What A.J. Green said, what he felt and what it means in Bengals Pick Six

Joe Burrow took another beating Sunday, but this one was different. Unlike previous games, there really wasn’t anything positive to offset the thumps, bruises and grass stains.

The Ravens rattled Burrow with a relentless package of blitzes that the quarterback, and his protection, had a hard time recognizing and/or stopping in a 27-3 drubbing at M&T Bank Stadium.

The game had the look and feel — and exact final score — of the last time the Bengals failed to score a touchdown, the 27-3 loss at Pittsburgh in Week 4 last year. Quarterback Andy Dalton absorbed eight sacks in that game, one more than Burrow endured Sunday while also throwing an interception and fumbling twice.

But in many regards, what Burrow felt took a backseat to what wide receiver A.J. Green felt before going to the bench in the third quarter, and what he said once he got there.

That’s where we’ll start this week’s Bengals Pick 6.

Lip service

Green left the field after playing two snaps early in the third quarter with what the team said was a hamstring injury, although he wasn’t limping as he checked out ahead of a third-and-6 play and there was no sign of ice as the CBS cameras showed him sitting on the bench.

It was during one of those shots that the camera caught Green talking to assistant wide receivers coach Troy Walters. His words weren’t audible, but it was pretty clear to even the most amateur of lip readers that the last thing Green said before the camera cut away was “just trade me.”

I don’t know if A.J. Green is saying “trade me” here but his effort in the Ravens game also points to what the amateur lip readers are suggesting. pic.twitter.com/ogK23rkVIN

— Peter Bukowski (@Peter_Bukowski) October 12, 2020

What Green said before that is far less clear, as is the context of the conversation. What was clear is that Green was frustrated.

One week after catching one pass for 3 yards on five targets, Green was a nonfactor again. The only time Burrow targeted Green on Sunday was on a third-down blitz when the pass sailed high above the wide receiver’s head. And when it did, Green just quit as though he expected the play to be over. But Ravens cornerback Marcus Peters intercepted it and ran past Green, who looked surprised and less than committed to trying to stop the return.

Green played 26 of the 32 offensive snaps in the first half but only two of the first three in the second half before leaving.

Asked when Green got hurt, Bengals head coach Zac Taylor began his answer by saying, “That’s a great question.”

“It was around (halftime),” Taylor said. “I can’t pinpoint it.”

Green’s final play was a 5-yard hitch, and he was open with Peters playing off of him. But the pressure again got to Burrow quickly, and the quarterback tucked the ball and ran. Green turned around to block, but Burrow was dragged down quickly for a 2-yard gain.

Green looked skyward after that play and rolled his head around in apparent frustration. He was walking off the field a few seconds later as Mike Thomas ran on to replace him.

Wide receiver Tyler Boyd was asked if he sensed any frustration from his teammate.

“Nah. Not really. I think we were all frustrated at a point,” Boyd said. “It was kind of hard to pick out individual guys. We were all upset. Not about our targets or things like that. We all want to win. That’s what it all comes down to. We felt that we left a lot out there, and that was the worst performance of the offense that we’ve ever displayed. I can tell you that will never happen again.”

Taylor said Green never voiced any frustration to him.

“A.J. has been nothing but positive,” he said.

But if Green said what it looked like he said to Walters, it likely was born of frustration and not any sort of demand. His return to action after missing all of 2019 has been disappointing and not productive. He entered Sunday’s game with a 42.4 target-to-catch percentage, the worst among the 135 players with at least 10 catches.

A request was made for Green to speak to reporters after the game, but he was not one of the four players the Bengals put on camera. Another request was made to hear from Green on Monday, but even if he appears, he will have had 24 hours to think about what he wants to say.

And even if he says he said what it looked like he said and he meant it, the trade market for a 32-year-old wide receiver with declining speed and 14 catches for 119 yards on 34 targets, not to mention one still due 11 game checks totaling $12.4 million, will be almost nil.

Defensive development

The Bengals’ defense held Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson to 3 yards rushing, his lowest total since becoming the starter in Week 11 of 2018.

