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News broke that Patriots’ cameras directly filmed the Bengals’ sideline during Sunday’s game between the Bengals and Browns in Cleveland.
News broke that Patriots’ cameras directly filmed the Bengals’ sideline during Sunday’s game between the Bengals and Browns in Cleveland.
News broke that Patriots’ cameras directly filmed the Bengals’ sideline during Sunday’s game between the Bengals and Browns in Cleveland.
News broke that Patriots’ cameras directly filmed the Bengals’ sideline during Sunday’s game between the Bengals and Browns in Cleveland.
The Baltimore Ravens can clinch the AFC North in Week 15 with either a win or a Pittsburgh Steelers loss to the Buffalo Bills.
It’s a quick turnaround this week as the Baltimore Ravens host the New York Jets on Thursday night. Though the rest of the AFC North plays on Sunday in Week 15, Baltimore’s early game will help set the tone for the division.
The Ravens can lock up the AFC North this week, guaranteeing them a top-4 seed in the AFC playoff picture. But it’s some other key division games that can pay even bigger dividends for Baltimore in Week 15.
Let’s take a look at how Week 15 shapes up for the AFC North.
The Jets travel to take on the Ravens in a game that features a bunch of former faces. But that’s about where the intrigue ends in this game.
New York is in the beginning stages of a rebuild and it shows both on the field and on the stat sheet. With an ever piling number of injuries to key players, the Jets have gotten kicked while already down, losing to the then lowly 1-11 Bengals in Week 13 before bouncing back to barely edge out the Miami Dolphins last week.
For their part, Baltimore hasn’t exactly looked the same either and some small cracks are starting to appear. While much of that can be attributed to poor weather, the Ravens have shown a few defensive holes that are a little concerning. But few things cure what ails a team like beating up on a bad opponent.
Oddsmakers rightfully view this game as a blowout in waiting and it makes plenty of sense. This is a chance for Baltimore to finetune any issues they’ve seen in the last two weeks and walk into the final two games against division rivals with their confidence surging.
Here are some top takeaways from Cincinnati’s loss to Cleveland.
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.
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.
Tyler Boyd and others commented on how the game went.
Most observers would seem to agree the officiating during the Week 14 game between the Cincinnati Bengals and Cleveland Browns wasn’t the best.
During Cincinnati’s 29-17 loss, officials flagged a few phantom penalties and had a rather large precedent-breaking moment on reviewing, taking an interception away from the Bengals.
Replies from head coach Zac Taylor during the postgame presser say it all:
On whether coaches have been told that pass interference has changed since more calls are being overturned:
“You’re saying it’s unclear? You said it.”
On being animated on WR John Ross III’s hold on HB Joe Mixon’s run:
“Yes.”
The flag on John Ross that wiped out a big gain was clearly a bad call, to which Ross agreed.
“I had him in his chest. The reason why it maybe looked like I was holding was he tried to get away at the last second and (Bengals RB) Joe (Mixon) ran by him already,” Ross said. “No, I did not think it was a hold at all.”
Fellow wideout Tyler Boyd also noted things didn’t feel balanced, yet preached just controlling what they can.
“I felt today nothing was going our way,” Boyd said, according to Geoff Hobson of Bengals.com. “It’s the first time I felt all year the refs were on their side. But like Zac (Taylor) came in and said. You can’t worry about what you can’t control.”
Overall, it was an uncharacteristically bad day for the Bengals in the flags department. They lost 99 yards on eight flags, which paired with a three of 12 mark on third downs and six points in the second half was clearly a recipe for disaster. Which isn’t to say these flags were all on officials by any means, as a lapse in judgment from Joe Mixon resulted in a personal foul, for example.
But the Bengals were measured in their commentary here. Most would probably agree the officiating at key moments Sunday wasn’t in line with the usual quality. But the overall theme coming out of the loss is one of accepting discipline and execution woes and demanding better as the season winds down.
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Winners, losers coming out of Bengals-Browns in Week 14.
The Cincinnati Bengals fell to 1-12 on the season during Sunday’s 27-19 loss to the Cleveland Browns.
Outside of a strong game from Joe Mixon, the Bengals looked lost offensively, converting three of 12 third-down attempts and scoring six points in the second half.
Coming out of the loss, here’s a quick look at some winners and losers, ranging from Mixon to John Ross and more.
