Year in Review: Recapping Cincinnati Bengals' 2017 Season
Looking back, the Cincinnati Bengals were one of the most confusing teams of 2017.
Entering the season with what is clearly a talented roster and a coaching staff led by Marvin Lewis without a contract extension after the season, the Bengals seemed like a team ready to prove a six-win year in 2016 was an anomaly, not a budding norm.
Instead, the Bengals faceplanted, suffering miserable setbacks in free agency that trickled into the season. Lewis and his staff struggled and made consistent gaffes in all areas, perhaps highlighted by an inability to get top-10 pick John Ross on the field.
With one game left, the six-win Bengals look lost and headed for an offseason of change.
Ken Zampese Fired
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Bengals owner Mike Brown and his staff don't tend to let people out of contracts early or outright fire a coach.
Yet the Bengals did just that after starting this season 0-2, giving offensive coordinator Ken Zampese the boot after a 20-0 loss to the Baltimore Ravens and a 13-9 defeat at the hands of the Houston Texans.
Over those two games, Andy Dalton didn't throw a touchdown pass and had four interceptions, while the ground game never averaged more than 3.5 yards per carry. Both facets of the attack faltered behind a new-look offensive line feeling the losses of free agents Kevin Zeitler and Andrew Whitworth.
It felt like an overreaction after the Bengals had gone through the entire offseason with Zampese leading the offense. It still does, as the losses up front and odd personnel decisions were a bigger issue than Zampese's schemes.
The A.J. Green Fight
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It's hard to find a low point in the season for a Bengals team featuring so many, though the A.J. Green fight certainly ranks near the top.
The normally quiet Green erupted during a Week 9 game against the Jacksonville Jaguars, slamming opposing defensive back Jalen Ramsey to the ground twice, punching him repeatedly and getting ejected.
Given his past, the NFL fined Green but didn't suspend him. His Bengals went on to lose the game 23-7.
The lasting images of the fight illustrate Green's season well. He's sitting on 1,061 yards and eight touchdowns, but he's getting no help from the weapons around him. Opposing defenses are keeping him locked into one of the worst seasons of his career.
The Offensive Tackle Rotation
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We knew the offensive line reached a disaster point when the coaching staff implemented a rotation at both offensive tackle spots.
Few teams have tried to do something like that successfully, and the attempt was especially odd in Cincinnati. The coaching staff saw it fit to rotate in Andre Smith—a career right tackle serving as a backup—in for Jake Fisher at right tackle and Cedric Ogbuehi on the left side.
It didn't work, of course.
Rotating offensive tackles isn't widespread for a reason. The Bengals instead became a clear example of a couple of league-wide issues:
- Offensive guard is more important than ever, especially in the passing game.
- Teams aren't letting great offensive tackles get away anymore, and the position is harder than usual to draft.
The Bengals had to learn the hard way after losing both Zeitler and Whitworth. The ripple effect isn't done yet, as the team will spend the offseason searching for answers in free agency and the draft.
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Marvin Lewis' Reliance on Veterans
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Lewis is well known for his preferring veterans over what might be more talented younger players.
Case in point: his insistence on using Jeremy Hill this year at running back. Before going to injured reserve, Hill rushed for 116 yards at 3.1 yards per carry. He didn't receive carries often, but when he was on the field, defenses knew exactly what was about to happen.
When asked why Hill kept getting carries over talented rookie Joe Mixon at the start of games and out of halftime, Lewis said it was a "good chance for Mixon to watch and learn," according to Geoff Hobson of Bengals.com.
Alrighty then.
Once Hill was out of the picture, Mixon was effective as an every-down back and actually helped stabilize the offensive line. Once he got hurt, Giovani Bernard put on a show, too.
This reliance on veterans happened elsewhere. Screen passes were designed for Brandon LaFell instead of Ross or Tyler Boyd, while William Jackson III was never allowed to shadow a team's top wideout.
While this is just one facet of the team's failures this year, the theme here is perhaps the most damning.
Another Post-Bye Collapse
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Another staple of the Lewis era?
Collapses out of a bye.
It was as predictable as it gets. The Bengals won two in a row going into a Week 6 bye to sit at a somewhat-respectable 2-3 mark. But in their next game, the team looked lost in a 29-14 whipping at the hands of the Pittsburgh Steelers and lost three of four overall after the break.
Two weeks after the loss to the Steelers, the Bengals had the Jaguars loss before dropping a game against the Tennessee Titans to sit at 3-6.
Granted, the collapse was also representative of the season as a whole. The Bengals are a bad team. Before a Week 16 upset of Detroit, they only had one win over a squad with a winning record: the currently 8-7 Buffalo Bills.
Either way, count it as another strike against the coaching staff.
The Second Pittsburgh Game
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Through it all, Week 13 looked like a turning point for the Bengals.
Well, for one half, anyway.
Second-half collapses have been another staple of the Marvin Lewis era, with none worse in 2017 than a Week 13, 23-20 home loss to the Steelers.
The Bengals fired out of the tunnel and ran up a 17-0 lead. Dalton threw some of the best passes of his career, the offense looked unstoppable and the defense held the Steelers in check.
The Bengals scored three points the rest of the game.
As usual, the scripted offensive plays ran out, and the better coaching staff made the proper halftime adjustments to lead its team to a win. Along the way, Mixon left with a head injury and Vontaze Burfict was carted off the field after a blindside block.
The loss sent the Bengals into a free fall, and they wound up losing two in a row—by 33-7 and 34-7 margins—all while the Steelers kept marching to the postseason.
All Things John Ross
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We may never know the true story with Ross.
Drafted No. 9 out of Washington in 2017, the wideout with a scary injury history suffered two setbacks during the preseason. He finally made his debut in Week 2, where he fumbled on an end-around carry after a defender got his hat on the ball.
Ross then suffered an injury in practice and didn't return until Week 10, where he goofed on a target from Dalton and Lewis openly criticized him. The coaching staff made Ross a healthy scratch for weeks before we later learned, according to Lewis, he had hidden an injury from the staff until the point where he couldn't sleep.
The Bengals sent Ross to injured reserve, resulting in a zero-catch rookie season for a guy pegged as the one who could open up the field for the entire offense, including making life easier for Green.
Next year, Ross will have what essentially amounts to a rookie season again.
The End of an Era?
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This seems like the end of the Marvin Lewis era in Cincinnati.
Such an idea after 15 seasons seemed obvious before the season when Lewis and Brown didn't agree on their usual one-year extension. A December 17 report from ESPN's Adam Schefter confirming Lewis planned to leave the team only accelerated matters, though Lewis predictably denied it.
This has to be the end after a pair of lackluster seasons. Lewis has a strong future ahead of him as a coordinator or in the front office, and fans can both recognize the incredible work he has done for the Bengals and in the community.
This season as a whole was a failure, but it wasn't without its bright spots. The team found breakout stud rookies in guys like Mixon and Carl Lawson. It found a top-20 corner already with WJ3. It beat the tar out of the Cleveland Browns twice and showed solid character, beating Detroit on Christmas Eve to play the spoiler.
But the writing is on the wall. Lewis and his staff had too many mistakes in various areas—regardless of front-office miscues in talent retention—to earn another shot at this next year.
We can't know if change will be a good thing for the Bengals, but this year wasn't good enough.
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