Bengals defense to blame for wasting Joe Burrow, offense's last best chance at Super Bowl

The Cincinnati Bengals always start slow. It has been their shtick during the Joe Burrow era — lose a couple games early in the season, give folks a reason to panic, and then flip the switch and start performing like an AFC heavyweight.

Well, that switch isn't flipping this season. The Bengals fell to 4-7 on Sunday night with a disheartening loss to the Los Angeles Chargers, 34-27. It was a tale of two halves, with LA dominating up to halftime before the Bengals reeled off 21 unanswered points to knot the game at 27 a piece with a couple minutes left in the fourth quarter.

It all ended with the Chargers marching down the field, four plays and over 80 yards, to score the game-winning TD via J.K. Dobbins pole vault.

The Bengals' defense has been a problem all season, and that final drive was the perfect microcosm for a campaign of woe. Cincinnati's offense put together a superhuman effort to get back into this game, but when rubber met the road, the Bengals' defense just couldn't hang. The Chargers took a knife to hot butter in the final minutes of the game and put Cincy's comeback on ice, all as Joe Burrow and Ja'Marr Chase watched from the sideline with distressed looks on their face.

Bengals defense deserves endless blame for wasting Bengals season

This was the first game all season in which Los Angeles scored more than 27 points. Justin Herbert's 297 passing yards mark a season high. This Chargers team has won low-scoring, bare-knuckle brawls all season. Jim Harbaugh and Greg Roman are notorious for running the football into the ground. And yet, against Cincinnati, the Chargers were airing it out with ease. Six receptions and 123 yards is a new career-best for rookie wideout Ladd McConkey. It looked awfully easy.

The Bengals' defense just can't string together stops. Whether we want to blame defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo, head coach Zac Taylor, or take a torch to the front office's personnel choices, something has to change on a fundamental level. This was quite possibily the Bengals' last, best chance to reach the mountaintop with Joe Burrow, and the season already feels wasted.

Burrow inked a historic five-year, $275 million contract last fall. He's putting up MVP numbers in 2024. And yet, because of Cincinnati's defense, the Bengals are hurling toward a potential top-10 pick instead.

The issue is, that $275 million contract severely complicates the Bengals' long-term financial outlook. Ja'Marr Chase wants a new contract. If the Bengals pay him, that's another hefty chunk of change on the books. Tee Higgins, meanwhile, is set to be a free agent. His departure feels all but guaranteed. The Bengals aren't going to be able to keep this group together much longer. Maintaining depth is hard enough with so much money tied up in a couple players; expanding depth, which the Bengals desperately need to do, is pretty much impossible.

Better days and better seasons are ahead for the Bengals. Burrow is one of the best players in the world and he's going to be heard from again. The dude is 27, lest we forget. But, with so much talent circulating the AFC and such a finite window of opportunity for any Super Bowl hopeful, fumbling the last season before Chase and Higgins become untenably expensive stings. Unless we are treated to a historic turnaround in the weeks to come, well, this Bengals season will be remembered for all it could have been, and all it was not.

The Bengals are essentially a lesson in how not to build your roster. Burrow and Chase are all-time talents having all-time seasons, but the team around them can't prop up a winner. It's all flash and no substance beyond the top handful of players, and the Bengals are paying dearly for their lack of commitment to fleshing out the roster.