CINCINNATI (AP) — The Joe Burrow-to-Ja’Marr Chase connection reignited the Cincinnati Bengals offense in a confidence-building win last week. Now they’ll try to string together two of them when the Seattle Seahawks come to town, to be followed by a bye week for Cincinnati. The Seahawks have won three straight after losing the opener and are coming off their bye week. Burrow shook off the lingering effects of a calf injury to throw three touchdown passes to Chase in the 34-20 win over the Cardinals. Chase’s 15 catches set a Bengals single-game record.
Kickoff is 1 p.m. ET on Oct. 15 at Paycor Stadium.
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Who: Bengals vs. Seahawks
When: 1 p.m. ET on Oct. 15
Where: Paycor Stadium
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With QB Joe Burrow mobile again, the Bengals want to build momentum against 3-1 Seahawks
By MITCH STACY AP Sports Writer
CINCINNATI (AP) — Ja’Marr Chase says he’s been getting open all season.
Even during the first three games, as injured quarterback Joe Burrow struggled to get the Bengals’ pass game on track, Chase claimed to be like the 7-Eleven convenience store — always open.
The Burrow-to-Chase connection — it’s been a thing since they played together at LSU and won a national championship in the 2019 season — produced three touchdowns and reignited the Bengals last week in a 34-20 confidence-building win over the Arizona Cardinals.
Burrow looked far more comfortable scrambling and throwing. His lack of mobility had been a struggle all season with the lingering effects of a strained calf muscle. He said Wednesday that it’s “pretty close” to being 100% healed.
Now the Bengals have a chance to win two in a row, go into the bye week at .500 and try to keep building momentum on the other side. Cincinnati hosts the well-rested Seattle Seahawks (3-1) on Sunday.
After a loss in the season opener at home against the Los Angeles Rams, the Seahawks have won three straight before their bye week behind some first- and second-year players making major contributions as well as 33-year-old quarterback Geno Smith.
“It was a great break. Hopefully we can maximize the opportunity coming out of it,” Seattle coach Pete Carroll said. “I’m concerned about that. We have to do a really good job about being on the details and the discipline that it takes to make sure that we get back on track because it’s just not automatic that everything is exactly the same as when you left it.”
BEEN THERE, DONE THAT
Last season, Cincinnati lost the first two and was 4-4 before winning the next 10 games and the AFC North title.
“We’ll worry about the standings later in the year,” Burrow said Wednesday. “It’s Week 6. The standings after Week 6 mean absolutely nothing. I think we’ve proven that the last couple of years, and so we’ve just got to focus on being 1-0 this week and getting better every day in practice. We’ll go from there.”
GETTING HEALTHY
Most teams don’t like having a bye early in the season, but for Seattle it fell at a terrific time for getting some players healthy.
Left tackle Charles Cross (toe) and right guard Phil Haynes (calf) both have a chance of returning. Cross has been out since getting hurt in the third quarter of Seattle’s Week 1 loss and injuries to the offensive line have left the Seahawks scrambling to fill spots at times.
It will also help on defense. Safety Jamal Adams and cornerback Tre Brown have both been cleared to return from concussions. Defensive tackle Jarran Reed left the Week 4 win with a shin injury but is expected to play.
The only two defensive players that remain a question for Seattle are reserve defensive backs Coby Bryant (toe) and Artie Burns (hamstring), while left guard Damien Lewis (ankle) is uncertain on offense.
CHASING CHASE
Chase’s 15 catches last week broke a single-game team record that stood since 1998. He became just the fifth player in NFL history to have at least 15 catches, 150 receiving yards and three receiving TDs in a single game. At 23, he became the fourth player in league history under age 24 to have 15 receptions in a game. Chase’s first TD last week was his 200th reception.
Seattle receiver DK Metcalf was duly impressed, but he likes the chances of rookie cornerback Devon Witherspoon to keep Chase in check. Witherspoon is one of the top rookies in the NFL. He had a 97-yard pick-6 in the win over the Giants and also has four pass breakups and two sacks.
” Just the long ball that Burrow threw to (Chase) on like a 70-yard bomb, just how effortlessly he caught the ball,” Metcalf said. “He’s just a great receiver, tip my hat off to him with what he has done his first three years in the league. It’ll be fun to watch Sunday, but I think (Witherspoon) will get the best of him.”
