Lets overreact to NFL Week 8: Is the Browns offense broken? Are the Bengals pretenders?

• Joined ESPN in 2011
• New Jersey native and author of two published novels

It is the nature of an overreaction column that you have to correct yourself from week to week. You might recall last week, one of our declarations was that “the Bengals are AFC North favorites,” and I said it was not an overreaction, because they’d just waxed the Ravens to move into a first-place tie in the division.

Then came Week 8, and — sorry, Bengals fans — we need to take the column in the opposite direction. Just the way overreactions work. Not much I can do about it. Here we go:

The Bengals are pretenders, not contenders

The no-contest most inexcusable loss of the day was Cincinnati’s 34-31 defeat to a Jets team that was starting its backup quarterback and without its best receiver. A week after completely throttling Lamar Jackson and the Ravens to become the week’s fresh-contender media darling, the Bengals gave up 34 points to a team that hadn’t scored 30 in a game since Week 12 of 2019.

They blew an 11-point fourth-quarter lead to a team that was 0-38 over the past five seasons when trailing in the fourth quarter. They gave up 405 passing yards to Mike White, who was making his first career start. The only quarterback in NFL history to throw for more yards in his first start was Cam Newton, who threw for 422 in his 2011 debut. It was the first 400-yard passing game by a Jet since Vinny Testaverde in 2000.

The loss dropped Cincinnati a half-game behind idle Baltimore (and only a half-game ahead of Pittsburgh) in the AFC North. There was nothing good about this performance.

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