2024 Week 3: Commanders 38, Bengals 33
The Commanders straight up beat the Bengals, nothing else to say about it.
Washington (2-1) has a legit shot at winning the NFC East… it’s a weak division and the Commanders are the only time ‘on the rise’, the other 3 are falling.
Cincinnati is close to having to blow this whole up. Obviously Burrow is going to stay but the receivers are asking for too much money for this thing to work. Zac Taylor and company should go as well. It worked but it’s not anymore and it’s time to move on from it all. If Cincy loses week 4 they are dangerously close to finishing under .500 and if that happens heads will roll.
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- Let’s start this off with the man of the hour Jayden Daniels (21/23 for 254 yards, 2 TDs, 12 rushes for 39-1TD). As I touched on briefly in the Denver recap, this was the best start by any of the rookie QBs. Jayden Daniels is the best QB/ from the 2024 draft. Not a radical thought to have had back in April but this game cemented it, in my mind. My next game to watch is the Caleb Williams 300 yard performance.
- Joe Burrow (29/38 for 324 yards, 3 TDs) also looked great, for some reason people are calling him washed and/or blaming his wrist but he played really well. He just missed on a few TD-possible plays and despite that he still lit up the stat sheet. I expect another strong performance against the weaker Arizona pass defense next week as well.
RB Report:
- Austin Ekeler (3-35-1, 2 catches for 22 yards) seems to be well on his way to winning the lead role in the Washington back field, he has looked great all season. Another guy everyone was ‘out’ on, that I wasn’t.
WR Report:
- Terry McLaurin (4-100-1/6) had a really good game that he capped off (somewhat luckily) with a bomb TD late. Daniels spreads the ball around so this won’t be his norm per-se… it’ll likely be a very boom-bust season. As Daniels rises, so does Terry and Ekeler.
- Luke McCaffrey (3-44-0/3) had another nice game after not being targeted last week. He’s probably the best receiver they have but there’s a lot of talent in this receiving room. Noah Brown (3-29-0/3) and McCaffrey are rotating with each other and both are so so good.
- This game also featured the return of Tee Higgins (3-39-0/6), he looked fine like he always does. The larger impact will be felt on Andrei Iosivas (5-52-1/7) than anywhere else on this offense. Iosivas brought in another TD giving him 3 on the year but they seem to be ‘he’s the open guy’ touchdowns, not ‘he’s my endzone guy’ kind of scores.
- Mike Gesicki (4-47-0/5) might be the winner of all of the shuffling around between Higgins and Iosivas. He’s a value-add for the Bengals pass game and Burrow has given him good targets week-in and week-out.
- Even with that, Erick All (4-22-0/4) is going to cut into Gesicki’s outputs, All had 21 snaps to Gesicki’s 31.
image source: (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)