Reality of rough starts to season hitting Bengals, Raiders

The Cincinnati Bengals entered the season with Super Bowl aspirations. Now entering November, they are 3-5 and will still be searching for their first home win when they host the Las Vegas Raiders on Sunday afternoon.

The Bengals are coming off an embarrassing 37-17 home loss to the Philadelphia Eagles that had fans leaving in droves with 11 minutes left in the fourth quarter. Cincinnati fell to 0-4 at home.

The Bengals are mired in third place in the AFC North with a suddenly struggling offense that hasn’t reached 20 points in three straight games after a three-game span of scoring at least 33.

“(The urgency is) as high as it can be,” said Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow. “This is a must-win game. We’re 3-5. You go to 3-6, you basically have to win out. We’ve done it before. I know the players we have. You have to treat it week by week. Any game is winnable. You’ve just got to go and do it.”

The Bengals’ running game is ranked 28th in the NFL, averaging just 89.8 yards per game. The run game was particularly poor last Sunday as feature backs Chase Brown and Zack Moss combined to gain 43 yards on 17 carries.

“We’ve put ourselves in a bad spot, but it’s not a spot that we can’t get ourselves out of,” said head coach Zac Taylor. “I know that we believe that. We’re not even yet at the halfway point of the season. There’s going to be a lot of opportunity here. We’ve just got to stick together and keep working, find some wins and string it together.”

The Raiders (2-6) are coming off a 27-20 home loss to the Kansas City Chiefs, a game in which they were 2-for-4 in the red zone and just 1-for-3 in goal-to-go situations.

“It’s really frustrating. That’s obviously something we have to be better at,” said quarterback Gardner Minshew II. “We’ve been getting down there a few times, the defense put us down there a couple times.

“We’ve got to be able to get it in the end zone, point blank, period, if we want to be the team we’ve got to be. I have to look at it, figure out what we’ve done well over the last little bit and figure out what’s not working and go from there.”

The Raiders had their chance in the third quarter when they had the ball on the Kansas City 3-yard line, trailing just 17-13. But they were stopped on four straight plays, losing two yards on a run and Minshew getting sacked on fourth down.

The Raiders were flagged for five penalties for 32 yards on Sunday, including a pair which stalled drives.

“You can’t kill yourselves,” Raiders coach Antonio Pierce said. “We’ve got great opportunities like we did twice in the third quarter to get points on the board. We’ve got to do that. I don’t think you ever try to coach or play the game perfect. You do the best you can but, obviously, they were better in a lot of areas than us.”

The Raiders have ruled out center Andre James (ankle), while linebacker Robert Spillane (knee), running back Zamir White (quadricep) and guard Dylan Parham (foot) are questionable for Sunday’s game.

Bengals offensive tackle Orlando Brown Jr. (knee/fibula), wide receiver Tee Higgins (quadricep) and running back Zack Moss (neck) are doubtful after missing practice, with wide receiver Charlie Jones (groin) and safety Geno Stone (shin) questionable after they were limited participants Thursday and sat out Friday.

The teams are meeting for the first time since Cincinnati’s 26-19 win in the wild-card round in the 2021 playoffs, snapping a 31-year playoff victory drought for the Bengals.

The Raiders lead the all-time series, 21-13, including 2-1 in postseason. The Bengals have won five of the past six meetings.

–Field Level Media

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