Texans at Bengals: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Texans at Bengals – The Bad

Andy Dalton:

Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Andy Dalton has the look of a man who’s in need of a change of scenery.  There’s just something off about the way he’s playing right now and it’s so obvious because he’s been a good quarterback for most of his career.

Dalton went 20 of 35 for 224 yards, no TD’s and no interceptions.  So, he wasn’t terrible so to speak but he wasn’t nearly good enough to lead to Cincinnati Bengals to a win over an injury depleted Houston Texans team.

Andy Dalton was all over the place with the ball.  Missing wide open receivers and throwing passes where sometimes you couldn’t even tell who he was throwing to.  Nothing is going right for Dalton and it’s just perplexing to figure out a reason?

And why isn’t he throwing the ball to A.J. Green?  As I said about DeAndre Hopkins, Dalton has a great receiver at his disposal.  Why not get the ball to him and let him make plays for you?  But it’s like A.J. Green is just another player to Andy Dalton.

As we saw on the long pass completion to Green in the first half, he has the size and speed to make mismatches on any defensive back.  All Dalton had to do was just throw it up to him and A.J. Green can go up and get it.

But unlike Deshaun Watson who fed the ball to his best receiver DeAndre Hopkins, it seemed like Andy Dalton barely looked at A.J. Green.

The Bengals running game:

Knowing that the passing game wasn’t clicking, the Cincinnati Bengals came into this game knowing they needed to run the football.  However, they could only muster 82 yards on the ground.

Not a horrible number but not nearly enough either.  The Bengals only ran the ball 24 times and averaged a paltry 3.4 yards per carry.  Joe Mixon is clearly their best running back but only got 9 carries in the game.

Yes, they have Giovani Bernard and Jeremy Hill but at this point Mixon needs more touches.  Why take all the scrutiny for drafting him and barely use him?