The Bengals quarterback with the most touchdowns in his first five NFL starts ever is Jake Browning.
A higher passer rating(99.4) than Greg Cook, the 1969 AFL Rookie of the Year (97.4). 1,515 yards, as opposed to 1,410 yards for long bomber Jeff Blake. Seven touchdowns compared to Boomer Esiason, a member of the Ring of Honor’s five. a higher completion percentage (73.7) than Joe Burrow (65.2), the NFL’s all-time leader in completion percentage.
And keep in mind that during a playoff run, those are the only first five starts to string together in the brutal furnace of November and December. Only Cook (4-1) has won more games in his first five career, with a 3-2 record.
But on Saturday night in Browning, all those stats felt meaningless.
The Steelers, an AFC North opponent, have suffered both losses. Finally, he had his first multiple-interception game on Saturday, winning 34-11 at Acrisure Stadium, with three picks that resulted in 17 points for Pittsburgh.
In the postgame, Browning took a harsh line, calling the turnovers that seems always decide AFC North games “dumb” and “stupid.” (In the Bengals’ inaugural AFC North encounter, a defeat to Cleveland in 2002, they committed three turnovers while the Browns committed none. Similar to Saturday.)
But Zac Taylor, the head coach of the Bengals, believed his quarterback was overly critical of himself. Particularly after the Bengals’ 14-point deficit in the first 15:39 of the game, they were doomed to lose to the Steelers’ pass rush in their stadium.
“Today, nobody lived up to expectations. Since Jake is the quarterback, he is quite aware of it, and I value his willingness to take responsibility for it. However, Taylor felt it wasn’t good enough. Many sections just weren’t strong enough to hold him up. That’s just a part of playing team football, and I believe that winning teams handle situations like that by coming together as a unit and not blaming any one player.
“With their pass rush, we placed them in a difficult position. to dig ourselves a hole and be forced to retreat. It’s not a good strategy to play those guys. Neither did we do enough to help him.”
In the immediate aftermath of the game, Browning—who had thrown three interceptions in his previous four starts—was furious with himself.
“I believe the first two were poor choices. Then it was evidently a bad choice for the third one as well,” Browning suggested. However, with the third one, you have to be a little more forceful as you’re attempting to start something. But we had a wonderful drive on the first one. In the red zone, we come to a stop. Simply toss it out of bounds, earn three points, and continue to press. And I’ll simply keep saying that I need to figure out how to make those three throws incomplete since I never know how it will effect the game’s outcome.
You can expect a physically demanding game with back-and-forth action, with no regard to records. Furthermore, momentum is irrelevant. Furthermore, I don’t think I had the impression that they had secretly observed us or something similar. They gave us the boot. And while I had the ball in my hand, I made some poor choices.”
There was one thing Taylor and his quarterback agreed upon. There can be no first interception. Not a touchdown pass from the Pittsburgh 15 into the end zone at a time where a field goal makes it 7-3.
“The first interception was quite easy. Simply toss it farther beyond the boundary. Not much can be said about that. He is aware of that, said Taylor. “The other two are kind of what happens when you face a good pass rush and you get behind in a game and you start trying to push the ball down the field and guys get underneath in those zones and pick it off.”
The thing about Browning, who is so well-liked here for his intelligence, is that he always seems to pick up new skills. He has also witnessed firsthand how Burrow has amassed a 3-1 advantage against Patrick Mahomes of the Chiefs, Burrow’s opponent in Kansas City on New Year’s Eve of the following week.
“I believe that what I really want is to experience this after a loss. The guy in the arena is who I want to be. Browning declared, “I want to be the guy playing.” “I just realized that. Additionally, being aware that every movie will include certain lessons that are constructive. It goes without saying that when you throw three interceptions, there are less. Though I’m not attempting to overstate my performance, there will be lessons learned from both good and bad plays. and using those to practice so that you can keep improving each week.
“For me, it’s really focused on trying to get some takeaways from this game that can help me improve for the Kansa City game.”
ALBUM NON-SPORTING NEWS: Pro Bowl wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase (shoulder) is still sidelined, and won’t be until the Bengals return to action on Wednesday following their customary Tuesday and Christmas Monday vacation. Despite being inactive, Chase (shoulder) did travel to Pittsburgh.
Taylor remarked, “We’ll take it day-to-day with him.” “What day is it today?Sunday, huh?Wednesday is practice day, so I won’t be heading there just yet.”
In order to play the Chiefs, they are hoping that starting cornerback Cam Taylor-Britt (ankle) can return off injured reserve. He’s good to go to practice.
“We’ll get him back on the field, see what he looks like,” Taylor stated.
SLANTS AND SCREENS: It’s obvious that they intend to select Princeton wide receiver Andrei Iosivas in the sixth round. Chase had a season-high 46 snaps and a career-best four receptions for 36 yards, 20 more than he had in October when he was out on Saturday. In addition, he made a fantastic leaping catch on the sideline, but it was called back.
“Andrei is a man who has adopted the proper strategy. This week will present a completely new challenge, and he’s in there just waiting for an opportunity,” Taylor stated. “They will saturate you with their hands, and the unrestricted access he was receiving will be diminished.” However, he took advantage of the opportunities that presented himself.
“He made a fantastic catch on the sidelines, where I should have just tempo’d it and snapped the ball, but he had the one that kind of fell short on the curl route that we dropped. Though he didn’t quite get down, he caught the ball. He made some good contributions, and we’ll build on them moving forward since he will always play a significant role in our work.”
With three completions of at least 44 yards against the Steelers, the Bengals, who entered the game surrendering a league-high 8.1 yards per pass, won’t be helping.
“I just think overall, those three explosives are really what got us on defense,” Taylor stated. “You take those out, which you can’t, as that resulted in numerous points, and offensive turnovers also contributed to points.” Although there were some good things there, as a team we didn’t perform well enough to win this game.” ..
The two-point conversion on Browning’s shovel pass to running back Joe Mixon on the opening series of the second half brought the score to 24-8 with little analytical work done. But at halftime, I had a great chat with math whiz Sam Francis.
At that point, just aim to make it a two-score game. When you behind 24–8, you start to build confidence. If you can recover and score again, the game changes, and you can now put pressure on them with a one-score advantage of 24–16, according to Taylor. That is what’s on your mind, and our team is confident that we will be able to do it.For a while at least, we believed we would have an opportunity to retake the lead in that particular game.
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