HIGGINS, AWUZIE QUESTIONABLE
Receiver Tee Higgins (ribs) and cornerback Chidobe Awuzie (back) are day to day. Both missed the game last week. Trenton Irwin took Higgins’ place in the starting lineup and had the best game of his career with eight catches for 60 yards.
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AP Sports Writer Tim Booth in Seattle contributed.
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AP NFL coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/NFL
Burrow and the Bengals hope to win back-to-back games when they host the Seattle Seahawks
By The Associated Press undefined
SEATTLE (3-1) at CINCINNATI (2-3)
Sunday, 1 p.m. EDT, CBS
BETTING LINE: Bengals by 2 1/2, according to FanDuel Sportsbook.
AGAINST THE SPREAD: Seattle 3-1; Cincinnati 1-3-1
SERIES RECORD: Bengals lead 11-10.
LAST MEETING: Seahawks beat Bengals 21-20 at Seattle on Sept. 8, 2019.
LAST WEEK: Seahawks beat Giants 24-3 on Oct. 2; Bengals beat Cardinals 34-20.
SEAHAWKS OFFENSE: OVERALL (19), RUSH (17), PASS (16), SCORING (6)
SEAHAWKS DEFENSE: OVERALL (24), RUSH (6), PASS (30), SCORING (19)
BENGALS OFFENSE: OVERALL (31), RUSH (31), PASS (25), SCORING (T27)
BENGALS DEFENSE: OVERALL (21), RUSH (31), PASS (10), SCORING (T20)
TURNOVER DIFFERENTIAL: Seahawks plus-5; Bengals plus-4.
SEAHAWKS PLAYER TO WATCH: RB Kenneth Walker III. It’s been a somewhat slow start to Walker’s second season, but he has a chance to break out in a big way against a Bengals defense that ranks 31st in the league at stopping the run.
BENGALS PLAYER TO WATCH: Joe Burrow’s calf injury has healed enough that the young quarterback was scrambling and throwing downfield again. He had trouble doing that in the first three games and the Bengals never could get going offensively. Burrow completed 78.3% of his passes last week for three touchdowns — all to Ja’Marr Chase — in Cincinnati’s 34-20 win over the Cardinals.
KEY MATCHUP: Will Seattle be able to replicate its record-setting performance two weeks ago against the Giants and overwhelm Burrow and the Bengals offense? Seattle tied a franchise record with 11 sacks in the victory over the Giants after the Seahawks managed just five sacks in the first three games. Seattle was able to take advantage of a depleted offensive line and made New York’s offense stagnant. The Bengals have been pretty good at keeping Burrow upright despite his limitations dealing with his calf injury. The Bengals have allowed 11 sacks on the season.
KEY INJURIES: Seahawks CB Coby Bryant (toe), CB Artie Burns (hamstring), G Damien Lewis (ankle), WR DK Metcalf (ribs) were out at practice, S Jamal Adams (concussion) had limited participation.; Bengals WR Tee Higgins (ribs) and CB Chidobe Awuzie (back) were limited participants in practice Thursday, linebacker Akeem Davis-Gaither (knee) was held out.
SERIES NOTES: The Bengals have won three of the past five games in the series. They also lead 7-5 in all games played in Cincinnati, including 2-0 at Paycor Stadium (formerly Paul Brown Stadium). Seattle won the most recent meeting 21-20 in the 2019 regular-season opener at Lumen Field (then called CenturyLink Field). The teams have met once in the postseason, when Seattle was playing in the AFC. The Bengals beat the Seahawks 21-13 in a 1988 divisional round game at Cincinnati’s Riverfront Stadium on the way to Super Bowl 23.
