Who Dey
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- Mar 18, 2019
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In Miami, they’re losing because they planned to. In Cincinnati, it has been more organic, which perhaps makes it more frustrating.
Wide receiver Tyler Boyd summed up those frustrations from last night’s 27-3 loss to the Steelers, which dropped them to 0-4.
“We got embarrassed,” Boyd said, via Ben Baby of ESPN.com. “Straight like that. It sucks.”
More or less, yes.
The Bengals have been competitive in other games, but they weren’t last night. Rookie coach Zac Taylor tried to shoulder as much blame as possible, because that’s what coaches do.
“We didn’t expect to be an 0-4 team, but that’s what we are right now,” Taylor said. “There’s no excuses we can make. . . .
“To be quite honest, it starts with me. I’ve got to make sure the standard is higher than what it is right now because I haven’t done a good enough job and there’s certainly things that I’ve got to improve on.”
Of course, he can’t fix the injury problems, which have taken away their best player (A.J. Green) and made a mess of their offensive line (which allowed eight sacks of Andy Dalton last night).
While those are shorter-term issues, there’s a more troubling trend there. The Bengals have lost 13 of their last 15 and are rapidly losing hope this year.
Suddenly, the decade-plus of stultifying mediocrity under former coach Marvin Lewis doesn’t seem like such a bad deal any more.