The Bengals open their 2022 season on Sunday against the Pittsburgh Steelers at Paycor Stadium. Following a month and a half worth of instructional course and preseason planning, Cincinnati enters the customary season hoping to safeguard its status as AFC champions, starting with Sunday’s opener. The Bengals have had a momentous offseason, getting a new workforce that incorporates a six-player draft class and a few marquee-free specialists, determined to expand on a noteworthy 2021 mission.
However, while the program increments — on top of a youthful yet experienced core — have gathered assumptions for much more creative than last year, lead trainer Zac Taylor says his group is looking no farther than this matchup against an AFC North Division rival.
“That is not something we’re truly getting into,” Taylor said when gotten some information about the Bengals’ likely this season. “We knew the work that we expected to place in during the instructional course to set ourselves up for the main week. I’m not looking past that, since we know how enormous Pittsburgh in Week 1 at home — and how huge a divisional game is, period. It means quite a bit to open up with extraordinary energy before your fans and begin the season 1-0. All that we require to be centered around right currently is being the best group we can be to beat Pittsburgh.” Offensively, the Bengals brag about one of the most skilled passing assaults in the NFL, driven by third-year QB Joe Burrow. The No. 1 general pick in the 2020 NFL Draft, Burrow in ’21 set single-season group standards for passing yardage (4611), passing TDs (34), and passer rating (108.3).
Named the association’s Comeback Player of the Year subsequent to getting back from a knee injury endured during his youngster crusade, Burrow as of late needed to work his direction back to full wellbeing following an appendectomy right off the bat in the instructional course. As he gets set for his third expert season, the 25-year-old local of Athens, Ohio anticipates that the Cincinnati offense should take up where it left out. “I’m amped up for everyone that we have in the group,” said Burrow. “We have a ton of involvement with the top, yet I think we have a ton of profundity this year that perhaps we haven’t had before.”
Encompassing Burrow is a dynamic getting corps that highlights veteran opening WR Tyler Boyd, third-year ace Tee Higgins, and second-year Pro Bowler Ja’Marr Chase. In 2021, those three players consolidated for 3374 getting yards, the most among any triplet of pass catchers in the NFL. Pursue turned in one of the best youngster seasons in association history, getting done with the most getting yards (1455) by a first-year player in the Super Bowl period (began in 1966).
Higgins had a 1000-yard time of his own, netting 1091 and six getting TDs in only 14 games played, while Boyd had 828 yards and five scores. Front and center, one of the principal storylines this offseason has been the redone hostile line. While fourth-year LOT Jonah Williams keeps up with his obligation of safeguarding Burrow’s blindside, the other four individuals from the beginning unit are set to play in their most memorable normal season game in Bengal stripes. To reinforce its insight and winning family, Cincinnati marked three free specialists in RG Alex Cappa (Tampa Bay), ROT La’el Collins (Dallas), and C Ted Karras (New England).
However, their time playing together has been restricted by wounds all through the instructional course, that triplet enters the 2022 mission with a joined 236 professional games played (ordinary season and postseason), including 174 beginnings. On the other side, freshman LG Cordell Volson will make his NFL debut on Sunday, subsequent to acquiring the beginning job in the preseason.
Colson, the group’s fourth-round draft pick, comes from FCS stalwart North Dakota State, where he came out on top for four public titles and played in a program-record 65 games. “I truly love this gathering,” Williams told the media. “I like how well we cooperate. We emerge with a specific brand of sturdiness and solidarity. Our objective as a hostile line is to go cause the guard to feel awful.”
Protectively, the Bengals enter the season with security, as the group’s 11 starters from Super Bowl LVI on Feb. 13 stay unaltered. The cautious line arose as a world-class unit last season when Cincinnati positioned fifth in the NFL against the run (102.5 yards permitted per game). On the edge, 6th-year DE Trey Hendrickson is falling off a Pro Bowl crusade that saw him record 14 sacks, the second-most in a season in group history. The Bengals’ auxiliary elements five veterans that each made critical plays during the postseason hurry to the Super Bowl, and is driven by fifth-year S Jessie Bates III. Bates, who was named the group’s assigned establishment player during the offseason, re-endorsed on Aug. 23 and returned from the Exempt/Commissioner Permission rundown to the dynamic program on Monday.
Sunday will be the 105th matchup between the Bengals and the Steelers. Cincinnati has won its last three against Pittsburgh, which went 9-7-1 of every 2021. And keeping in mind that each game during the normal season brings its own significance, lead trainer Zac Taylor recognized the elevated power of divisional matchups.
“I think each game in this division has that inclination to it,” said Taylor. “Your simplest way to the end of the season games is to be prevailing in your division. It begins Week 1 against a divisional group at home. We must make the most of those open doors. You feel it from our fans, surely. There’s a relationship there that you feel while you’re strolling through the local area.” The series: The Steelers lead 67-38 by and large and 32-21 in Cincinnati.
The series incorporates two postseason games, both Steelers wins in Wild Card round challenges at Paycor Stadium, after the 2005 and ’15 seasons. The Bengals have played more games against the Steelers (105) than some other enemy. Cleveland is second in that class at 97, and Tennessee (previously Houston Oilers) is third at 77.