Cincinnati Bengals Vs Tampa Bay Buccaneers Oct 28
Boyd had been all over the place since the bye, sometimes getting good usage, other times just disappearing outright. Sunday was more of the former, with the No. 1 wideout getting six targets and turning it into five catches for 75 yards. It certainly didn’t hurt that John Ross was back on the field to space things out.
Baker Mayfield later apologized for calling out Cleveland’s trainers.
Baker Mayfield and the Cleveland Browns entered the season with so much hype… only to look very much like the same old Cleveland Browns for much of the season.
The main reason why those expectations were so high, of course, is that they acquired Odell Beckham Jr. in a trade with the New York Giants. The star wide receiver was supposed to form and deadly combo with Mayfield but instead OBJ has had the worst season of his career and the Browns are likely going to miss the playoffs.
After Sunday’s win over the Bengals, Mayfield called out the Browns training staff, saying they didn’t handle OBJ’s groin injury correctly in the preseason, an injury that has lingered during the season and has slowed down OBJ. Mayfield said they should have performed surgery, which would have probably led to the WR missing the first few games of the season.
Here’s Mayfield’s postgame comments:
"It wasn't handled the right way in our training room. It is what it is."
Baker Mayfield spoke candidly about OBJ's lingering injury. pic.twitter.com/GhO4BI8E0Z
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) December 8, 2019
Now that’s not something you normally hear a player say in public, in front of the media. Mayfield, however, has never been one to shy away from sharing his feelings on things.
He later apologized for calling out the trainers:
Those people within our building know my intentions and where I am coming from. I truly believe that and I apologize to those that don’t deserve the backlash…. today was a good team win. On to the next one.
— Baker Mayfield (@bakermayfield) December 8, 2019
But yeah, Mayfield and OBJ have been miserable together this year.
Notes and game balls coming out of Sunday’s AFC North game.
The Cincinnati Bengals had a brief week to celebrate a single win before dropping Sunday’s game to the Cleveland Browns in 27-19 fashion.
In Cleveland, Zac Taylor’s offense was a complete mess besides a splendid effort from Joe Mixon. The unit couldn’t convert on third downs or near the goal line and it cost the team the game outright.
Here’s a look at some notable stats, game balls and quick notes.
…Browns running back Kareem Hunt scored early in the third quarter to make it 21-13. The Bengals simply hadn’t shown enough offensively to inspire confidence the unit could make a play or two and win it.
— First drive fizzles out again after a nice throw from Andy Dalton and great run by Joe Mixon. Settling for field goals, even against the Browns, wasn’t going to win it though. That provided a good tale of things to come.
— Nick Vigil with a huge interception on Cleveland’s first drive. Oddly enough, he’s been superb since the team cut Preston Brown, strange as it sounds.
— Why do bad teams stay bad? First-quarter: Joe Mixon carries the ball, gets a personal foul for getting too aggressive toward an opponent. Third-and-long, Dalton fires a fastball inaccurately at Auden Tate that goes back for a touchdown. Fans will hear about this one all week.
— Jessie Bates grabbed Cincinnati’s second turnover of the day after a pass went off the hands of a Browns wideout. Like Vigil, he’s been flying around and making big plays lately.
— Despite chunk yardage at points, by halftime Bengals had completed one third down attempt on seven tries. By the end of the game it was three of 12.
— Laughable effort on a 50-plus yard run for the Browns as at least three Bengals missed tackles on the carrier. The defense had been mostly fine to that point but it’s exactly what a team doesn’t want to see out of the halftime tunnel.
— Odd play calls from Zac Taylor and Co. on two consecutive trips into the redzone, highlighted by a strange quarterback draw on a fourth down to give the ball back. Aggressiveness is good — the play-calling hasn’t been. At the time, that brought the running tally to one touchdown on five red zone trips.
— Bengals get decimated by a flag late in the game. Jessie Bates picked off a pass intended for Odell Beckham that could’ve swung the contest given the field position. Officials decided to overrule the play because they found DPI by William Jackson on review. Given how little this has happened leaguewide, if at all, it was alarming, to say the least. The call was right, the precedent for it, not so much.
3-12, 1-5: Let’s double up. The first number is the team’s conversion rate on the third down, the second is conversion rate in the red zone for touchdowns. When it mattered, the play calls weren’t great and neither was the execution.
Mixon has been on fire for weeks and this seems like the apex. He put up an almost silly 146 yards on 23 carries with a score, good for an average of 6.3. Oddly, he wasn’t always involved in the red zone, but Mixon made the best effort to put the entire team on his back that he could.
