The Bengals Need to Dominate a Game They Have No Business Losing Following Jeffery Simmons Trade

James Rapien (0:00)

It's Bengals, it's Titans, it's a huge game for Cincinnati. And yes, I get it on paper, the Bengals should handle business. I'll explain right now on Cincinnati Bengals Talk.

Hi again, everyone, and welcome in to CBT. I'm James Rapien of bengalstalk.com. Hit that subscribe button, ring the bell, join the 69,000. Feelin nicey like John Gruden, Bengals fans that have hit that subscribe button. And let's dive in because boy, oh boy, do the Bengals need to get a win on Sunday and they need to get a win in the how matters. Sometimes the how doesn't matter, the how matters on Sunday, because if they go out there and they win 20 to 17 and they squeak by Cam Ward and the Tennessee Titans, well, guess what you're gonna have to say? See James, they are not a contender. They barely beat the lifeless, hapless, one-win Tennessee Titans. The Tennessee Titans that just traded their best player, more on that in a bit. The Tennessee Titans that are 0-4 at home, the Tennessee Titans that started the season 0-5 in our last place in the worst division in football, arguably the AFC South. Yeah, the how matters. There's no doubt about it, the how matters. I cannot get past that, especially after the Jeffrey Simmons part of this. Jeffrey Simmons gets traded on Thursday to the Chicago Bears. And I got to be honest, once that deal happened, it was like, that was the path for the Titans to win. That was it. I was going to come on here and I'll give you what today would have been like at Jeffrey Simmons not gotten traded. You ready?

Look, the Bengals have won two straight games. They're rolling going into this Tennessee game. They can build off of that first or that second half against the Baltimore Ravens. The key is not letting Jeffrey Simmons wreck the game. That would have been it. It would have been that. You would have heard me say, wreck the game, wreck the game, wreck the game. Guess what? Now you did.

That was the path for the Titans to get a victory. Is they muck it up with Tennessee and Jeffrey Simmons just hits Joe, and he's getting after Joe and is shutting down the run game. The Titans get out to an early lead. Maybe they force a turnover. They take the air out of the ball a bit on offense. Tony Pollard gets going and he ran for three touchdowns last week. That's still certainly a concern, but that element of it, combined with Jeffrey Simmons, and then Cam Ward finds his tight end a few times. Gunnar Helm, who's been just awful for the Titans, goes off because the Bengals can't cover a tight end. Some of those things can still happen, but the path to victory revolved to me around Jeffrey Simmons dominating on the interior of that Titans defensive front. Like there's a reason Ted Carras in the lock room on Thursday is like, yeah, I'm going to sleep a little better.

And yeah, you know why? Because Jeffrey Simmons is a MF man. He's a bad dude. There's a reason they gave up two first round picks for him. There's a reason they did basically a pick, swap fourth and fifth round for him. What value for Dexter Lawrence? What value for sexy Dexter Lawrence? Boy, oh boy, I'm surprised.

I'm surprised that no one else had the foresight. And the Bengals deserve a ton of credit, because Dexter Lawrence's stock was nowhere near Jeffrey Simmons's.

And if you would have told me two first rounders for Max Crosby or two first rounders for Jeffrey Simmons, which one would you rather have this off season? I would have said Simmons. There's no doubt. So I'm not knocking the Bears in the price they paid. I think it's worth it. It's worth the swing.

But the Bengals got a run stuffing bigger nose tackle that has clearly shown that he has plenty of pass rush juice for his size for one first round pick, for one first round pick. And we posted the entire video and audio of Joe Burrow on Wednesday, and he hit on this. So make sure you check that out. But, man, I'm a shameless plug that wherever you get your podcast as well as on YouTube, it makes sure you check that out and listen because I thought it was cool how Joe mentioned that. Like, yeah, we got a player of that caliber for only one first round pick. And then a day later, Jeffrey Simmons traded for two first rounders. So who knows? Maybe that's some hope that the Bengals can be opportunistic and get another deal right. So that's one. The other element of this game before we get into my prediction, you want to, and I'm going to read Cam Ward's stats for you. All right. And Cam Ward's stats.