Bengals takeaway from Super Bowl LV? Invest in the offensive line

One big takeaway from the Super Bowl for the Cincinnati Bengals.

[jwplayer aAOfBp0y]

Cincinnati Bengals players and coaches might have had a little deja vu Sunday night while watching the Super Bowl:

The best quarterback in the world can only do so much behind a bad offensive line.

Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs couldn’t even score a touchdown during his team’s 31-9 loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, which is about as rare as it gets.

Mahomes just couldn’t shake free of his poor offensive line play, so much so, the Buccaneers — aided by an expertly called game by coordinator Todd Bowles — hardly blitzed and still got plenty of pressure.

Despite a lack of blitzes, Mahomes was pressured on more than 50 percent of his drop backs, the most ever:

Or to put it another way that will hit a little closer to home:

And it’s the truth. Not only would Mahomes flounder in the same manner often behind Cincinnati’s line, the Bengals have now become the posterboy for terrible offensive line play.

To their credit, the Bengals have already tried to start fixing this problem by swapping out Jim Turner for Frank Pollack. But it was too little, too late as most onlookers can attest, esecpially now that Joe Burrow is entering his second season on a reconstucted knee.

Here’s the other problem — the cost of offenisve linemen across the board just went up, too. Rest assured every non-Super Bowl team was receiving the same message loud and clear Sunday night. Want to compete? Better pay up for a guy like Joe Thuney, even at an escalated price now.

There were other lessons from Sunday night, of course. The Bengals have their franchise passer. They know getting good pressure, having quality boundary play at the corner spots and sure tackling is a must.

But after a season in which an offensive line coach overstayed his welcome, obvious poor roster-building choices in the trenches backfired and a generational quarterback prospect and hometown kid suffered a season-ending injury, Kansas City’s plight while Tom Brady picked up ring No. 7 behind a better offensive line is the highlight the Bengals need to heed.

[listicle id=40656]