Four Verts: Bengals' supposed strength prompts worry, while Dolphins' loss was really really bad

https://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/article/four-verts-bengals-supposed-strength-prompts-worry-while-dolphins-loss-was-really-really-bad-194935874.html

Week 1 is in the books, and we finally have real live games to analyze. So here’s a lively edition of Four Verts, starting with …

Bengals’ win over the Browns showed a good but flawed team

Not every 1-0 feels the same, especially when said team has Super Bowl aspirations with one of the most talented offensive trios in this era of football. The Bengals got that feeling in a strong way after they eked out a victory over the Browns, who are projected to be one of the worst teams in the NFL this year.

A win is a win, but 17-16 while making the Browns’ offense look viable at times is not where Cincinnati wants to be in general as it tries to return to the playoffs.

Expectations are incredibly low for the Bengals’ defense, but the offense sputtering for much of that game was a bit of a surprise. The Browns do have some talented players on defense, but this Bengals team totaling 95 net passing yards over the course of a full game is not something that should ever happen. Beyond that, the Bengals were only able to muster 46 rushing yards. The offensive line had a brutal performance, unable to get much by the way of movement in the run game and allowed a pressure rate of 43% according to TruMedia. That’s just not a sustainable way to play winning football in the NFL.

The only reason why the Bengals were able to get out of this one with a win is because they were playing arguably the worst team in the NFL. Even then, the Bengals’ defense showed why people were right to be concerned about them as they allowed Joe Flacco, in the year of our lord 2025, to have a success rate of 47.9% and the Browns, on a down-to-down basis, to be more productive than the Bengals’ offense. That is screaming DEFCON red as to what may happen when they face some of the best offenses in the league, or even in their own division with Baltimore and Pittsburgh.

It’s not like the Bengals haven’t invested in their defense. Every single position group has first-rounders and top-100 picks from the past three years. Unfortunately, they haven’t hit on many of those picks and it has put the Bengals’ defense into a spot where Flacco and rookie tight end Harold Fannin Jr. can be overwhelming for drives at a time. No bueno.

However, that type of defensive performance was largely expected after the Commanders’ backups gave Cincinnati the blues during their preseason game a few weeks ago. The offense being a complete dud was more surprising, and now the Bengals will have to figure out a way to turn this around so they actually start playing like a contender on that side of the ball.

Hey man, the Dolphins loss was really, really sad

We probably should have put more stock in the Colts being favored over the Dolphins this past weekend, but it just didn’t seem like the Colts would have enough firepower to do much of anything considering where they were in their roster construction (i.e., starting Daniel Jones).

But of course, our gambling overlords know all and not only did the Colts win, they absolutely stomped the Dolphins. Week 1 overreactions often look silly (looking at everyone who watched Caleb Williams on Monday night), but it’s hard not to press the emergency button when a Daniel Jones-led offense scores on every single drive.

Every aspect of this team was bad, but as one of the highest-paid quarterbacks in the league, a lot of eyes are on Tua Tagovailoa, who had arguably his worst game as a pro against a mediocre Colts defense. Tagovailoa was as inaccurate as he’s ever been and just made some bafflingly bad decisions en route to a blowout loss. As the Dolphins start to think about the future of the franchise, it’s officially fair to say that they probably won’t get to where they want to go with Tagovailoa as their starting quarterback and it’s time to think about pressing the detonate button on this era of Dolphins football.

Going into halftime down 20-0 to the Colts, the Dolphins had nothing. They had run 15 plays for 43 yards, turned the ball over twice and then punted after a gruesome eight-play, 22 yard drive. It was expected for the defense to struggle this year with how little talent they had on the back end, but the Dolphins’ offense laying a complete nothing burger with several embarrassing plays wasn’t quite on the menu for this year. Or especially this game.

A 33-8 loss to the Colts, who benched their former starting quarterback prior to the season, is unacceptable. There’s a long way to go this season, but it’s hard to generate much positivity for Miami after a performance like that. According to TruMedia, in the first half, the Dolphins had an average starting field position of 35.7 yards and still couldn’t muster any offense. This offense is supposed to thrive in advantageous situations, but instead all they got was a beatdown and immediate doubt about where their season can go.

Again, it’s Week 1. So it’s hard to get too deep about what is happening here. But after the Jets were able to score 32 on the Steelers and the Bills showed they can score points in bunches against Baltimore, it’s also hard to imagine that the Dolphins can even make a legitimate play for the AFC East. Maybe they can avoid third place after a dismal showing by the Patriots in their season opener against the Raiders, but it doesn’t seem like the 2025 Dolphins are bound to accomplish much more than that.

