdown passes in a span of three snaps in the third quarter, barely overthrowing John Ross in the back of the end zone from thirty five yards out and then missing a wide open aj Green at the goal line from thirty one yards out still fifty and forty three yard field goals by Randy Bullock allowed the Bengals to take a thirteen sixth lead to the fourth quarter. It didn't last,

as the Chargers pulled even early in the fourth. Virgil Green checks and is a blocking tight end and the pounding running back Joshua Kelly is into the game out of a pistol formation. Second and goal from the five, Taylor gives it to Kelly and he'll run it into the end zone for the Chargers first touchdown of the day. Joshua Kelly's five yard run tied the game, and when the Bengals got the ball back, they promptly caught it up double tight ends on second and ten, the Bengals

at their own twenty five in a tie game. Twelve twenty left in regulation. It's a run to the right, Mixon fumbles the football and the Chargers recover at the Cincinnati twenty four yard line, the first turnover of the day for either team. Denzel Perryman forcing a fumble out of Joe Mixon, who never fumbles the football. Coming into this game, Joe Mixon had carried more than five hundred times without a fumble and he gives it up in

his own territory. In the fourth quarter, the defense held the Chargers to a field goal, but that gave LA a sixteen thirteen lead. Joe Burrow promptly drove the offense to the Chargers twenty three yard line before he made a critical mistake. Burrow drops back to pass again. Here comes bosup Burrow moving to his left, intercepted by Melvin Ingram. There's a penalty flag down as burrows shovel pass intended for Giovanni Bernard was picked off by defensive end Melvin

and Ingram ineligible receiver down the football field. There's Joe Burrow tried to throw it, so that's what the penalty flag is. That's not going to help the Bengals cause it's a turnover. Two turnovers for the Bengals on back to back drives in the fourth quarter, zero turnovers for the Chargers in the game. And that was the bottom line, according to Zach Taylor, killed us. I mean, we you know, we went into the second half and if we're gonna

win the turnover battle, we're gonna win the game. And it certainly didn't work out that way. And the Chargers got him, so hats off to them, but that port's disappointing, and yet the Bengals were still in position to win. Burrow got the ball back at his own eighteen yard line with three o eight to go and no timeouts and executed a near perfect drive, going eight for eleven for seventy yards and throwing what could have been a

dramatic game winning touchdown. Three receivers left AJ Green out to the right, shotgun snap Burrow from the ten yard line, throws for Green, penalty flag down if he AJ comes down with the ball, there's no touchdown. Six pennies for offensive pass in appearance. Oh man, that is a tough call at the top of the route, unbelievable. A J Green they called him. They're they're doing hand to hand combat at the top of the route. If they both have their hands on each other, they call a J

Green for a push off. And it was sold big time by the defensive back. That's Casey Hayward. Here are AJ Green and Joe Burrow on the call. Well, when he h clamping me the whole time coming off the ball, so within five yards, So if you can call that, we can call that. Both ways, but they made the call bang bang plays. At the end of the day, you know, I made too many, too many mistakes to win the game, and we just didn't make enough plays.

So you know, whether that call goes our way or not, a lot of calls are going to go on a lot of different ways throughout the game. And then you know, I made miss miss aj on a deep bombs John on a deep bond and through the interception that that just can't happen. The penalty moved the ball back to the thirteen yard line, and with seven seconds to go, Taylor called on Bullock to attempt a thirty one yard field goal to force overtime. Bullock two for two so

far today. The snap is good, the kick is wide right, he missed it. Oh, the Chargers hold onto the lead with two seconds to go, and Pollock is hurt. Bullock immediately grabbed his lower leg after missing the kick. Yeah, on the last play, for whatever reason, during the kicking motion, my left calf just grabbed real hard. So obviously that's not not an excuse. That's a kick that I make ninety nine times out of one hundred. It was a freak deal. I wish I had a better answer for

what transpired. It seems like just for whatever reason, a calf grabbed and it it affected the play. Instead of a thrilling last second victory, Joe Burrow's debut ended in a three point loss. How did he grate his performance? D Like, I can't, Yeah, D I can't. I mean, I can't miss that one too. Aj. That's you know, high schooler can make the throw and then I can't throw the ball right to Meld and Ingram and give them the ball back when we were in scoring ring.