Up next: The Bengals return home for what has always looked like one of their toughest games of the year — a visit from Tom Brady and the New England Patriots.
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Former New York Giants WR Odell Beckham has reportedly been telling coaches and players he wants out of Cleveland.
Over time, former New York Giants wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. became known as someone who was never happy, always wanted change and consistently believed the grass was greener on the other side.
That’s not a knock on Beckham, who was a tremendous teammate and fierce competitor who craved winning more than oxygen. Rather, it’s a reflection on the instant gratification era in which we currently reside.
After several losing seasons in blue, Beckham became frustrated with the situation in New York and passive-aggressively voiced those concerns. As a result, he was traded to the Cleveland Browns this past offseason — a trade he pretended came as a surprise.
After letting the reality of the trade sink in, Beckham bought into Cleveland’s championship dreams and expressed a belief that being reunited with friend Jarvis Landy and inheriting Baker Mayfield as his quarterback would lead to his Super Bowl prayers being answered.
They weren’t.
Now mired in a career-worst season and facing an offseason surgery for a sports hernia, Beckham appears done with Cleveland and has reportedly been telling both opposing coaches and players to free him from the misery.
Inside Scoop: Jay Glazer on the future of Cleveland Browns WR Odell Beckham Jr 😮 pic.twitter.com/B1KlOgUy80
— René Bugner (@RNBWCV) December 8, 2019
Earlier this week, Beckham was coy when asked about his future with the Browns and provided the typical maybe/maybe not response most Giants fans had become accustomed to.
“I couldn’t tell you what’s going to happen. I couldn’t sit here and tell you whether I’m going to be here, want to be here, don’t want to be here. This is exactly where I’m at now, and I wouldn’t rather be anywhere else. God has a plan, and in the offseason, everything will figure itself out,” Beckham said, via Browns Wire.
“I feel like I’ve been here before, asking questions about the next team while I’m on a team already. That’s just something that I’m just going to tune out right now. Catch me in the offseason and we’ll see what happens.”
Beckham had been there before. He later returned to another familiar well.
Ok😑😑😑… I NEVER said I was not happy in Cleveland, just like everyone else I’m hopeful for better results. Period. Next story plzz 😭 …
— Odell Beckham Jr (@obj) December 6, 2019
When Giants wished Browns fans “good luck” following the Beckham trade, those in Cleveland took it as an insult or sour grapes. Up and possibly until his comments earlier this week, they may have still believed that. Now? Not so much.
Having fun yet, Cleveland?
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Can the Bengals upset the Browns?
For the first time since the 2019 season started back in September, the Cincinnati Bengals enter a game looking to establish a winning streak.
The Bengals won their first game of the season during their 12th attempt after solidifying the worst start in franchise history, besting the visiting New York Jets.
Now the Andy Dalton-led Bengals — back from a three-game benching — travel a short distance to take on the Cleveland Browns in the first of two Battle of Ohio AFC North matchups.
The Bengals will continue to hope two budding strengths can carry them to victory — the running game and pass rush. After some shifts in approach up front, Joe Mixon has come alive over the last four games, securing his first rushing score and 100-yard performance in the process.
Defensively, Carlos Dunlap finally seems fully healthy and put up a three-sack performance against the Jets. The return and efficiency of Carl Lawson as a pressure creator has helped boost the entire defense.
But coming out of that win, there’s also a sense the Jets just couldn’t get out of their own way.
Lucky for the Bengals — that seems to be one of the themes surrounding Cleveland’s season.
The much-hyped Browns are 5-7 and a week ago ruined a three-game streak with a loss to Pittsburgh. Baker Mayfield, completing just 60 percent of his passes with one more touchdown than interception, hurt his hand on a helmet and is also dealing with an apparent rib injury.
Regardless of who is to blame, the Browns only average 20.5 points per game. That’s with sporadic, big outbursts, including dropping 40 on Baltimore randomly.
Cliche as it might sound, this one feels like a flip of the coin. On paper, the Bengals should be able to run the ball well against one of the league’s worst run-defense units. But the Bengals boast the league’s outright worst, so the Browns could cruise in this area too.
Gut feeling? These Bengals have never stopped fighting all season and now that they have a taste of winning with a rejuvenated Dalton back under center, they keep it rolling. The Browns have talent, but that hasn’t been the problem all season. Look for Mixon to have a day.
Prediction: Bengals 24, Browns 21
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