INGLEWOOD, Calif. -- The Bengals nearly pulled of the greatest road comeback in franchise history but let victory slip through their hands several times in the final three minutes, dropping a 34-27 loss to the Los Angeles Chargers Sunday night at SoFi Stadium. Evan McPherson missed a pair of field goals and Mike Hilton had a potential pick-6 slip through his hands with under two minutes remaining. Instead the Bengals allowed Justin Herbert to march 84 yards in 27 seconds, capped off by J.K. Dobbins 29-yard TD run with 18 seconds remaining. Trags and Skinny have the postgame locker reaction from the Bengals who fall to 4-7.
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00:00Hey everybody, welcome to the Jungle War Skinny Bengals postgame pod from here in Englewood,
00:07California, SoFi Stadium. Stop me if you've heard this before, but the Bengals can't close
00:13out their opponent. They fall with 18 seconds to go on a J.K. Robbins 29-yard run right through the
00:21heart of the Bengals' defense. They fall 34-27, falling to 4-7 on the season. Just about all
00:29hope is gone for the Bengals to make a playoff push now. They'd probably, or they would have to
00:35finish out the season winning the remainder of their games, and that would mean going
00:41six straight wins to finish 10-7. That would match their mark from 2021. But right now,
00:47Skinny, I can't imagine the Bengals putting together six straight wins. I can't imagine
00:53them putting together two or three straight wins given how inconsistent they've been all year
00:59in trying to finish out these close games. It's weird. I mean, there's not a lot of
01:05explanation for it. I mean, some of it is it's just not a very good roster, certainly on the
01:09defensive side of the ball. That leads to those issues. But, you know, the defense has played
01:14in stretches the last two weeks, Mike. Baltimore game, you know, the four of the first five series
01:19end in punts. The second half of this game, they go, the Chargers go punt, field goal, punt,
01:24fumble, punt, punt, punt. They had all of four first downs going into the last drive.
01:30You know, they go 84 yards and four plays in 27 seconds to score the game-winning touchdown.
01:35How do you explain that? I mean, honestly, how do you explain it?
01:40They're inconsistent, Skinny. And we have to start this game, this podcast, if we're talking defense,
01:47talking about the inability of the defense to get off the field in the first half. They allowed
01:5317 first downs. They fell behind 24-6. They allowed Los Angeles to score on each of their
02:00first four possessions, the first three being touchdowns before a field goal late in the first
02:06half to make it 24-6. And Cam Taylor-Britt has completely fallen off a cliff. He hit rock bottom
02:14here tonight in Los Angeles, in Englewood, getting pulled after allowing, or we think he allowed,
02:22by playing man coverage in a zone concept. Lou Anarumo and Zach Taylor pulled him off the field
02:29in favor of D.J., or not D.J. Turner, but in favor of Josh Newton. And when you're a third-year player
02:39in the National Football League, and you get pulled for a rookie who's had only a handful of
02:44snaps this year, it kind of speaks volumes to where your game is at if you're Cam Taylor-Britt.
02:51Yeah, especially in what was a complete must-win, because I still think they could go 5-1 and make
02:56the playoffs, but neither here nor there. This was a big game, period, end of story.
02:59And they rolled the dice and said, you know what? Your play is not satisfactory enough,
03:02and we're just going to go with a rookie, and the rest of what takes place be damned.
03:06Actually, he played pretty well, Josh Newton did. He had some moments that were rough,
03:09but he had some really good moments too. This whole speech last week, this whole conversation
03:17about Cam Taylor-Britt, I talked to Mike Hilton one day, I think you guys as another group talked
03:22to him the next day, and he kind of said the same thing to both of us, which is, hey guys,
03:27go through slumps. He's got a chance to get himself right. He's been doing all the things
03:31we need him to do. Leonarudo talked about corners can go into slumps, and that just as soon as
03:36you're in a slump, you can get out of it with just proper technique and doing things the right way.
03:40Cam didn't want to talk this week, because I truly think he wanted to
03:43focus on making sure things were right. And through all of that, he gets benched
03:49because of poor play, because of doing something the wrong way. And that's disturbing,
03:55because it's not just the short term. I mean, when he played last year in stretches,
04:00you thought this guy was a long-term solution at corner. You hate to think that
04:04he's not only not a short-term solution, but he's not a long-term solution either.