So um tough way to lose. But his coaches and teammates had a much different opinion, as Zach Taylor and AJ Green marveled at burrows poise under pressure in the final three minutes. That's what we expect, you know. That's he just moves on to the next boy. And I'm sure he's disappointed that you have to turnover. But again, you don't since that at all from him. On the sidelines. He's focused on what he's going to get done. And he went out there and put us some position to

go there and winner tie the game. Is unbelievable. Man, that guy. Don't flinch. Um. I was very the way he handled itself when the last right was unbelievable. No rookie I have seen, you know, the way he handled it after advertually. Um, so you know, we got a special one in Joe. We're gonna be better next week and we're gonna build his thing brick by brick and uh get better each week. Jonah Williams gets the last

word on the bengals first loss. It's tough because you know, in this league, like, there's no you know, you just have to own it. There's no like you can't feel sorry for yourself. You can't sit there and say, oh, well, we should have won, even though you know, I would agree that it was definitely a game we could have won, But at the end of the day, it religious comes down to we didn't execute like we needed to on offense. You know, the defense played well, but there are obviously

things that could have done better. You know. So it's definitely something where you can look and say that we could have won, we should have won, whatever you want to say, but at the end of the day, we just didn't, you know, do what it took to win. Last season began with a one point loss in Seattle, and that's where I began my postgame chat with Dave Lapham. All Right, Lap. For the second straight year, it felt to me like the Bengals lost an opening game that

they should have won. Last year in Seattle, they outplayed the Seahawks, did not come away with a w in this game. Two fourth quarter to fourth quarter turnovers absolutely killed them, and then all that happened in the final ten seconds of the game. Yeah. I mean, when you look back at last year for this the LA Chargers, they were mine seventeen in the turnover department, they had thirty one giveaways none tonight. Tyrod Taylor is known as

a guy that takes care of the football. His mantras just don't screw it up at the quarterback position, and ultimately that won the football game for them. Joe Burrow had a very unusual interception on a backhanded shovel pass on a screen that he was trying to accomplish, and England made a great play. I mean Pro Bowl player made a great play. And Joe Mixon had the fumble a game a short field and a touchdown on that

short field. So yeah, I mean, those those two turnovers, the Bengals are going in to put points on the board and they turn it over and then gave short field for you know, touchdown. That's a minimum of a ten point swing, maybe more. Joe Burrow graded himself a D. Is he too harsh tough grader? You know, I mean, I think he's all about wins and losses. You know. The fact is, I think he's obviously disappointed with himself. Overthrown AJ Green, who beat the linebacker like a drum.

He was opened by ten yards or more and he didn't make that throw. He felt like he overthrew John Ross. I didn't think John found the football. I thought the ball was like right through his hands. It looked like that was a catchable ball. But he said he's going to put the ball in John Ross's chest. A good quarterback does that. He deflects all the credit, takes all the plane, and that's what he's doing. So he understands

that part of it for sure. But in my mind, very positive thing after that, you know, bone headed shovel pass interception. He goes down the field with no timeouts and almost wins the football game. AJ Green catches a touchdown pass that's nullified by offensive pass interference that would have won the football game tells me a lot about Joe Burrow. Compartmentalized. Move on, forget about that, try to make plays, can't do anything about the mistakes. Go make

up for him. If he does that, he's gonna have a long, successful career. Well, let's talk about the final drive. The Bengals got the ball back with three O eight to go, no timeouts at their own eighteen yard line. Burrow went eight for eleven for seventy yards. He also had a seven yard scramble I think on the first play of the drive. Of the three incompletions, one was a spike, one was a kind of a deep ball

for aj Green that was incomplete. The other was a great pass to John Ross that he bobbled going out a bound should have been a nine yard game. So basically, three O eight no time outs to go, He drives down the field, throws a game winning touchdown pass that gets wiped out. But even taking that into consideration, he sets up his kicker for a thirty one yard field goal that you know, ninety eight percent of the time is supposed to fours overtime. Yeah, and then the kicker

ends up injuring his kicking calf hopefully. I'm hoping it's a cramp because during COVID nineteen, where the hell you're going to find a kicker on a short week go to Cleveland. It's gonna be interesting. I mean, if he can't go, that's a tough, tough deal. I mean, very tough deal. What's out there, I really don't know. Hopefully there's something out there, but that's a that's a huge factor, I think in that football game coming up less than

a hundred hours from now. So yeah, I mean Joe Burrow to me is so poker faced, so cool, calm and collected. He is definitely cool hand Joe. I mean nothing. I remember the forty nine players talking about Joe Montana in the huddle in Super Bowl twenty three when he went down for the game winning touchdown drive. He's saying, other guys and hey, look there's John Candy over in the sideline just loosening guys up. You know that's Joe Burrows.

