Rich’s Top Takeaways from the Cincinnati Bengals’ Week 1 Win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Look at the final score of Bengals and Buccaneers and you will draw the wrong conclusion. Cincinnati escaped with a win. Drill down into how, and the game gets strange.

"Who had on their bingo card the Bengals winning Week 1 because their defense won it for them?" Rich asked.

Nobody did. That is the point.

Tampa Bay fumbled on three straight possessions, and Cincinnati recovered fumbles on three consecutive defensive drives in the first half. The last time this team did that was 2007, in a season opener against the Ravens.

The Bengals built a 17 point lead off it, and then it got real tight, which is the part that keeps this from being a clean story for either side.

Eventually Joe Burrow, Ja'Marr Chase and Tee Higgins did their jobs, with Higgins making an all world catch on the final first down that put the thing away. Chase Brown looked good too. But the takeaway Rich wanted Cincinnati fans to sit with is the one they have been begging for.

You wanted the defense to be better. There it is. This is a unit that could not generate takeaways last season if its life depended on it.

For Tampa Bay, the taste is bitter precisely because the game was winnable. Baker Mayfield did not dodge it afterward.

"This one falls on me," Mayfield said. "They had I think 17 points alone off my turnovers. Turns out to be a one score game, six points. Offensively, it's frustrating when you do something like that, when you're moving the ball up and down the field. But if we get that fixed, I get that fixed, make those corrections, and we'll be all right."

The timing is what makes it sting. Mayfield signed a big contract and then produced his first multiple fumble game since joining the team in the first game under it.

Rich is treating it as an outlier rather than a trend. He also suspects the offense needs time to sort itself out without Mike Evans. The pieces around it looked fine. Chris Godwin was good. Hurst caught three straight on one of the final drives. Bucky Irving looked really good, though he fumbled as well, which was sort of the theme.

Clean up the turnovers, get the defense going, and the Buccaneers are fine. It is one game. And the schedule offers immediate motivation, because Cleveland is next, and Mayfield will want to handle his business against the team that drafted him.

Rich had a closing message for him, and it was two words.

"Go blue."

The desk objected that this was messed up. Rich pointed out that Mayfield brought up the Michigan and Oklahoma business himself the last time he was on the show, so the door is open.

Nobody is safe, either. Rich noted that every Sooner is getting a piece of this, including Stacey Dales, and that even the sweet Canadians on the staff need their heads on a swivel.