04:08Well, and Jermaine Pratt and TV cameras captured the Bengals linebacker going over to him and
04:14having an animated conversation on the sideline. We talked to Jermaine Pratt after the AIM Cam
04:19Taylor-Britt was not available, and Jermaine was saying to him, look, we need you to be more
04:25consistent. We need you to be better. We need you to be in the right position. When we communicate
04:31what the defense is, you've got to know what defense you're in. And obviously that's the
04:37situation that happened on that second touchdown. That was the Will Disley, the tight end,
04:44the 29-yard touchdown pass from Justin Herbert. Disley was pretty much, I'm sorry,
04:51let me correct that. That was the Quentin Johnston, 26-yard pass. Sorry about that.
04:58That was the second touchdown pass from Justin Herbert. And Johnston just floated in all by
05:04himself in behind the Bengals secondary, and he should never have been that wide open, Skinny,
05:11as Justin Herbert was scrambling off to his right.
05:15Yeah, I'm not so sure. Also, wasn't the play two plays before, which was a pass play to Disley,
05:19where it looked like the cam went the wrong way, and he was playing a coverage that others
05:22weren't playing. So I think you're partially right that it wasn't the touchdown to Disley.
05:26It was another pass on that same drive a couple of plays earlier. But the bottom line was,
05:30he got yanked. He got yanked for whatever reason. We're going to talk to Lou Anna Romo on Tuesday,
05:34and maybe we'll find out what that reason is, and if they can figure out a way to salvage him.
05:38Because again, I'm not just talking about for this season, right? You don't need to go into
05:43next season going, we've got to remake the safety room. We need another corner. We need this. I
05:47mean, you hope that some of these young guys are solutions for the longer term moving forward. And
05:54man, when he's getting benched in a game like this in favor of a rookie, it shows you where
05:58they're at with this guy at the moment. All right, what did you make of Trey Hendrickson's
06:03personal foul that he picked up, which I think was debatable, certainly. And he really kind of
06:12lost his cool there. He ripped off his helmet. Then later on, on the same drive, he rips off
06:18his helmet after they allow a third down conversion, and he goes over to the sideline.
06:23Zach Taylor tries to calm him down, it appeared, and speak some sense. And Trey Hendrickson just
06:30smacked his hand out of the way and kept going about his—he didn't want to be talked to.
06:35I talked to Trey Hendrickson after the game about this, and he said, look, I'm an animated,
06:42very intense competitor. I love Zach Taylor to death. That wasn't about disrespecting
06:48Zach Taylor. I am a defensive player in the National Football League, and guys are going
06:53to react like that. And that was kind of his way of, you know, writing it off as not a big deal,
06:59not trying to make a mountain out of a molehill, I think. But what did you—how did you interpret
07:06what you saw on the sideline? I think there's frustration from everybody, and that's what
07:10happens when you lose. And it's all nice to say, well, what a harmonious locker room we have,
07:16and these guys are all playing for each other. That works when things are winning. When things
07:20don't go right, that's when you really see, you know, what are these guys about? I do think
07:23they're about hard work. I do think that they hate losing. I think that's a good sign. You know,
07:28some people would not take Jermaine Pratt yelling at a teammate as a good—I think that's a good
07:32sign. That's holding a guy accountable, maybe in too public of a fashion or a manner, but I don't
07:37mind it. And so some of that stuff doesn't bother me at all, but some of it also shows you it's
07:43starting to pile up. It's—when we get to it a little bit, it's Jamar Chase kind of calling out
07:48Zach Taylor. It's Trey Hendrickson, what he did on the sideline. It's Jermaine Pratt animatedly
07:52talking to Cam Taylor Britt. It's Joe Burrow slowly walking off the field, dejected in the
07:57first half after a drive didn't work. It's all of those things starting to add up, and that's
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09:23Well, okay, you segue to that. Let's get right to that, Skinny, and that is what Jamar Chase
09:29and T. Higgins had to say after this game. T. Higgins always wears a smile. Don't you notice
09:35that in the locker room? He always has a pleasant disposition, but sometimes even with a pleasant
09:41disposition, there are daggers that he throws in there with a definitive purpose, and what T. Higgins
09:50said after this game on Sunday night here in L.A. was that, we can't finish. We've been saying it