I think he has a lot of Joe Montana makeup to him, which I know is saying a lot and he's getting a lot of praise and he's generational player in all this net. But the guy has something to him. Now he's got some fiber, and I think I think he made a very very favorable impression on his teammates once again offensively, defensively, special teams by what he did on that last drive with no timeouts. Your point about

the kickers really interesting to me. If the injury to Bullock is significant, you've probably got to grab somebody off another team's practice squad and somebody that can get here quickly to start going through the protocol in order to be available on Thursday. You probably will not be able to practice with him. You're just going to have to hope that he can clear protocol because he will already be in the system, so there shouldn't be any problems there.

But it does take a few days when you change teams and then he'll get his first opportunities to practice with your snapper and holder on game day. Maybe unbelievable. I mean, I think COVID nineteen with a short week a Thursday night game, hilacious problem massive. You know, I don't know Kevin Huber lining up from forty three yards out to field goal instead of hold for the field goal that would be That would be just absolutely crazy.

But yeah, it's you know, hopefully, hopefully it's something that Randy Bullock can recover from. Maybe he just landed awkwardly and cramped. I don't know. You know, if he wasn't taking fluids it was human tonight. Maybe he lost more fluids than he thought. Maybe he ended up just cramping. I don't know. One can only hope. But if it is a pull, that it's a very very minor pull. But if you're a place kicker and you have calf pull in your kicking leg, that ain't good. It's not

a good deal. I don't care how minor the pull is. And you know there's a bunch of muscles in the calf. You know, there's big ones, little ones. It's you know, it's it's a it's a complex area to have have an issue if you're trying to, you know, blast kickoffs and field goals. There's no doubt. Let's talk about the O line. You haven't seen any tape yet. We're talking about this game immediately in the press box after broadcasting it. But what do you think about Jonah Williams. Obviously, Joey

Bosa gave Bobby Heart fits. That's why he's making twenty seven million dollars a year as the highest paid defensive player in the NFL, and then Billy Price wound up playing right guard toward the tail end of the game when Xavier sue Filo went out. Yeah, and I thought, I thought, in the second half, the offensive line played much better than they did in the first half. And that's when Billy was, you know, in the football game in the second half. So there wasn't any glaring thing there.

But there's no doubt. I mean when we played the Raiders, how he Long back in the day would go up and down the offensive line and see what everybody had in terms of past protection and then settled in. And if you were the guy who settled in out it was like you were the fish man. So he got to pick which guy he wanted to rush out because he could rush from anywhere. How he Long was the man.

And it looks like Joey Bosa, you know, he can rush from both end positions and looks like you know, they said, you know, give it a feel him out and see where, see where you feel like you might have your best opportunity. And he ended up settling over Bobby Hart more than Jonah Williams for sure. So and honestly, you know, I'd have to look to see how much help he got. But I would have given Bobby Hart more because when I see an offensive lineman what Bobby

did in the first half, duck. When I see an offensive lineman duck his head and take his eyes off targets and everything else, I see a guy that's in a panic mode. That's just you can't pass protect anybody. Duck in your head, bringing your shoulders and everything closer to the defender who's got unbelievable hands and strength and strengthen his hands and everything else. I mean, you just you're you're beating yourself as well as him beating you.

So yeah, that But it seems like from what people were saying after the game in the offensive line, that the Charges came out with a wrinkle with a nuance in their in their defensive front that caused some assignment errors assignment problems for the Bengals offensive line, and they definitely ran the ball better, pass protected better in the second half when they made they made adjustments, I guess they couldn't make them as quickly as they needed to

or wanted to. When they came off after every series in the first half when they had time to get on a board at halftime and make some solid adjustments. It seems like they did that. So I thought the performance was better in the second half for sure. I think the secondary was good. Will Jackson was very solid. Darius Phillips gave up that one deep ball to Mike Williams, but that's a tough matchup for him. Big guy, good downfield, a lot of tackles for von Bell, Jesse Bates made

a couple of plays. Kenzie Alexander was really solid. Yeah, I thought so too. That there was a Hunter Henry. There was an assignment era between the second level and third level linebacker secondary where Hunter Henry gould open like five yards when you know that's the only glaring mental mistake ground and say WHOA, I mean, where is everybody or anybody other than that? I thought. I thought overall it was pretty solid as well, And I thought the

tackling wasn't atrocious, you know. I mean, these are NFL running backs and NFL receivers are a good run after catch. I mean, they get paid a lot of money to make you miss as much as you get paid to tackle him. So you're gonna win some you're gonna lose them. But I didn't think that tackling was like, oh my gosh, I mean, that's just that's horrible. I thought I thought they got people to the ground. How can it improve? Yeah,

