The Bengals had a shot at a clean, game-changing final possession against the Pittsburgh Steelers, but the drive got tangled before it ever really got rolling. After the special teams unit managed to field the kickoff and give Cincinnati two timeouts and time to work with, the offense still couldn’t get lined up efficiently, and one of those timeouts disappeared before the first snap.
Joe Burrow’s frustration was easy to see. He was visibly yelling as the situation got worse, and what should have been a manageable setup turned into a tougher one because of a basic operation issue.
In the moment, it looked like either the play call arrived too late or a substitution problem let the clock bleed away. Either way, the Bengals were left paying for a mistake that should not be happening this late in Zac Taylor’s tenure.
Taylor owned the mistake after the 30-27 loss, and he didn’t try to shift the blame.
“It was just my fault,” he said. “There’s no conversation that I need to have with somebody else when I make mistakes. So that was my fault.”
The larger problem is that this kind of breakdown keeps showing up. Burrow has already hinted at his own frustration with late play calls on Ja'Marr Chase's Chasing No 1 podcast, saying:
"If the play call is in eight seconds too late, now everybody is rushing to the line of scrimmage; now we just have to run the play, and I can't get any of my indicators that I wanted," said Burrow. "Personnel gets in a little too late, and sometimes you still call two plays at the line of scrimmage, but you don't have enough time to see if the blitz is coming this way, and then you end up running a bad play."
The Bengals have been one of the league’s cleaner teams in terms of penalties in 2025, with only one team committing fewer, but they still led the NFL in delay-of-game penalties. NFLPenalties.com had the Cleveland Browns as the only other team with 11 delay-of-game penalties in 2025, and that number doesn’t even capture the timeouts Taylor has burned in spots like this one.
There’s also a broader pattern in the league. Of the nine NFL teams with seven or more delay-of-game penalties in 2025, only one head coach kept play-calling duties. Five of those teams had new head coaches, and two of the four that didn’t handed play-calling over to their offensive coordinator.
That’s where the discussion around Taylor keeps circling back. He has been a successful playcaller before, but the source material makes clear that his biggest value as a head coach may no longer be in juggling every offensive detail himself. There’s a strong case for him to delegate more and focus on the part of the job where he has already proven he can move a team: building a winning culture.
Taylor did that in Cincinnati, taking a franchise with one of the NFL’s longest playoff-win droughts all the way to a Super Bowl appearance and turning it into a contender in a short span. But if the Bengals are going to squeeze more out of this team, the operation has to get cleaner. A couple of wasted timeouts and a few extra delay-of-game penalties can swing the difference between a playoff run and an early vacation.
In Other News...
Bengals Legend Blames One Reckless Decision For Steelers Loss
The Bengals loss to the Steelers has been picked apart from plenty of angles, but T.J. Houshmandzadeh zeroed in on one third-quarter sequence he changed the feel of the game. Speaking on the Speakeasy podcast, the former Cincinnati receiver blamed the decision to try to block a punt, a gamble that instead produced a roughing the kicker penalty and handed Pittsburgh a fresh break in a tight spot.
Houshmandzadeh called the call reckless, arguing that the odds of successfully blocking a punt in the NFL are so slim that the risk rarely justifies the reward. That backdrop matters because blocked punts remain one of the leagues rarest plays, with only 59 since 2020, which only sharpens the scrutiny on a decision that left the Bengals paying for a mistake rather than cashing in on one. [Read more 🡒]
Dalton Risner Saw One Bengals Positive Even In That Final Chaos
The Bengals had one last chance to steal the game from Pittsburgh, and it ended in the kind of scramble that leaves an offensive lineman replaying every second. Joe Burrow was sacked and fumbled on Cincinnatis final offensive snap, with the Steelers coming away with the recovery to close out the game in chaos.
Even in that finish, Dalton Risner found a silver lining for Cincinnati. The right guard pointed to tight end Erick All for the way he kept fighting for the loose ball after the official recovery, a small detail in a messy ending that at least showed the Bengals were still playing hard to the final whistle. [Read more 🡒]
Bengals Face A Stretch That Could Change Everything Before Madrid
The Bengals Week 3 loss to the Steelers only sharpened the focus on what comes next, because the road before the trip to Madrid looks like the kind of stretch that can define a season. Cincinnati is staring at a run of games against the Jaguars, Dolphins, Ravens and Titans, a mix that tests everything from pass rush and coverage to the ability to stay steady while injuries and coaching decisions continue to shape the week-to-week outlook.
Jacksonville and Miami bring their own challenges, while Baltimore always raises the stakes for Cincinnati in a division race that leaves little margin for error. Tennessee can be a different kind of test, but the bigger question is whether the Bengals can use this stretch to reset their footing before the spotlight shifts overseas, or whether the issues that surfaced against Pittsburgh keep following them into October. [Read more 🡒]