Bengals Plagued by Same Old Problems in Crushing Overtime Loss to Broncos

Observers of the Cincinnati Bengals have every right to smack their foreheads and mutter "here we go again."

The Bengals collapsed on Monday Night Football against the Denver Broncos with a first-round bye up for grabs, losing 20-17 and failing to get the extra week of rest the team so desperately needs with Andy Dalton nursing an injury.

This time hurt unlike the others, though.

There simply wasn't a whiff of the Bengals letting the Broncos hang around for most of the first half. At one point, AJ McCarron and the offense had run just over 30 plays and converted 15 first downs behind a solid ground game and darts from the backup quarterback to the receivers on the outside near the chalk.

Or to put it more simply, in numerical form via Jay Morrison of Cox Media Group:

Now, this needs stressing—the Bengals did this without tight end Tyler Eifert, safety George Iloka and Dalton under center. So it's not like anyone can claim these Bengals never stood a chance or the missing pieces were the reason for the loss.

It was just a typical Bengals collapse.

Case in point—Mike Nugent whiffs on a momentum-killing kick, only to make one arguably more difficult later in the game.

No big deal, right? Coming out of the tunnel up 14-3, the game snowballs. The secondary allows a blown coverage and Emmanuel Sanders scores a touchdown. In the final frame, Denver took the lead on a 39-yard C.J. Anderson run in which a defensive lineman, linebacker and defensive back each miss a tackle after the unit once again gets fooled by a predictable cutback.

In overtime, Vontaze Burfict commits a boneheaded personal foul to gift the Broncos with free yards and eventually leads to three points. While a questionable call on the referee's part, Burfict has to understand not only the situation, but his reputation and how that weighs into things. He doesn't.

Then the botched snap to lose the game on the last play, which McCarron took full responsibility for while also revealing he suffered an injury while chatting with ESPN.com's Coley Harvey:

These sorts of things wouldn't happen, and perceptions of the franchise wouldn't exist, love it or hate it, if the coaching staff displayed more consistency. The above note by Morrison isn't just a lack of execution by the players, it's a gross struggle by the coaching staff to make the proper adjustments at halftime and keep the pedal to the floor.

The coaching staff allowed the Bengals to come out of the half up a respectable amount and fall into a borderline complacent approach knowing full well the effects of the Broncos' elevated stadium would eventually take its toll on the defense, which it did on the two game-changing plays.

Understand that Cincinnati's loss had nothing to do with a silly prime-time narrative. The lights weren't too bright, the pressure too crushing. The coaching staff simply didn't uphold its end of the bargain, orchestrating a flawless (timeouts the exception) first half only to let reputation killers such as blown coverages, untimely flags and more ruin it all.

It sounds silly, but there's still time for the Bengals to correct the problematic areas. Cincinnati's well aware, according to Fox 19's Joe Danneman:

A first-round bye remains in play for the Bengals as they head into a season-ending divisional encounter with the Baltimore Ravens.

For the good luck of the mess that is the AFC to matter, though, the Bengals have to not just put Monday's collapse behind them, but actually take something away from it.

In other words, if the Bengals don't want to be the "same old Bengals" anymore, which is sure to be a topic this week, they have to shake free of the miscommunications, flags, coaching collapses and more that define them as of late.

Either way Cincinnati heads to the postseason soon. But if the team's anything like the squad that took the field for the second half in Denver, history will repeat itself again.

Stats courtesy of NFL.com and are accurate as of December 29. All advanced metrics courtesy of Pro Football Focus.