CLEVELAND – The Bengals didn’t just face an 0-3 drop in the AFC North after Monday night’s 32-13 win over the Browns, they left First Energy Stadium heavily injured after cornerback Chidobe Awuzie suffered a knee injury in the first half.
“It’s not good, but nothing is planned,” head coach Zac Taylor said. “It’s tough, Chido is one of the hardest workers in the team. He is a good person. He gives himself body and soul to it. To see someone like that hitting something like that is tough.”
You get an idea of what his team thinks about him as they rush into the media tent to check him out.
“It’s amazing, it hurts a lot. He’s an incredible player and I wish him the best. He will forgive and I don’t know what happened. I saw him pull and he was really tough,” left fielder Sam Hubbard said. “If you know anything about Chido, it means the world to him. He’s one of the most reliable teammates I’ve ever played with, and there’s not much to say other than and it means a lot to this team.”
The Bengals are full of cornerbacks. Another starter, Eli Apple (hamstring), was inactive, and second baseman Cam Taylor-Britt made his NFL debut in Game 2. Then, in the third quarter, Awuzie’s replacement, Tre Flowers, went down. on the field with an injury and was still crouching in the locker room an hour later.
Finally, freshman safety Dax Hill found himself with one of the game’s top road runners, Amari Cooper, for a 53-yard touchdown that set up the Browns’ final score.
“Two rookie corners are out there in this type of game,” cornerback Mike Hilton said. “It’s a good experience for them, but it’s a difficult situation to live in.”
Cooper ran for 131 yards and five catches, Donovan Peoples-Jones went for 81 more in the quarterback Jacoby Brissett went for a season-high 278 yards and Bengals quarterback Burrowed Joe Burrow had a passer rating of 133.7 on 17 of 22 passes.
MORE CHANGE: Burrow, 0-4, is still looking for his first win with the Browns. Like last year, the break in the first series set the tone. In a 41-16 loss at Paycor Stadium, it was cornerback Denzel Ward who had six picks from coast to coast. On Monday night, it was flying Myles Garrett who threw the first pass to an open Higgins Tee for a first down in the red zone.
Instead, he was picked by another AJ Green over the Browns 16. That’s when Burrow turned them around on a third-down conversion with a 26-yard pass to running back Chris Evans and a 14-yard pass to wide receiver Tyler Boyd.
“If we score there,” Boyd said. “It’s different. That’s the way we play, coming out fast.”
Burrow showed up later in the first half, after the defense made a strong defense, Vonn Bell’s NFL-leading fourth interception, and linebacker Akeem Davis-Gaither’s first NFL fumble.
“The defense gets two turnovers and we don’t do anything about it,” Burrow said. “But Myles makes a big play on the RPO. He throws his hands up and knocks it down, then falls on it. It’s really the start of a long day for us.”
After breaking out the stats Tuesday morning, the Bengals’ receivers will have nothing in YAC. The Browns are explosive, especially with Burrow checking against running backs Joe Mixon and Samaje Perine. “They did a great job with their levers and playing soft and making us check,” Burrow said. “They did well. In the last two weeks, we’ve taken teams out of this because we’ve been able to break things down, and we’ve gotten yards after the catch. You have to give them credit. They are the big fight today.”
TIPS AND GLOBALS: Taylor said the game started to go downhill after halftime when Bengals kicker Evan McPherson missed a 47-yard field goal and when the Bengals made “three bad plays … we were down, 25-0 like that. “
Cade York threw a 55-yard field goal to end the half and the Browns opened the second half with two fingers pressing around the Bengals at three and three, that’s how you go from 8 -0 to 25-0 run only three games. The final play, third and six, was a sack from linebacker Deion Jones running around Garrett on the left side…
Hilton said the Bengals are talking about Carolina’s short week of preparation at Paycor Stadium this Sunday in a pre-bye game remembering that they entered last year’s bye at 5-4…
Hubbard, who missed a few games early in the second half with what he said was a broken thumb, carried the burden with nine tackles, a sack and a forced fumble.