The Bengals struggled defensively in the second half, allowing 17 points and hamstringing the offense’s attempts to rally from a double-digit deficit, and the lack of a pass rush was an obvious issue after Hendrickson’s exit.
Now, they are hoping he can be back on the field Thursday against the Pittsburgh Steelers, but it’s a quick turnaround to a tough AFC North rival.
“We’ll see,” Taylor said Monday. “Early in the week, Monday, we’ll have to give it kind of a day-to-day listing here. A lot of guys are just sore, so we’ll just have to play it by ear.”
The Bengals already will be without starting tight end Mike Gesicki, due to a pectoral injury that will sideline him for “a while,” and now Tanner Hudson is in concussion protocol.
Even the possibility of Hendrickson being available is a positive sign. They’ve already been missing rookie defensive end Shemar Stewart the past four games because of an ankle injury, and he never went on injured reserve because of the hope he could be back before now.
Taylor said Stewart is “progressing back” and even though there won’t be a lot of full-speed work this week to test out his readiness, Taylor is “optimistic about him.”
Cincinnati just needs a win, after dropping four straight games since Joe Burrow’s turf toe surgery, and Thursday would be a great time to end the skid. Pittsburgh (4-1) sits atop the AFC North standings, but the Bengals (2-4) are next in line, and moving to 3-4 would put them right back in the thick of things while Baltimore and Cleveland have struggled through 1-5 starts.
“I think there’s a lot of emphasis on this game,” Taylor said. “We’re coming off the stretch we’ve come off of. We want to win. We’re hungry for it. Our guys have worked for it. We got to do a better job from start to finish getting that done, but there’s a lot here. You got a home divisional game. Division is where it is right now. As it stands, it’s the top two teams at the top, and you get a chance to knock them down a peg and put yourself up one, so our guys understand what’s at stake, and it’s big for us. We’ll treat it as such, and guys got to get to work, and we’ve got to have a great performance by everybody.”
DJ Turner and Geno Stone, who played arguably their best games of the season Sunday, both said Thursday is a good opportunity to change the narrative. The defense has been playing well for stretches of games but hasn’t been able to put two good halves together, while the offense has struggled with slow starts.
Veteran quarterback Joe Flacco finally found a rhythm in his new offense after four poor drives to open the game, and the Bengals crossed into Green Bay territory on each of the last five series. Struggles moving the ball with a quarterback who was acquired just five days before gameday isn’t all that surprising, but the finish to the game was an encouraging step.
“I thought he settled in,” Taylor said Monday when asked what he saw on the film of how Flacco operated in the offense. “Especially being on the road. … With the nonverbal stuff at the line of scrimmage, I thought he operated really well. It’s surprising how quickly he was able to do that. But gave us a lot of confidence in seeing how he did it. So, now we get a chance to carry it over to home and use the verbal cadence and all that kind of stuff. Really pleased with how he operated and gave us a chance.”
Defensively, the Bengals held the Packers to 10 points in the first half and forced the only turnover of the game when Turner tipped a pass that Stone intercepted in the red zone on the opening drive. The tackling was poor in the second half, Stone noted, but even if Hendrickson can’t go Thursday, Cincinnati has to figure out how to put together a complete game.
If the Bengals are able to build on the positives of the 28-17 loss at Green Bay and secure a win Thursday, that would be a huge boost in the standings and for confidence.
“It’d be huge,” Stone said. “That’s the one thing that we just need. I feel like everyone’s got that attitude now. I feel like ever since that Minnesota game (the first loss), I feel like we all got that attitude that we want to win. Like I said, we just gotta put a whole game together. The offense picked up in the second half, we didn’t. We just gotta put the whole thing together.”
“Once we get the win, we’ll get the momentum going from there.”
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