Bengals: Offensive line finds rhythm after early struggles against Jacksonville

The Bengals were struggling to block a stout Jacksonville defensive line in the first half, as Burrow dropped back 15 times and took hits on 33 percent of the time, including two sacks and one that now has him on injured reserve with turf toe that requires surgery.

“I just think that early on in this season, we’ve had a lot of rotation,” Risner said. “I mean, I’ve only been here two weeks, right? Dylan Fairchild is a rookie, so there’s a lot of guys trying to jell and form a whole offensive unit. And I just think the Jacksonville Jaguars threw a lot at us (Sunday), whether that be three-man games, five-man games, walking linebackers up, giant fronts, tough-bug fronts. They were throwing everything at us. We got to just continue to take it one step at a time and get better at it. And we took steps in a lot of areas, but then there’s some areas that we still haven’t.”

Burrow went down with 8:36 left in the second quarter, and Browning finished the game, passing for 241 yards and two touchdowns. He also threw three interceptions but took just one sack on 33 dropbacks with 10 pressures.

Taylor said the breakdowns in protection early came from Jacksonville doing a lot of stuff defensively it didn’t show in the team’s opening win over Carolina. As the Bengals started seeing where the pressure was coming from and how the Jaguars were attacking them, they were able to make corrections.

“There’s corrections we make as the game goes with the running backs and the tight ends and the receivers and the linemen as a whole, so I think as the game goes, there’s always those, okay, here’s how they’re going to play us,” Taylor said. “That was a challenging coordinator (Anthony Campanile). He spent one year in Green Bay. So, is that his identity? He’s played one game against Carolina. They’re up 20-3 at halftime after a lightning delay, so they had control of that game. So, what are we really going to get from these guys? That was an extremely challenging plan to put together that as the game evolved, you had to see, okay, this is maybe more of his identity and how he’s going to attack us.”

Credit: AP

Credit: AP

Taylor felt like Cincinnati did a better job in the second half countering the Jaguars’ looks, and the best sign of that was how the Bengals finished the game. Browning completed 9 of 12 passes, including a checkdown to Drew Sample for 7 yards on third down to get to a fourth-and-3 that he converted with a 13-yard pass to Chase Brown. A defensive pass interference call extended the drive on the next fourth down, but Browning stayed aggressive and eventually got the Bengals to the 1-yard line with four downs to score.

The offensive line was a big part of that, Taylor said, because Browning “wasn’t touched by a player that (the Bengals) couldn’t account for.”

Risner said with a lot of chaos going on around him, Browning surprised him with how calm and confident he was. Cincinnati was never going for the tie, and Browning finished off the 92-yard drive on a quarterback sneak for the winning points.

“He said, ‘We got four plays to get in here,’ and just the confidence, I literally remember being in the huddle being like, ‘Wow. This dude knows we’re gonna score here,’” Risner said. “So hats off to him, for him to be able to step in. Unfortunately, I’ve been on the other side of Jake Browning. I came here with Minnesota two years ago. You guys know what happened there, so I feel good to be on this side of it with Jake.”

Browning led the Bengals to a 27-24 overtime win against the Vikings at Paycor Stadium in 2023, when Risner was in his first of two seasons with Minnesota. Browning will be familiar with the atmosphere at “The Bank” from his own time with the Vikings, though he never had a chance to play a real game there while on the practice squad in 2019 and 2020.

Risner said it will be a big test as Cincinnati tries to improve to 3-0.

“A lot of respect for how Minnesota does things with their fan base, how loud it’s going to get,” Risner said. “It’s a lot like a 12th man that you get in Seattle. It’s one of the loudest stadiums that you’re going to play at, so for us, it’s never about the other team. It’s about us. How can we handle it as Cincinnati Bengals? How can we handle the crowd noise? How can we handle the defense? Got a great defense with Brian Flores down there, defense that I’m familiar with, and a lot of really good football players, and they even brought more on this year, so a true, big test for us this week that we got to step up to the occasion.”

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