J.J. McCarthy and Michael Penix had similar outings ahead of their first career NFL matchup

One second-year quarterback won, one lost, but both J.J. McCarthy and Michael Penix Jr. gave flashes of hope to their fan bases. Neither of them played much as rookies; McCarthy was injured while Penix sat behind Kirk Cousins for 14 games. But a few big throws and gutsy plays in Week 1 have both teams feeling like they’re in a good spot at quarterback. Ahead of their Week 2 showdown on Sunday Night Football, which will be a rematch of the 2023 season College Football Playoff national championship game, both players are in a position to continue to build on the solid foundation they’ve put together.

McCarthy just won NFC Offensive Player of the Week for his fourth-quarter heroics on Monday against the Bears, giving him a signature win in his first NFL game. There are plenty of things to clean up from the first three quarters of the game, including inaccuracies and a badly telegraphed pick six, but the athleticism and playmaking were on display when it counted for the Vikings. This is a player who didn’t have too many starts in college and is building off an injury-ruined rookie season, so patience with what is being built here should be applied. At least there was a good vision of what this can look like for the long term if McCarthy continues to develop and hit his ceiling.

Penix wasn’t able to seal the win for the Falcons, thanks to yet another missed kick by the formerly accurate Younghoe Koo, but he did show off some of the ridiculous playmaking ability that led to Atlanta taking a risk on him with the eighth overall pick in 2024. He’s got the arm strength to make all the throws, even if the downfield accuracy can be streaky, and he did a good job working with what the Bucs’ defense gave him in the short game as the Falcons’ run game was completely stifled on the ground. A couple late scrambles pushed the Falcons to be in a position to win, but they couldn’t close.

Both players missing large swaths, or the entirety, of their rookie seasons has made the starts of their careers more compelling because there’s an element of mystery to what’s possible here. Both of their games can feel like a Rorschach Test for the viewers, but that does indicate that these guys both have at least the physical talent to be quality NFL quarterbacks.

Whether that continues to manifest is a different beast, but ahead of their prime time showdown this upcoming weekend, they’ve each given reasons for positivity.

Buffalo is about to embody the peak of 2010s Big 12 football

Buffalo and Baltimore got the NFL season off to a raucous start with one of the wildest fourth-quarter comebacks in the history of the game. Josh Allen kept his cool and brought the Bills back from a 15-point deficit in the final few minutes of the fourth quarter to cap it off, but as a whole this game should be fairly alarming for the Bills.

Their defense looks to be just as bad as it was to end last season, when Allen had his gaudy performances that earned him the first MVP award of his career. As fun as that win was for the Bills, it was just as scary for their chances moving forward as Super Bowl contenders, because it suggests every game will be a high-scoring affair, like the Big 12 conference last decade.

Baltimore’s offense absolutely crushed Buffalo’s defense. Dominated. Road graded. Splintered. Whatever word that invokes a stampeding works as a descriptor for where Buffalo’s defense was by the end of that game. A couple splash plays made at the end gave them a chance, but they absolutely earned the 40 points that Baltimore dumped on their head. Through the first three quarters of the game Baltimore was averaging 9.1 yards per play. That’s almost a first down every time they touch the ball! The Ravens also averaged 11 yards per pass attempt, and Derrick Henry was running free. Oftentimes it felt like Baltimore was running plays against air.

That’s simply not going to be good enough to win the Super Bowl. This is what the Bills were doing at the end of last year. They did beat Baltimore in the divisional round last year, that was mainly due to the Ravens’ own mistakes. All of this culminated with the worst Chiefs offense of the Mahomes era scoring over 30 points en route to knocking Buffalo out of the postseason yet again.

Allen is the saving grace here. The Bills have shown that investments in the offensive line along with a top-flight quarterback is enough to be a consistent threat in the AFC, but their ceiling is capped as long as the defense continues to perform this poorly. No one is saying that this team won’t win the AFC East, but a defense this bad would absolutely be an anchor for what they want to accomplish.

This formula is also going to create some unbelievably fun games to watch for Buffalo, which is in line with how their past seven or eight games have gone starting with their 44-42 loss against the Rams last season, which was followed by a 48-42 win over the Lions the following week. Watching Allen hunt for 30 or 40 points on teams sure is a fun watch, even if it doesn’t actually seem sustainable over the long term.

Bills fans will be white-knuckled. However, I am not a Bills fan, so I will be enthralled by every pseudo-Big 12 game they wanna play.

https://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/article/four-verts-bengals-supposed-strength-prompts-worry-while-dolphins-loss-was-really-really-bad-194935874.html