09:57all year. We cannot finish. Finish the effing game, and he said, again, he said it with a
10:03smile on his face, but clearly he's frustrated. Jamar Chase, he had a much more stoic look on
10:09his face, a very serious, frustrated, agitated even look on his face. I said, Jamar, are you
10:17sick and tired of answering the same old questions, and then I followed that up with,
10:21well, you've got to win to stop these questions from being asked. You realize that, and to your
10:28point, what Jamar said about why this team can't finish, he said, I don't know. I'm just a player
10:39on the football field. Ask Zach. Ask the coaches. I don't call the plays. I mean, that's pretty
10:45damning. When you say something like that, he's pretty much putting it at the feet of the coaching
10:51staff. Yeah, and that's where there's so many fingers of blame to go around, and maybe some of
10:57it is play calling. When you hear players talk about it, maybe it is. Maybe it's the personnel
11:02on defense. Maybe it's always a little bit of something when you're just a little bit away,
11:08and that's where this is mounted. I mean, you can call it maybe bad luck, right? You lose all
11:13these one-possession games. They're one-in-five and one-possession games. The low and win came
11:17against... You are what you are. But, Mike, the other point that I was going to say is you're
11:22also 0-6 against teams above 500. That's not luck in all six of those games, right? I mean,
11:27that just means you aren't quite good. I think Joe even said it after the game that we're just
11:31not quite good enough. We don't have a big margin for error, and they don't. I think that's why
11:36they're losing all these close games is they just aren't good enough. Your reaction, because it
11:41caught my eye, your reaction when the Bengals, I believe, were down 7-3. They're driving into
11:48the red zone, in the lower red zone, inside the 10-yard line, and it was Jamar Chase, Tee Higgins,
11:57and Jermaine Burton on the field, and the ball goes to Jermaine Burton. I don't know. When you
12:03need a touchdown, I'm not looking at Jermaine Burton to get his second hand free, which he
12:10needed to do and did not, and maybe he was being held, but on replay, I just thought that Jermaine
12:18couldn't make the play, the physical play, get free, and catch the ball with two hands, whereas
12:25when you have Jamar Chase or Tee Higgins on the field, the ball has to go to the direction of
12:30those two players when you need a six. Yeah, you want to run a first down go
12:35route for Jermaine Burton or an eight-yard out route to get his confidence going? Absolutely,
12:39but not on third and two, third and goal, whatever it was, third and goal down there,
12:42third and two down there, trying to convert a first down in the low red zone.
12:47He hasn't proven anything, and I think even in this game, there were a lot of times where you're
12:50like, OK, that was a hard catch. It's a contested catch, but I watched Tee make that catch. I watched
12:55Jamar make that catch. He had a deep ball that he just looked like he didn't track very well,
13:00and so I know he's doing things. The coaching staff, we talked to Dan Pitcher last week,
13:04who said he's doing better things. He's doing things to earn more snaps, and maybe that's
13:08the truth, but what I see is a guy who honestly, to this point, hasn't shown me he's a very good
13:13receiver other than when he gets wide open on a goal ball, when he can catch it, when he can
13:16track it, because he can't track it very well either. OK, I don't know if you heard all of
13:21Joe Burrows' skinny. I know you were making your way down. Oh, yeah, yep. He was as dejected as
13:27I've ever heard him. I know Kelsey Conway asked, is this the most frustrating year of your career,
13:32and he said, I'm paraphrasing here, but what do you think, and he said yes. Then she said why,
13:41and then he said, well, I think it's pretty self-explanatory, was the actual quote,
13:46and I asked Burrows, it seems like you don't have the answers. Do you have any reason why
13:55you don't have the answers, and he just shrugged and said, nope, I don't, and to me, that's
14:00troubling. When you're a quarterback, the icon, the centerpiece of your franchise looks lost,
14:08bewildered, frustrated. I don't want to say he's given up hope, but he just looks,
14:15resigned is the right word. He looks resigned to this happening week after week after week,
14:20even though the battle was there. Burrows is an incredible competitor. He showed that certainly
14:25coming back from 27 to six, making it 27-27, and I think he's to be commended for that,
14:33but the body language of Joe Burrows tonight stuck out to me in that regard post-game.