STATS AND STUFF: The Seahawks have not won in Cincinnati since 1993, losing their past two trips there in 2003 and 2015. … Seahawks are 23-9 in their past 32 games that kick off at 10 a.m. PT, including wins in 15 of the past 18. … QB Geno Smith has posted a 107.9 passer rating in his past 10 road starts. During that time, Smith has thrown 18 touchdowns against five interceptions. … Rookie WR Jaxon Smith-Njigba has struggled to get involved in the offense. The first-rounder has just 12 receptions for 62 yards and no touchdowns. He had three catches for 5 yards against the Giants. … The Seahawks tied a franchise record with 11 sacks in Week 4. They were the first team in the league to have 11 sacks in a game since 2018. … LB Bobby Wagner, LB Jordyn Brooks, CB Devon Witherspoon and DE Uchenna Nwosu all had two sacks in that game. … Wagner had 17 tackles vs. the Giants, his second game this season with at least 17 tackles. … Witherspoon was the NFC defensive player of the week after Week 4. Along with the sacks, Witherspoon had seven tackles and returned an interception 97 yards for a touchdown. It was the second-longest interception return in team history. … The Bengals look to be turning the corner after struggling to score in the first three games. Burrow is moving well again after trying to play through the lingering effects of a strained calf suffered early in training camp. … The Cincinnati defense finally showed up in last week’s win although missed tackles were still a problem. … Cam Taylor-Britt had an 11-yard pick-6 in the Cardinals’ first series after Cincinnati failed on fourth-and-short from the Arizona goal line. … WR Ja’Marr Chase’s 15 receptions broke the single-game franchise record. He finished with 192 yards and three TDs. … WR Trenton Irwin had a career-high eight catches for 60 yards last week filling in for the injured Tee Higgins. … The Bengals are second to last in the NFL with 74.6 rushing yards per game. Only the Raiders are worse (71.4). … Burrow and Chase opened the second half of Sunday’s game with a 63-yard TD, the Bengals’ longest scoring pass of the season. … According to NFL’s Next Gen Stats, Burrow’s pass traveled 58.1 yards in the air, the most of any TD pass of his career. … It was also Burrow’s 18th career TD pass of 40 or more yards, the most by any QB since he entered the league in 2020.
FANTASY TIP: Cincinnati RB Joe Mixon ran for a season-high 81 yards last week, and the Bengals will continue pushing to establish the run game with their No. 1 back.
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AP NFL coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/NFL
Seahawks looking to keep pressure on QBs after 11-sack performance
By TIM BOOTH AP Sports Writer
RENTON, Wash. (AP) — One after another, the pressure came in waves.
Defensive linemen, linebackers and defensive backs all getting involved to the point that when the game ended, the Seattle Seahawks had put together a record performance.
No one expects the Seahawks to have 11 sacks in a game with any sort of regularity as they did in Week 4 against the New York Giants.
It was just the second time in franchise history that Seattle had 11 sacks in a game and the first time for any NFL team since 2018.
And that lofty number included six of the 11 sacks coming from cornerback Devon Witherspoon and linebackers Bobby Wagner and Jordyn Brooks, all of whom had two each.
But there are aspects of what happened against the Giants that the Seahawks believe can be repeated moving forward, beginning with Sunday’s game at Cincinnati.
“A lot of it is just the guys being around each other and playing with each other. A lot of it is our first opportunities to run some games and do some different things together,” Wagner said.
“As you do it more and more, you understand how somebody likes to do it, you understand how you can trust the person to do it and I think that’s what’s happened over the last four games.”
Seattle enters this week fifth in the league in sacks with 16, but the numbers are so heavily eschewed by the eye-popping total against the Giants that the number doesn’t necessarily represent pass-rush success.
What Seattle wants is to find a balance between a total that’s rarely obtainable such as the game against New York and the first two games of the season when Seattle managed zero sacks of Matthew Stafford in the opener and just two of Jared Goff in Week 2.
“We should be able to affect the quarterback consistently with who we have,” Seattle defensive coordinator Clint Hurtt said.
Seattle’s pass rush flashed at times last season, but the consistency in getting pressure on the quarterback had its ups and downs. Seattle was 7-1 last season in games where it had three or more sacks and 2-7 in games where it failed to reach that mark. Uchenna Nwosu and Darrell Taylor each had 9½ sacks to lead Seattle last season, but only one other player had more than five and the Seahawks’ pressure rate — QB hits, hurries and sacks — ranked in the middle of the league.
As part of the effort to boost the rush, Seattle hired BT Jordan as a pass rush specialist coach in the offseason.
“We’ve never really had a guy that’s specialized in pass rush, so it’s a new experience for us. He’s got a wealth of knowledge about it, he’s got a great way of connecting with the players,” Seattle coach Pete Carroll said.
“They hover around him to try to find out what he’s going to tell them next. It’s a nice part of our scheme and it’s nice to see that we’ve really picked up in these last couple of weeks.”
Wagner noted that he specifically spent time working with Jordan the week leading into the Giants game.
“I’ve probably been coached some of those things he’s teaching, but the way that he communicates it helps me understand exactly what I need to do so that when I’m in the game, I’m not thinking about it,” Wagner said. “I’m trusting my movements and trusting what we’ve practiced. That’s been the biggest thing.”
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AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl
The Associated Press contributed to this article
