There are six undefeated teams in the NFL, and you can construct an easy story for four of them. The Patriots and Packers have the two best quarterbacks in football. The Broncos have the league’s best defense. And the Panthers have played the league’s easiest schedule. It’s a little tougher to piece together the story for the Falcons, who had won three close games before blowing out the Texans on Sunday; they’ve faced an easy schedule and gone up against a pair of backup quarterbacks.
It’s even tougher to sum up why the Bengals have made it through the first quarter of the season without a blemish on their record. This isn’t to say that they don’t deserve a 4-0 record; Cincinnati has outscored its opposition by 11 points per game while going up against three playoff contenders and a Raiders team that’s been feistier than expected this year. Their story isn’t quite as obvious as the league’s other undefeated teams, but it doesn’t make the Bengals any less impressive or suggest that they’re suddenly about to fall from grace. With a
67 percent chance of winning the AFC North, Cincinnati may have already done enough to seal another run of meaningful football in January.
The Bengals have a more subtle tale in play: It’s hard to find a team that has been more impressive on both sides of the line of scrimmage than Cincinnati. It’s always tough to gauge this, but through four weeks, the Bengals have had one of the best offensive lines in all of football. That’s not necessarily a surprise, given how well their stars — notably dominant left tackle Andrew Whitworth — played a year ago up front, but they’ve taken another step forward. Right tackle Andre Smith was a disaster in 2014 before going down with a torn triceps; he has returned and been reasonably effective. Center Russell Bodine, the other weak link from a year ago, has also improved.
The impact of those improvements has been felt in Cincinnati’s performance. No line has been better in pass protection. Andy Dalton has been sacked only twice across four games, tied for the league-low mark with Ryan Fitzpatrick of the Jets. He has been pressured on just 13.5 percent of his dropbacks this season, which is the third-lowest rate in the league. Only Eli Manning and Derek Carr have felt less pressure, and as far as the Giants are concerned, that’s mostly been because teams have been dropping seven into coverage in the hopes of slowing Odell Beckham Jr.
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As has often been the case with Dalton, he’s a totally different quarterback when the Bengals keep defenders out of his face. During those rare times defenses have gotten pressure on Dalton this season, he has posted a 1.8 QBR, 28th in the league among quarterbacks when they’ve been pressured. When unmolested, Dalton is brilliant: His 97.6 QBR when unpressured is the best rate in football through four weeks.
It’s no surprise that he torched the Chiefs for 321 yards on 24 pass attempts in a 36-21 win on Sunday. The same pass rush that lit up Tom Brady in this very week last season and stood out as one of the league’s best rushes for most of the season couldn’t get near Dalton yesterday.
The Chiefs didn’t knock Dalton down even once amid those 26 dropbacks, and ESPN Stats & Information credited Justin Houston & Co. with only two pressures during a long, arduous afternoon.
The Bengals have also been better about creating running lanes for the combination of Jeremy Hill and Gio Bernard. Last year, Cincinnati’s backs averaged 2.47 yards before contact by a defender, which was 20th among the league’s 32 teams. This year, with a larger dose of Bernard and steadier play up front, they’re averaging 2.97 yards before contact, which is the fifth-best rate in the league. That figure, too, was up to snuff on Sunday: The Bengals averaged 3.69 yards before contact, topped in Week 4 by only the Broncos and the Rams.
By avoiding sacks and negative plays, the Bengals have been way ahead of schedule on offense.
They’re averaging 7.4 yards per first-down play this year, which is the best in the league by a comfortable margin. Nobody else is within a half-yard of them. And then, when they get to third down, they’re converting on 45.8 percent of their attempts, the fifth-best rate in the league.
It’s obviously still early, but so far the Bengals are seeing the benefits of getting their personnel back on offense. The most notable returnee is emerging tight end Tyler Eifert, who missed virtually the entire 2014 season after dislocating his elbow during the season opener, one of many injuries that plagued Cincinnati last year. The Bengals posted the league’s fifth-highest Adjusted Games Lost (AGL) figure on offense in 2014, while this season they have virtually their entire offensive roster available. The only exception is first-rounder Cedric Ogbuehi, with the Texas A&M tackle basically spending 2015 as a redshirt year as he recovers from knee surgery before likely taking over for a departing Smith in 2016.
It might be even more promising to see the Bengals return to form on defense. Last year was a disastrous campaign for the Cincinnati front four, which failed to come close to lofty expectations. Star defensive tackle Geno Atkins wasn’t the same guy after returning from a torn ACL, and a thin rotation at defensive end failed to get after the quarterback. The Bengals finished with fewer sacks (20) as a team than Justin Houston (22) had on his own.
This year, with Michael Johnson returning after a year in the Tampa wilderness and Carlos Dunlap back to health, the Bengals are back to form. They beat Alex Smith and an underwhelming Chiefs offensive line into submission on Sunday, sacking Smith on five occasions and knocking him down 10 times on 55 dropbacks. They got another sack from Dunlap, who may finally be having the breakout season the Bengals have long envisioned. Having failed to make it over eight sacks since a 9.5-sack rookie season, Dunlap has 3.5 sacks in his first four games. Atkins, too, looks like the force who was dominating in 2012 and 2013.
The Chiefs were able to move the ball with Jamaal Charles, but when they got to the red zone, Cincinnati’s defense tightened up. Cairo Santos kicked seven field goals on Sunday, as the Bengals held Kansas City to nine points across three trips to the red zone.
And while Charles ran for 75 yards on 11 carries, the Bengals had been great against opposing rushers heading into this game, posting the league’s second-best rush defense DVOA through three weeks.
This is all a very viable, sustainable plan for the Bengals, who have been built around their offensive and defensive lines and a deep, versatile secondary. Dre Kirkpatrick has finally made his way into the starting lineup ahead of Leon Hall without the Bengals skipping a beat. Darqueze Dennard, a 2014 first-rounder, struggled when taking his first snaps of the season in the stead of injured starter Adam Jones, but Jones should be back in time for Cincinnati’s Week 5 matchup with the Seahawks.
With the Bengals, it always comes back to Dalton, and so this is a time to acknowledge how well he has played with an allowance for how it might fade.
Dalton’s numbers to start the year — completing 67.2 percent of his passes while averaging 10.2 yards per attempt — have been ridiculous. He has produced 11.4 adjusted yards per attempt to start the season, the best four-game figure of his career by a significant margin. Dalton has posted a four-game average higher than nine yards per attempt only once, when he averaged 10.2 adjusted yards per attempt during a stretch in 2013.
That run felt like a maturation point for Dalton; the Bengals went 4-0 during that period, including a memorable win over the Patriots in Cincinnati. As tempting as it was to pin it as a step forward, it wasn’t. Dalton immediately followed that by averaging 4.0 adjusted yards per attempt over his next four games, the second-worst four-game stretch of his career. He threw nine picks during that subsequent four-game run, even as the Bengals went 2-2. Cincinnati may have done enough during its hot start to seal up the North, but if the Bengals want to make a serious run in the AFC playoffs, it’ll be awfully important for Dalton to keep up his hot stretch over the second quarter of the 2015 campaign.
Week 4 Wrap: The Haves vs. the Have Nots
that perspective..
