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Joe Buck Destroyed Bengals With Brutally Honest Message At End of Loss to Broncos
The Bengals suffered another ugly loss on the road Monday night, falling to the Broncos 28-3 in a game that never felt even close to that lopsided final score. Cincinnati has now lost two straight without Joe Burrow and its season could quickly be falling apart after just four games.
The loss to the Broncos was an embarrassing one for Zac Taylor's group, which has been outscored 76-13 in its last two games. Here's one stat that shows just how bad it went for them: the Bengals had more penalties (11) than first downs (9). That's not great!
Joe Buck broke down the Bengals' struggles in brutally honest fashion while the Broncos were closing it out with a few kneel downs in the final minutes.
"If you're Zac Taylor, you're gonna have to find a way to hold this thing together," Buck said. "They've got more penalties than first downs tonight. There were pre-snap penalties, there were defensive penalties that were just crushing. ... If you've got Jake Browning at quarterback, you cannot play a game like this around him with all the mistakes and expect to compete. And they just frankly after their first possession, didn't compete."
Hard to find anything wrong in those words
Then just for good measure, Troy Aikman delivered another crushing blow to the Bengals, saying: "This has been an embarrassing effort by the Cincinnati Bengals."
Here's that moment:
Joe Buck and Troy Aikman didn't sugarcoat their recap of the Bengals' performance.
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) September 30, 2025
"They've got more penalties than first downs tonight...they just frankly, after their first possession, didn't compete."
"This has been an embarrassing effort by the Cincinnati Bengals." pic.twitter.com/YeSzAzsWpY
Things don't get any easier for the Bengals going forward as they host the Lions in Week 5 and then face the Packers and Steelers after that.
They better get things figured out in a hurry or their season could be all but over in just a few weeks.
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Andy Nesbitt is the assistant managing editor of audience engagement at Sports Illustrated. He works closely with the Breaking and Trending News team to shape SI’s daily coverage across all sports. A 20-year veteran of the sports media business, he has worked for Fox Sports, For the Win, The Boston Globe and NBC Sports, having joined SI in February 2023. Nesbitt is a golf fanatic who desperately wants to see the Super Bowl played on a Saturday night.