Quick Slant: MNF - And Then, Darkness
Bengals @ Cowboys, Monday @ 8:15 PM
It is appropriate that the calendar has flipped to December; Monday Night Football features teams skittering on paper-thin ice. The 4-8 Bengals and the 5-7 Cowboys entered the season with massive aspirations, but, by now, those aspirations have been proven unrealistic. Each team has been battered by hard luck, injuries, and most of all, the unpleasant dose of reality that what they believed about themselves was never so. Regardless, each team can hear the syrupy-slow metronomic rhythm of a fading postseason lifeline.
Beep, beep, beep...
It has become slow and fragile for each, but it is, for now, still intact. They pursue the Eagles and Commanders, the Ravens and Steelers, as if these foes have long run out in front but never quite made it out of sight. And they race on, as they should, trying their best to remain vigilant and disciplined. But it's so hard to concentrate with that incessant beeping.
Beep, beep, beep...
The Bengals arrive in Arlington armed with a dizzying offense that, when healthy, can hang with anyone. In a parallel universe, had the rest of the team been up for it, Joe Burrow might have been an MVP front-runner. Instead, 2024 will be remembered as a year unmade by a defense that too frequently crumbled in the game’s defining moments. Now, despite Burrow’s genius, the Bengals are on the brink of eradication. And with mounting uncertainties about their future, so too may be the age of Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins in tiger stripes.
For the Cowboys, the story took a devastating turn weeks ago when Dak Prescott was lost for the season. If they are being honest, the moment may have been a strangely welcome relief for many Cowboys fans, as it excused a doomed campaign already bruised by frequent turbulence, provided an eject button from a nightmare, and allowed fans to put away unrealistic fantasies until next September. And yet, despite their ready-made pardon, the Cowboys have refused to fold. Riding a two-game win streak under backup QB Cooper Rush, Dallas enters this game with something they haven’t had in weeks: momentum. Yet, even this modest resurgence won’t save them in the end; the crater is coming. Might the Bengals be the asteroid?
Both teams are caught in an unforgiving moment: too flawed to compete at the level they’d envisioned, but too proud to give up entirely. Monday night in Arlington will mercifully allow one all the justification needed to finally give up, accept fate, and find the deep restfulness that can only come with letting go.
Beep, Beep, Beep...
And then, darkness.
Bengals’ Implied Team Total: 27.5
The Pythagorean wins model finds expected win percentages for each team based on points for and against. Based on the model, the Bengals are the third-unluckiest team in the league, coming in nearly three wins below expected.
We don’t need a formula to tell us the Bengals have had a rough go of it; they started with a false start against New England; it felt then, in this competitive AFC North, that such a loss would come full circle to haunt them. Next, a questionable call stung them against Kansas City. Since then, they’ve lost to Baltimore twice by a combined four points; they fell to Washington by five and to the Chargers by seven. The only team to beat them soundly is Philadelphia, and in Cincinnati’s defense, the Eagles masticate nearly anyone.
The Bengals are on the road, they’ve lost one more game than Dallas, and yet, they are 5.5-point favorites with the third-highest implied team total on the week. No one believes this is a well-deserved 4-8; if so, they don’t believe the offense is to blame.
The Bengals rank seventh in EPA per play and tenth in offensive success rate. They rank fifth in EPA per dropback and second in offensive success rate on dropbacks.
Predictably, based on that, Joe Burrow is also having a tremendous year. Burrow leads the league in EP/G, as well as pass attempts, completions, passing yards, and passing TDs. Despite no notable rushing component, Burrow ranks second in fantasy scoring. He is the best pocket passer of 2024.
Burrow leads the league in attempts in part because the Bengals lead the NFL in neutral pass rate and pass rate over expected (PROE).
Down by seven or more points, Cincinnati jumps to a 72% pass rate. Cincinnati spends 84% of its plays in a neutral script or behind, accumulating a 66% pass rate throughout these moments.
The Bengals’ offensive pass-blocking unit is subpar, allowing the ninth-highest pressure rate over expected (PrROE) of all Week 14 teams at 1.10%. The Cowboys’ defense generates pressure at the third-highest PrROE of all Week 14 teams at 6.20%. This ranks as the fourth-most disadvantageous matchup for a pass-blocking unit on the week.
Unfortunately for the Cowboys, Burrow is undeterred by pressure. He is one of only two QBs who has performed better under duress than he has from a clean pocket. While we wouldn’t expect this to hold for the entire season, Burrow has played every game thus far, and the season is growing long. This is a fairly decent sample size by now.
Burrow is a regression candidate based on how many TDs he has scored relative to the league base rate for TDs/YDs; based on this, Burrow has scored over 14 TDs over expected. This is an all-too-familiar story for pocket-passing QBs, who often run hot for a while and lure us into their trap; when we develop trust, the bottom falls out on the TD production, and there are no outs.
Even if we give Burrow the benefit of the doubt and allow five TDs over the base rate for being more efficient than the average QB, that is still a reduction of nine passing TDs – 36 to 54 fantasy points depending on league settings. A discount of 36 fantasy points would drop Burrow to QB7, just in front of Bo Nix. This is still playable but not elite for fantasy; it probably speaks more to what we should expect from Burrow ahead of what we’ve seen thus far.
The Bengals have only one player with over 32 targets in the past six games: Ja’Marr Chase, who has drawn 67. Chase has had a 29% target share during that span, but Tee Higgins, who has only played in three of the past six games, has had a better share at 30%. The same is true over the full season, as Higgins has a 29% share in seven games compared to Chase’s 25% share in 12.
Chase is the no. 1 fantasy WR, owning the sixth-best EP and best FPOE. He leads the league in receptions, receiving yards, receiving TDs, and ranks fourth in targets.
Despite having fewer targets than Tee Higgins, Chase leads Higgins in each of the other primary per-game receiving stats and several other efficiency stats. Chase is first in WR fantasy scoring, but Higgins is fourth in PPR/G.
Since the season-ending injury to rookie TE Erick All, Mike Gesicki has taken on a substantial snap share as a TE. His best performances have come while Higgins was out, and he hasn’t produced an excellent stat line since Week 9.
The Cowboys' defensive strategy doesn’t rely heavily on any single alignment; they maintain a balanced approach across formations, staying at the speed limit for usage rates. The only alignment they use at a top-ten rate league-wide is Cover 4, which they run just enough to rank tenth in frequency.
The Cowboys rank 28th in EPA per play and 15th in defensive success rate. They rank 13th in EPA allowed on dropbacks and ninth in defensive success rate on dropbacks.
Against the types and rates of coverages the Cowboys prefer, Burrow ranks sixth this week in Fantasy Points’ Matchup Expected Fantasy Points model. Chase ranks fourth among WRs and TEs, and Higgins is 23rd; Gesicki ranks outside the top 60.