Of course, a big reason for that was the knee injury that forced Jackson to miss two days of practice this week. Jackson’s two rushes also were the lowest of his career as a starter.

“I think he’s a little bummed up with his knee,” said Bengals linebacker Logan Wilson, who spent some time spying Jackson and finished with an interception and a quarterback hit.

Jackson’s knee certainly was a factor, but it doesn’t take away from the defense playing arguably its best game of the year, holding the explosive Ravens offense to 20 points while preventing them from scoring on seven of their final eight drives (not including the one-snap kneeldown to end the game).

Lamar Jackson throws as Logan Wilson applies pressure during the first quarter. (Tommy Gilligan / USA Today)

After stopping the Ravens twice in the final two minutes of the first half — a landmark development in its own right — the Bengals opened the third quarter with a three-and-out, their first against the Ravens in the last 24 drives that didn’t involve kneeldowns.

“I thought the defense did a lot of really good things,” Taylor said. “The offense put the defense in a lot of tough positions with turnovers, penalties, and really, the defense gave up 20 points over the course of the game. We had a fumble for a touchdown at the end. They did a lot of good things we can build off of. If they play like that again, we can win a lot of football games.”

The Bengals ended up allowing 161 rushing yards, 76 on two plays. Wide receiver Devin Duvernay gained 42 yards on the Ravens’ second offensive play of the game. Rookie J.K. Dobbins got loose for 34 yards on the second play after the two-minute warning in the first half.

The run put the Ravens in scoring position at the Bengals’ 27, but Wilson’s second interception of the season ended the threat.

Wilson dropped another interception, as did fellow rookie Akeem Davis-Gaither and cornerback Darius Phillips, who had one of the best games of his career.

The Bengals repeatedly blitzed Phillips out of the slot and did a good job of breaking down and not letting Jackson get loose.

“Darius showed up,” safety Jessie Bates said. “He’s a gamer, one of my best friends on the team. I’m not surprised at all that he showed up well.

“I think that we had a really good game plan going into it to stop that zone read and the quarterback stuff, but we didn’t do well on third down, which we didn’t really emphasize on,” Bates said. “(It’s) emphasized every week, but we didn’t do that well today. I don’t care how our offense isn’t playing up to our standard, but I don’t care how bad that is. We just have to keep it close; we’ve got to keep it close within how many points our offense is scoring.”

The Ravens converted five of their first six third downs, with all five coming on their first touchdown drive. Three of the first downs were passes to tight end Mark Andrews, including a 15-yarder on third-and-14 and a 5-yard touchdown pass on third-and-goal.

After that, the Ravens were just 2 of 9 on third down as Jackson finished 19 of 37 for 180 yards.

“I think there’s something that we could’ve always done better throughout this game,” Wilson said. “But for the most part, I think we executed our game plan as well as we could’ve. There are some plays we’d like to have back. Lamar keeps a lot of plays alive with his feet. And sometimes, that’s tough; that’s why we have to cage him (and) keep him inside of the pocket. But then again, there’s a reason why he’s the MVP.”

Giant loss

What the Bengals run defense will look like moving forward is a giant question after the loss of defensive tackle D.J. Reader to a quad injury that the NFL Network is reporting will be season-ending.

The most expensive piece of the Bengals’ record free-agency haul, Reader was the team’s second-highest graded defensive player, according to Pro Football Focus.

The 6-foot-3, 347-pound run plugger had one tackle and one pass defended against the Ravens, and 19 tackles and two passes defended for the season.

Reader left Sunday’s game on a cart midway through the third quarter, adding to the decimation on the interior of the defensive line. The Bengals have lost Ryan Glasgow, Josh Tupou and Renell Wren and will be without Mike Daniels for at least two more weeks after the defensive tackle went on injured reserve last week with an elbow injury.

D.J. Reader is taken off the field during the second half Sunday after a quad injury. (Tommy Gilligan / USA Today)

An elbow injury also is what forced defensive end Sam Hubbard to leave the game in the fourth quarter. Ravens tight end Nick Boyle cut Hubbard, who landed on his left elbow. He immediately grabbed the arm, jumped to his feet and ran off the field with just under 13 minutes left in the game.

