Cincy Comes out Firing
August 8, 2025
The Bengals kicked off their pre-season schedule with a week 1 trip to Philadelphia against the defending Champion Eagles. While the Eagles were resting many of their starters, Cincy had determined ahead of time that most of their starting groups would play through the first quarter. That news will always make a fan base nervous as you never want to see a key player go down in what is ultimately a meaningless snap. Football fans everywhere witnessed the Colts miss a key block resulting in an Anthony Richardson injury roughly an hour before the Bengals kicked off.
Fortunately for Who Dey nation, we’re writing this piece with a happy tone as everyone came out unscathed. In fact, the first string offense looked utterly dominant. Joe Burrow finished the evening going 9/10 with 123 yards and 2 touchdowns. His lone incompletion was a target to Tee Higgins who let one slip through his hands and land in the grass. Burrow did a great job spreading his 9 remaining targets around to the likes of Tanner Hudson, Chase Brown and Ja’Marr Chase. Chase would lead all starters with 4 targets and boy did he make them count racking up 77 yards and a touchdown. He would have had 2 touchdowns on the night but the first was called back due to a holding call on Mims. The big highlight came when Chase was running up the left side of the field and Burrow hit him on a back shoulder towards the sideline. He managed to somehow contort his body while getting both feet in the ground for the big first down play. His touchdown would come on the next drive where he’d run an out route, the corner overran it, allowing Chase to turn back inside and cruise up field for the score.
The Bengals offense was firing on all cylinders, however, the main context that this needs to be taken in is that the Eagles were not playing most of their starters. You hope your starters can go out there and dominate if you’re the Bengals but this did feel a little different. Maybe it’s because we’ve grown so accustomed to seeing the Cincy offense struggle out of the gates in September. Here’s to hoping this will light a fire and allow them to continue building and get off to a hot start come the official week 1 of the NFL season.
Keith, Author
Keith runs youth flag football leagues by day, and by night he hosts the podcast and writes articles with the confidence of a man who’s been rushing quarterbacks since dial-up. A longtime flag football DE and lifelong Falcons fan, he’s no stranger to heartbreak and enjoys watching the bears get slaughtered each week. Equal parts coach, critic, and chaos, Keith calls it like he sees it… even if it hurts.
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