Is The Sky Falling for Joe Burrow's Cincinnati Bengals? Can the Saints Compete? | MAILBAG

Answering your NFL questions as Week 2 kicks off!

As Week 2 of the NFL season gets underway, we once again field your questions and pose them to sources across the league in the latest edition of the Football Friday Mailbag.

Let’s get straight to the questions!

How concerned are you about the Bengals? They looked very flat in the opener. Chiefs game and their performance will be interesting (From

Mike h

in The Substack Chat)

As someone who predicted Joe Burrow as this year’s MVP, Sunday’s 16-10 upset loss to the New England Patriots was a bit worrying, but I’m not yet concerned from a big picture standpoint for Cincinnati.

There was a perfect storm of bad rolling in off the Ohio River ahead of the season opener, given Ja’Marr Chase’s ongoing contract negotiations and the questions surrounding just how effective Burrow would be in his return from a season-ending elbow injury.

So, a game in which they only mustered 70 rushing yards with Burrow only managing 154 passing yards might not have been the expectation against arguably the worst roster in football, but given the circumstances and modus operandi of this team in recent years maybe we shouldn’t have been to surprised.

Then again, how much differently does that game play out, and are we viewing the Bengals, if Mike Gesicki secures the catch to the ground on a touchdown that was reversed which was followed by Tanner Hudson fumbling away possession at the goal line on the very next snap?

Remember, this is a team that got smoked 24-3 in the opener against the Cleveland Browns last season, fell in overtime to the Pittsburgh Steelers at home in 2022, and has won just one season opener in the 2020s.

I posed the question to good friend, and ESPN Cincinnati Bengals beat reporter Ben Baby, to see how worried this team should be moving forward from its latest Week 1 clunker.

“I would put it at about a 6.5,” Baby told me, when I asked him his level of concern. “The biggest thing for me is seeing how Joe Burrow continues to look. If Cincinnati struggles to push the ball downfield, that is a long-enough trend dating back to training camp that should be concerning. And that is independent of Sunday's outcome.

“If Burrow looks comfortable attacking downfield, even in a loss, that should instill enough confidence that Cincinnati can take advantage of a soft schedule and rack up wins later in the year.”

There’s a chance that going on the road into Arrowhead galvanizes the Bengals, and Burrow is the definition of a big-game quarterback, so I’m inclined to agree that Sunday is a litmus test for Cincinnati.

But, even if Sunday goes similarly poorly as the opener, the Bengals have plenty of time to right the ship with three of the next four games coming against the Washington Commanders, Carolina Panthers, and New York Giants.