14:38I mean, Mike, those were another 350-odd yards. Those were three more touchdowns. Yes,
14:43did he miss some throws? Sure. I mean, no quarterback's perfect, but you're literally
14:47asking this guy in that offense to a degree- To play perfect.
14:50To play perfect, and that's impossible in this league to do. You're doing enough. I mean,
14:54you scored more points against the Chargers, and again, some of that skewed a little bit.
14:58This was the best quarterback and best offense that they had faced all year. They hadn't faced
15:01the top 10 quarterback and passer rating until today, so some of their numbers are skewed a
15:05little bit, but I think it's still a very good defensive unit. You scored more points than
15:09anybody scored on them all year. It wasn't enough. You scored 34 on Baltimore. It wasn't enough.
15:14You scored 38 on Baltimore. It wasn't enough. You scored 33 on Philadelphia. It wasn't enough.
15:19That's a huge ask in this league. Well, and the Chargers had not allowed
15:2620 points, but one time this year, and it was exactly 20 points, and so the Bengals come in
15:32here, score three touchdowns in the third quarter, bang, bang, bang, or two in the third quarter,
15:38one in the fourth quarter to tie it, and you're thinking, wow, they're going to pull off what
15:44would be the biggest road comeback in franchise history, and they can't get it done, and I want
15:51to go back to the defense for just a second, Skinny, and that is the optics of this team
15:57not bringing in Xavier Howard. It looks horrible, and they're going to say it was financially
16:06driven, the reason for not bringing him in. What could it have cost you? What could it
16:11have cost you that was going to break the bank? I don't know. We're not going to get the answer
16:16to that because the team is obviously not going to speak on that, but the reason Bengal fans are
16:21furious is it appears the Bengals are not doing everything to win. They're not doing everything
16:28to support Joe Burrow in trying to win a Super Bowl. That's why the Bengal fans are furious,
16:34and I do wonder if ownership and the front office fully appreciate that.
16:40No, I think what's happened, Mike, and this has happened before, where you've had a malaise in
16:45the late 70s. Remember, you had those really good teams that you and I grew up with, those
16:48teams in the mid-70s that were really good and unfortunately had to fight the Steelers,
16:51and then came the malaise eventually when those teams kind of fell apart because of age and
16:55poor drafts and all the things that come with falling apart, and then they got back to the
16:59Super Bowl, and you caught that euphoria for three or four years, and everything was great,
17:03and you had a nice little run there with Boomer for a while, right? The fans were all in for a
17:07decade, and then I think you just kind of sat on your hands and went, we're good because the fans
17:11are back, and then that kind of fell apart, and you had the Super Bowl team obviously, then that
17:15fell apart, and for decades it got to a bad part. Then Marvin comes in, brings some stability,
17:20brings some playoffs, the fans are back enough, and that falls apart, kind of fell apart the
17:24first couple years under Zach because those teams are bad. Then you go to the Super Bowl again,
17:27and we're back, and now it's all about the fan experience. You know what the fan cares about?
17:32They don't care about your white outs, green outs, brown outs, black outs, Susie outs, Susie ins,
17:36whatever you want to do with it. They don't. Do you know what they care about? They care about
17:40winning. That's what they care about. Mike Petraglia-Trags here, host of the
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19:06GameTime today. What time is it? GameTime. Skinny, I'll take it a step further. They compare about,
19:13they care about being competitive for Super Bowls. You don't have to win every single year. You don't
19:18have to win a Super Bowl every single year, but with Joe Burrow as your quarterback for a window
19:23of let's call it 10 years, you should be in the conversation like the Chiefs, like the Bulls with
19:29Josh Allen, and they're not. They're not at that level. They don't have a competitive defense,
19:34and that's why Bengals fans are quick to jump ship right now because people see what's happening
19:41with this defense, and it's regressing very severely. Yeah, I mean, Josh Allen had his
19:47best wide receiver. Granted, they had their differences, he and Stephon Diggs, but they
19:52decided they could move on because they were going to have a roster around on the other side of the
19:55ball that was going to be good. Kansas City let Tyree kill and kind of let the offense not go to
20:00waste because it's certainly not going to waste, but they restructured it because at the same time
20:03they were restructuring and rebuilding their defense through good drafts, good signings,
20:07good retention of keeping Chris Jones. This team doesn't do that, and so I do think it feels like
20:13they've gotten, I don't want to say lucky a couple of times, but it feels like lucky a couple
20:18of times in their franchise history, and then you said, we're good, the fans are back, we don't have
20:23to do anything else. Yes, you do. If you're a good franchise, you want to continue to do something
20:28else, and when you don't and when it doesn't work, someone who is making those decisions must pay the
20:34price, and unfortunately that guy should be Duke Tobin at the moment who should pay the price.
