Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. Did you miss me while I was out of the country for two weeks?
In today’s SI:AM:
🏀 The Aces close the door on the Sun
🏈 An unlikely addition to SI’s college football top 10
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The Bengals can’t solve their biggest problem
Two weeks into the season, the Bengals don’t look like a team poised to make a return trip to the Super Bowl—and for one very obvious reason.
Cincinnati lost to the Cowboys in Dallas yesterday, 20–17, to drop to 0–2 on the season, and the story was the same as the Bengals’ 23–20 overtime home loss to the Steelers in Week 1.
In both games, Joe Burrow just got pummeled. In Week 1, he was sacked seven times and hit another 11 times. He drew contact on 30% of his 60 drop backs. In Week 2, he was sacked six times and hit nine more, meaning defenders got to him on 36% of his 42 drop backs.
Needless to say, the results have not been good for Burrow. Against the Steelers, he completed 33 of 53 passes for 338 yards with two touchdowns and a career-high four interceptions. Yesterday, he completed 24 of 36 passes for just 199 yards and a touchdown.
The Bengals spent their offseason focusing on improving their offensive line, which makes the continuous pressure on Burrow particularly infuriating. Burrow suffered a season-ending injury on a sack in 2020 and was sacked a league-high 51 times last year, so Cincinnati went out and completely retooled the line.
Three starters from last year (Riley Reiff, Quinton Spain and Trey Hopkins) were either released or not re-signed. Left tackle Jonah Williams is the only starter this season who was with the Bengals last year. The other four spots are filled by three free-agent signings and a draft pick: Alex Cappa (four years, $35 million), La’el Collins (three years, $21 million), Ted Karras (three years, $18 million) and Cordell Volson (a fourth-round pick out of North Dakota State). For the Bengals to have invested that heavily in one area and completely fail to improve it is a total disaster.
The Bengals were able to win last year despite their offensive line woes, but those wins came in games where Burrow was able to stay upright. In the 10 games Burrow started and won, he was sacked an average of 2.4 times, compared to 4.5 times in six losses. (He sat out the regular season finale.) If Cincinnati is going to make it back to the playoffs, the offensive line is going to have to patch its holes in a hurry. Right now, Burrow is getting sacked at a historic rate. His average of 6.5 sacks over the first two weeks puts him on pace for 111 for the season, which would shatter David Carr’s record of 76 sacks for the expansion Texans in 2002. In a way, Burrow would be lucky to break that record. It’s much more likely the repeated punishment he’s been taking leads to him getting injured.
The best of Sports Illustrated
The Aces finished an impressive season by winning the WNBA title in four games last night. Two of the catalysts for their championship run found each other at just the right time, writes Michael Rosenberg in today’s Daily Cover story.
Looking back, what was remarkable about their meeting was how little needed to be said. [Coach Becky] Hammon told [A’ja] Wilson she would scrap former coach Bill Laimbeer’s methodical, post-heavy system for a modern pace-and-space operation. She told Wilson that she would expect her to play center on defense for the first time in her pro career, so the Aces could spread the floor offensively. She could have told Wilson she would have to wear shoes on her hands, and Wilson would have tried it. Wilson had already committed to a new approach to her career, for three reasons: “losing, losing, losing.”
After the Aces beat the Sun to win the WNBA Finals, Ben Pickman thinks Connecticut’s title window may be closing. … On the opposite side of the Bengals-Cowboys game, Conor Orr writes that Dallas’s win was a significant one for coach Mike McCarthy. … Kansas—yes, Kansas—cracked the top 10 in Ross Dellenger’s college football rankings.
Around the sports world
49ers quarterback Trey Lance is done for the year after injuring his ankle yesterday. … Arizona State fired Herm Edwards after losing at home to Eastern Michigan. … Here are all the World Cup uniforms that have been announced thus far. … The Browns could have beaten the Jets if Nick Chubb had just gone down instead of scoring a touchdown. … The Bucs are reportedly giving Tom Brady an off day every Wednesday this season.
The top five…
… things I saw yesterday:
5. The Packers’ ayahuasca celebration.
4. Tua Tagovailoa’s game-winning touchdown pass to complete a furious Dolphins comeback.
3. Aaron Judge’s two homers to move closer to breaking Roger Maris’s American League home run record.
2. Kyler Murray’s ridiculously long scramble on a two-point conversion. (He ran a total of 85 yards.)
1. Byron Murphy’s game-winning fumble return in overtime for Arizona.
SIQ
With his 58th and 59th home runs yesterday, Aaron Judge moved into a tie for ninth place on MLB’s single-season home run list (with Babe Ruth and Giancarlo Stanton). Which of the following players is not tied for 12th on that list with 58 homers in season?
- Hank Greenberg
- Ryan Howard
- Jimmie Foxx
- Hack Wilson
Friday’s SIQ: On Sept. 16, 2012, Eli Manning threw for a career-high 510 yards in a Week 2 win over the Buccaneers. Though it is the 13th-best passing yards total in a game in NFL history, it is not the franchise record for the Giants. Who holds that record, with 513 passing yards in a game?
- Y.A. Tittle
- Phil Simms
- Kerry Collins
- Kurt Warner
Answer: Phil Simms. Simms went for more than 500 passing yards in a 35–30 loss to the Bengals on Oct. 13, 1985. He threw 62 times, which, at that time, was tied for the second-most attempts in a single game behind George Blanda in ’64. Since then, that mark has been matched or surpassed 27 times.
—Josh Rosenblat
From the Vault: Sept. 19, 2005
In the days after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in late August 2005, there were bigger things to worry about than football—but there was football to be played. On Sept. 11, the Saints—who had set up camp in San Antonio in the wake of the storm—opened their season on the road against the Panthers with a 23–20 victory on a 47-yard field goal by John Carney with three seconds remaining.
“Everybody on this team is on the same page now—to do everything we can to help the survivors, and to play for each other as a team,” receiver Joe Horn said in Michael Silver’s cover story. “Football ain’t nothin’ compared to somebody who lost a loved one or who doesn’t have a house to go back to, but we feel them and they feel us, and we’re representing a region that’s resilient as hell.”
The Saints were resilient in that win over Carolina, bouncing back after blowing a 10-point second-half lead before putting together an impressive game-winning drive in the final minute.
“With chips on their shoulders and lumps in their throats, the Saints gave many of their displaced fans a few hours of diversion and, ultimately, joy on Sunday,” Silver wrote. “Horn, [veteran running back Fred] McAfee and other players said that during key junctures of the game, their thoughts flashed back to the evacuees they’d visited in shelters. But whether that motivation will last throughout the season remains to be seen.”
The Saints, splitting their home schedule between Baton Rouge, San Antonio and Giants Stadium, finished 3–13 that year, but their role in the city’s recovery after the storm—punctuated by Steve Gleason’s punt block in the team’s return to the Superdome in 2006—was significant.
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