it can definitely improve. And I think, you know, in October, it's going to be a heck of a lot better than this here in the middle stages of September. I'll tell you what does bother me about this loss? Though? From a Bengals perspective, I don't think the Chargers are any good. I mean, Tyrod Taylor is somewhere between the twenty eighth and thirty second best starting quarterback in the NFL. He's carved out a long career, God bless him, but he's just not a good enough downfield thrower on a

consistent basis to elevate a team. He is a I won't screw it up guy, and that was enough to get the job done, no doubt. They ran the ball well enough and they played good enough defense. I mean, Bradley didn't turn it over and didn't turn it over. He took care of the football. That's his mantra. You know, I'm I'm gonna make sure that I don't give the other team extra opportunity, these extra possessions. So defense, I'm not going to betray you. You do your thing. I mean,

this is a good defense. Gus Bradley puts together good defense. As you know, last year they were, you know, top five, fourth in the NFL and against the past and scoring pretty good defense and with a rookie quarterback and the offensive line dealing with the adjustments they needed to deal with with the defense or front, it took them a half to kind of fall into a little bit of rhythm.

And you know, while all that was going on, I mean, the Bengals had big average drive start field position advantages in the first half and two fourth down stops and they didn't turn it over in the first half. They had a lead, but it was nowhere near what the

lead should have been. Why Chargers defense charges defense bailed them out and Tyrod Taylor did not betray the defense and put them in a very very bad situation where you know, like what happened with Joe's fumble that short field that the Chargers took advantage and scored their touchdown. I mean they jumped on that opportunity and said we can't let this go by touchdown and uh, you know,

different different ballgame at that point in time. So yeah, I don't think they're you know, let's put it this way. They ain't gonna threaten the Chiefs in the AFC West. I know that. I mean the Kansas City, A City Chiefs are gonna have. You know, that's a different offensive club than what the Chargers face tonight. But yeah, I mean Cleveland gets smoked by Baltimore. I don't know what their injury status is. The Bengal sustained some injuries tonight,

you know, kicker, offensive lineman, defensive lineman. A short week, how many of them they gonna have. How many injuries does Cleveland have? And if they have injuries, where are those injuries? And all that stuff to be determined at this point. A thirty one yard field goal to force over time, you gotta make that freaking kick unbelievable. Any drilled fifty yard or they miss one from fifty. He makes one from fifty. So he miss hit a kickoff and they brought it back out for big field position

and then he miss hit the field goal. He had two miss hits, both of them were critical. One of them points should have been on the board and the other one allowed points to get on the board in a hotly contested football game, whereas otherwise, I mean, Darren Simmons and his group did their thing. You know, the special teams won for the most part that phase of the game in terms of dictating field position. And yeah, it came down to turnovers and miss kicks and the

penalty situation. I mean, the the aj Green thing. Now, did he push off the top of the route. Yeah? Was there a chicken fighting going on earlier? Yeah? Could they have done an offset like they did when Jesse Bates and which receiver was it? Was it Williams, I can't remember who was? They both lowered their head. Keenan Allen, Keenan Allen, Yeah, Keenan Allen and Jesse Bates and they

throw the penalty flag. Then they talk about it, and then they do over an offset do the down over that play which should could have been a touchdown, a game winning touchdown. Okay, I can see not allowing that to be a game winning touchdown, but to penalize the Bengals when you know, I just do it, just offset it, just like they did on the other one and and do over see what happens now maybe now final thought, the Bengals are now oh and nine in one score

games under Zach Taylor. That's amazing. Yeah, game games decided by eight points or less last year on eight and this one, Like you said, the Seattle game could have gotten off to a you know, like every I'm not saying it would have shocked the world, but it would have been like, WHOA, that's a big win the Bengals going to Seattle. And then if they could have pulled this one off today, but oh for two unopeners. We get to do this again though in four days. Looking

forward to it we go. Here's a quick reminder to join Lap and Lance McCalister for Bengals Line on Monday night from six to nine on seven WLW. Then I'll join Lap for the Bengals Game Plan Show on Wednesday night from six to eight on ESPN fifteen thirty. As we look ahead to Thursday night football in Cleveland. That's going to do it for this episode of the Bengals Booth Podcast, brought to you by Prime Sport, the official

hospitality partner of the Cincinnati Bengals. If you haven't done so already, please subscribe and if you have a minute, give it a rating or share a comment that helps more Bengals fans find this podcast. I'm Dan Horde and thank you for listening to the Bengals Booth podcast