20:39His drafts have sucked, his signings have sucked, his roster building has sucked,
20:42and somebody has to pay the price and they won't. All right, we haven't talked about Evan McPherson,
20:47and we have to. We sure do. Missed field goals in the final four and a half minutes
20:54of 48 yards and 51 yards. They were struck well, they just didn't go through the uprights. The
21:00snaps looked good, the holds were good, solid, he missed them, and he did not speak to the media
21:06after the game, and so we don't know what he's feeling, what happened. We think that
21:14the snaps and the hold were good, but we haven't heard anything from Evan, and I give
21:21him grace because he wants to just, he doesn't want to address it because he needs to process it.
21:27A couple of the Bengal players, when asked about Evan McPherson, said the same thing, let Evan
21:32process it, but I will say this about Jamar. Jamar, quote, again, paraphrasing here to a degree,
21:39skinny, that's why he gets paid the big bucks, is what Jamar said. We pay him that money
21:46to make those kicks, and tonight he didn't. Yeah, I mean, he was good with us a couple of Mondays ago.
21:51The last time we talked to Evan, he'd come off of a weekend of missing a couple of kicks,
21:56missing a key kick, and I thought he was good. I thought he, it felt like he kind of talked himself
22:01back into, you know, I'm going to be okay, this will work itself out, and I kind of believe that too,
22:06but man, I think it's a lot like the golf game, right? When you get the dreaded you-know-whats,
22:10and I'm not going to say the word because no one wants to hear that word. When you get them,
22:14it's hard to get out. I mean, Justin Tucker's in the same scenario. Justin Tucker's arguably the
22:18greatest kicker in NFL history, and right now he's going through it, and it's not like he
22:24suddenly forgot to kick. He's just going through it, and you know, both of Evan's kicks tonight,
22:28he tugged just a little bit, and they both kind of sailed a little bit wide left, and
22:32he's in it right now, and you know, I don't know how you get out of it other than you just keep
22:37go kicking, but to that point, this is a league of kickers who make, and if you don't make,
22:43eventually they're going to have to say, I got to go somewhere else with you, man.
22:46Well, I think James Ruppin asked a very interesting question afterwards. When you
22:51lose confidence in a guy like Cam Taylor-Britt, there's somebody you can go to on the bench,
22:56and that's what the Bengals did here tonight in Los Angeles. They obviously went with the
23:01rookie in Josh Newton. With Evan McPherson, you can't do that, and he asked Zach about that,
23:06and he said, we still have full confidence in Evan McPherson. He's got to say that skinny,
23:12right? I mean, there's nothing else he can say. Just like Zach Taylor has to say,
23:18there's no other group of guys that I want to be with more than this group. I still believe in
23:23them. Jamar Chase said that, as a matter of fact, after the game as well. We have the group of guys
23:28in this locker room that we believe in. Well, you may believe in them, but they're not producing.
23:34That's correct, and I don't know why you believe in the defense whatsoever. It just consistently
23:39has shown that it's just not good enough, and then it takes superhuman efforts on the offense.
23:44I think the frustration is starting to boil over for them, and then they get mad that, hey,
23:48you weren't maybe running enough goal balls for me in the first half, and then in the second half,
23:52you changed up. Zach, I need more of those things. That's when things go haywire, man.
