Tuesday Trenches: Gut Check

If the Bengals are going to salvage something from this season, the work begins now.

The Cincinnati Bengals were so focused on building the league’s most dangerous offense that they forgot the team plays football. Football requires a team to be able to punch and be punched while continuing to move forward. The 2024 Bengals have all the finesse of figure skaters but not much of the toughness needed to win in the NFL.

That’s why they’re 4-7. They can hit hard, but when they get hit back, they fold. Just look at the four teams they’ve defeated this year. The Browns are the best team they’ve beat. The other AFC Team is the worst in the conference, and the two NFC teams they’ve defeated are the worst in that conference.

Offensively, they’ve shown they can hang with any team in a shootout, but that’s about all they’ve been able to do. Scoring 50 points doesn’t do much good if your defense allows 51.

That’s why every good team they’ve played has defeated them, and some of the bad ones, too.

Despite all of this, the road to the playoffs for the Bengals is clear of obstacles. If they win out, they’d by 10-7, and while that may not be enough to win the AFC North, it should be good enough to still play football when Week 18 is over.

However, the Bengals can only come close to pulling this off if they develop a new sense of toughness over their bye week.

The Pittsburgh Steelers are coming to town, and if the Steelers are anything, it’s tough. That’s their Modus Operandi, as if it’s carved into the soul of the team. They will not come to Cincinnati and lay down nicely for a struggling defense to just walk over. They’re going to come to Cincinnati intent on putting their boots on the Bengals’ neck early and never taking it off until the last seconds tick off the clock.

If the Bengals lose on Sunday, we can stop pretending to hold out hope that they can suddenly figure it out. Their loss would mean the best the Bengals could hope for is 9-8, and they’d need some major miracle, and even then it wouldn’t matter.

For the Steelers, this week is an opportunity to further distance themselves from the rest of the division. For the Bengals, it’s a playoff game. And so is the game after that. And the game after that.

The only way the Bengals get to the playoffs is if they earn it, and the only way they earn it is if they suddenly grow the ability over this last week to take a hit and keep on moving. If they have, I’m behind them all the way. If they didn’t, it’s time to start focusing on 2025.

Before the bye, they didn’t have the stomach for an actual fight. Hopefully, they developed some guts over their week off because they’ll need plenty of them to climb out of the hole they dug for themselves.

Relevant Song Lyrics:

Main attraction in a freak side show
Down in the basement where the cobwebs grow
On my last leg just gettin’ by
Halo round my head, too tough to die