Bengals snap count takeaways: Tyler Eifert still being preserved despite offensive woes

Monday Night Football was not kind to the Bengals.

Many fans had hopes that a clash with a wounded Steelers team under the lights may be able to spark some hope for the rest of the season. Those dreams were dashed pretty early into the third quarter.

The snap counts don’t tell the story of how thoroughly bad the Bengals’ performance was because honestly, aside from a handful of drives, the Steelers’ offense wasn’t very good. It was a matter of the Bengals’ offense failing to even show up against one of the worst teams in the NFL coming into the game that made this loss a true gut punch.

Still, the snaps tell us something. Is it one fans are going to like to hear? Probably not, but at this point we have to be critical of a team that is 0-4.

Here are this week’s snap count takeaways:

• The Bengals out snapped the Steelers 69 to 59. The Bengals even won time of possession (by less than a minute). So why was this such a lopsided game? The Steelers had drives where they could move the ball, and when they did they scored. They also had a big play for a touchdown. Cincinnati was bad offensively, but they had shots in the red zone where they either turned it over or they got a turnover on downs.
• Tyler Eifert’s usage continues to be troubling. He only played 21 snaps. In those snaps he caught two passes for 21 yards and was targeted twice in the endzone (one of which he dropped). I get they want to preserve Eifert, but this offense that is trying to get by without A.J. Green, and they need a spark. We are watching a healthy Eifert being preserved on an 0-4 team. Tell me how that makes sense.
• Last week we saw Billy Price show some good things against the Bills (not perfect, but good) in Michael Jordan’s absence, so the assumption was that we may get to see Price start again. Why wouldn’t you ride the hot hand when your offensive line has been terrible? Instead we saw Jordan (64) handed back his job once healthy and get manhandled most of Monday Night. Price (5) eventually was put in, and he quickly gave up a sack as well. Was it a matter of a cold Price coming in against a red hot defensive front for Pittsburgh? Who knows. Either way, it was frustrating to see a good performance go unrewarded at a position that has been the weak link on this offense.
• Let’s look at the defensive line for a second. The lack of Carl Lawson and Kerry Wynn again caused the Bengals to play Carlos Dunlap (53) and Sam Hubbard (48) far longer than they should be playing. The team is just fortunate they didn’t have to field their defense for upwards of 70 snaps like last week. If Lawson and Wynn can’t go again next week the Bengals need to make a move to add another body to that rotation.
• Speaking of rotations, the linebackers need to be on more of one. Preston Brown (47) and Nick Vigil (50) played a vast majority of the snaps again. They made some plays, but it has been obvious that opposing offenses are scheming plays to get their skill position players in open field match ups with Brown and Vigil, and it works way too often. Meanwhile, Germaine Pratt saw an uptick in snaps from 10 to 12. He may not completely fix the issue, but something needs to be done to inject some excitement back into this defense.
• The return of B.W. Webb (39) at cornerback took away most opportunities for Tony McRae (4) and Brandon Wilson (7). It would’ve been interesting to see if Darius Phillips could’ve gotten some of the snaps that a cast wearing Webb was shouldering, but he was placed on injured reserve after a breakout game last week. We are only a few weeks away from Darqueze Dennard returning from the physically unable to perform (PUP) list, so it will be interesting to see what dynamic he adds.
• Young players receiving snaps include undrafted rookie Damion Willis (24) getting back into the action. Drew Sample (21) also saw sometime at tight end. Renell Wren (11) also got into the defensive tackle rotation with Ryan Glasgow still unable to play.