Believe it or not, the Cincinnati Bengals taking a loss to the Cleveland Browns over the weekend provided some rather important takeaways.
These lessons are critical primarily because it helps to paint a better picture of offseason needs, which in turn helps shape the talent-acquisition strategy in facets like the draft.
These are a few of those important lessons learned.
Andy Dalton isn’t it
Cincinnati Bengals At Cleveland Browns 12 8 2019
Dalton had a brief spat with good play during the team’s first win of the season. He had several sharp passes and combined with simply winning a game, the performance helped to make his otherwise bad line (22 of 37) forgivable. Dalton’s line wasn’t much different in the loss to the Browns (22 of 38), except he didn’t have some of the sharpness of the prior week. On his latest pick-six of the season, he missed while throwing it too hard at Auden Tate, one of the team’s bigger targets. If nothing else, it was a strong reminder Dalton should be considered nothing more than a potential quality stopgap after taking a rooke in the first round.