23:57This bye probably actually comes at a good time to kind of have everybody separate for a bit,
24:01take a deep breath, come back, regroup, and give it one last try, but I got to tell you, Mike,
24:06if that Pittsburgh game goes haywire, I know they play Cleveland. I know they play Tennessee. I know
24:13they play Dallas. None of that's going to matter because this season is about this close to
24:19teetering on the complete edge of disaster. Second to last drive that the Chargers had the
24:24ball after McPherson had missed from 48, I believe it was, Mike Hilton had a chance to
24:33essentially end the game in the pick six. If Mike Hilton catches the ball, which was right in his
24:39hands, he's off to the races, right? Yeah. I mean, no doubt about that.
24:44At the very least, he sets up heaven for another field goal opportunity.
24:49Yeah, but I think the way the replay looked to me, Skinny, is that if he catches that ball,
24:55see you later. And that's the frustrating thing if you're a Bengal fan. Again,
25:01all of these opportunities this year, there are too many to name. From starting with the
25:06Kansas City game right up now through tonight here at SoFi Stadium, the Bengals have missed
25:13on every single chance they have had to close out a game. Every single one.
25:20Yeah, and you just have to wonder at what point does that even out, right? It just feels like
25:24it's one of those where you want to put something tangible on it, right? And unfortunately,
25:30you can't put anything tangible on it. That's the disappointing part. Yeah,
25:32I think we both lost our light. Yeah, I think so too. Maybe that's a signal.
25:36Yeah. So I'll kind of wrap it up with this part of it. So we all want to put something tangible
25:41on what's taking place, right? And why things are going haywire and how to maybe fix it.
25:47Zach was asked about wholesale changes. He said, we're not at the wholesale change part,
25:52but I do think you really are going to have to examine at the end of this season
25:57what are the things that are preventing you from building the roster the right way? What
26:00are the things that are preventing you from winning games with guys making plays at the end?
26:06Is it honestly, when you look back, just bad, dumb luck? In some of these cases,
26:10maybe it is, and maybe there's an evening out process that has to wait until next year,
26:14but they do need to look at the entire operation at this point and go, all right,
26:19what can we do to be better? It can't just be Joe Burrow and Jamar Chase going forward,
26:23because that's what it feels like it's going to be if they sign those two guys.
26:26And I don't know how much trust I have in them building a roster around them, and you're going
26:31to waste two supreme talents at the peak of their careers if you're not careful. You're
26:36damn close to doing it right now. All right, the Bengals drop one here at SoFi Stadium,
26:41head into the bye at 4-7 on the season. Chargers win at 34-27. Chargers are 7-3.
26:50The season is slipping away. It's been a season of frustration. Anybody who watched this game here
26:56on Sunday night or watched it on television could sense the frustration all over the field.
27:01The sentiment was the same after the game, and the tone was that of a defeated, frustrated team
27:09right now, and that's where we're at in the 2024 Bengals season. Be sure to follow Skinny
27:15online at local12.com. Follow him on the X at local12skinny. Richard, do you have anything
27:23you want to promote before we sign off? Yeah, I'm just writing kind of a column that,
27:27I just wonder how much the guys have left in the tank after this one. When you've got a wide
27:32receiver taking some shots at the coach, you've got a downtrodden Joe Burrow. I mean, just how
27:37much can you really regroup for that final six games? Because there is a path. There's still a
27:42path. I mean, these are all winnable games, even though Pittsburgh keeps finding... I mean,
27:45Pittsburgh is in that one of those years, Mike, where it's finding ways to win. Bengals are
27:49finding ways to lose. Maybe there's an evening out process with them that they think comes along
27:53just because of dumb luck and because of the intangible nature of how sports can be,
27:59but it's been one of those seasons where it just feels like you're literally one more loss away
28:05from everybody pointing fingers at everybody. All right, we'll see if that happens. Bengals
28:10off next week. They return on December 1st to take on the Pittsburgh Steelers at Pacor Stadium.
28:17For Richard Skinner, Skinny, I want to thank you. My name is Mike Petraglia. Thanks for
28:23downloading this episode of the Jungle Wars Skinny Bengals postgame pod, and until next time,
28:28which will be two weeks from right now, have a great week and we'll talk to you then.
28:47you