Taylor said after the game he didn’t have any details on the extent of Hubbard’s elbow injury, which appeared to be a dislocation.

Reader, Hubbard and Green were the only announced injuries during the game.

Atkins arrival and the D-line snap splits

On the plus side of the injury situation along the defensive line, Pro Bowler Geno Atkins made his season debut. You wouldn’t know it by looking at the stat sheet.

The Bengals eased Atkins in by using him on just 19 snaps — three first downs, four second downs and 11 third downs — and he didn’t record a tackle or any other stat and was barely noticeable.

While Atkins was shelved for the first four games with a shoulder injury, Reader talked about how eager he was to get a chance to play alongside him. That opportunity lasted just two and a half quarters.

Atkins’ limited role could have been a way to bring him along slowly, or it might have been a direct reaction to the threat of Jackson running. We’ll see how many snaps he plays next week against Indianapolis and the far less agile Philip Rivers.

Atkins’ snap share was only part of the intrigue in that regard along the defensive line after Carlos Dunlap vented Thursday about his demotion from starter.

Carl Lawson made his fourth career start and played 40 snaps, most among Bengals defensive linemen. Dunlap played 29 snaps, while rookie Khalid Kareem logged 18, 16 of which came before Hubbard left.

Christian Covington and Hubbard logged 38 snaps, while Khalil McKenzie had 16 and Amani Bledsoe 14.

Bucking the trend

The Bengals won the pregame coin flip for the first time this year, and Taylor elected to take the ball rather than deferring in hopes of scoring at the end of the first half and beginning of the second half.

“We knew there was potentially some weather coming in,” Taylor said, referring to the rain that fell for most of the second half.

“There was a lot of things that factored into that,” he said. “Yes, we wanted to be more aggressive. We wanted to get points on the opening drive, so there were a lot of factors that played into that.”

The Bengals got one first down and gained 18 yards before punting to the Ravens, who drove 52 yards for a field goal to take an early lead and start a streak of three consecutive scoring drives.

Streak stopped

The Bengals entered Sunday leading the NFL with six fourth-down conversions in six tries, and their streak of 10 in a row dated to last season.

But it came to an end in the first quarter when, trailing 3-0, Taylor went for it on fourth-and-3 at the Baltimore 37 and Burrow threw incomplete for Boyd.

Burrow scrambled out of the pocket to his right and threw on the run, sending the ball too high for Boyd to catch.

“It was a broken-up play,” Boyd said. “It was a play to kind of get a pick-and-rub, and I come back in. I just kept playing, because I knew it was fourth down. And if the ball was a little bit lower, then I’m sure I would have made that play.”

The Bengals began a new streak in the fourth quarter, converting a pair of fourth-and-1 plays on the drive after a Patrick Queen fumble return helped make it 27-0. One of the conversions was a 19-yard pass from Burrow to Joe Mixon, with Burrow showing nice touch with a high arching pass and Mixon making a good, spinning adjustment while the ball was in the air.

The two conversions kept the Bengals’ longest drive of the game going and enabled kicker Randy Bullock to make a 38-yard field goal with 25 seconds remaining to avoid the shutout.

It was a 14-play, 55-yard drive that lasted 7 minutes, 49 seconds. It also served as a white flag as 12 of the 14 plays were runs in order to prevent Burrow from taking any more hits.

“You’ve got to be smart there,” Taylor said. “We are in the fourth quarter, we are down four scores, and he has taken a lot of hits. Again, they calmed down a little bit on defense, there were some pressures at the end, but I thought our guys did a good job regrouping on the last drive in the fourth quarter. (We) put together a nice drive, had to convert that fourth-and-1 on the throw. Guys did a nice job with some of the short-yardage situations. That was the world we wanted to be living in, to be honest with you. We were third-and-long, we wanted to be in those third-and-one, fourth-and-ones and be aggressive. We just didn’t give ourselves that opportunity until it was too late.”

(Top photo of Marcus Peters and A.J. Green: Scott Taetsch / Getty Images)