Joe Burrow is right to be alarmed about Bengals' mistakes vs. Eagles

Thursday night felt like 2024, with Joe Burrow leading impressive scoring drives when he had the ball, but the Cincinnati Bengals coming up short on the scoreboard.

Burrow went 9-of-10 passing for 123 yards and two touchdowns on his only two drives in the Bengals' 34-27 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles in front of 69,879 fans at Lincoln Financial Field.

The Bengals' offense wasn't perfect during those first two drives. Cincinnati offensive lineman Lucas Patrick was called for a chop block that took away a touchdown pass from Burrow to wide receiver Ja'Marr Chase on the first drive.

Following the game, Burrow told reporters he and the offense could have been better against the defending Super Bowl champion's second-string defense.

"I wouldn't say I didn't like anything," Burrow said via Bengals.com. "I think for myself I could have been better. I missed the first throw. I put all the other ones where I wanted to put them. I would've liked to have spun it a little better consistently today. But we had scored two touchdowns, so go learn from a couple reps and get better...

"We got to be better. Too many procedural penalties, too many errors. Things like that are going to happen, but I think it just wasn't clean enough across the board."

Burrow is right that the first-team offense needs to be better, because the defense doesn't appear to have improved much from the unit that gave up the eighth-most points a season ago.

The Bengals' first-team defense gave up 10 points on their opening two drives to the Philadelphia Eagles' second-team offense led by quarterback Tanner McKee.

Cincinnati head coach Zac Taylor claimed that part of the issue with the starting defense was that they played a basic scheme, trying not to tip their hand before the regular season.

"Well, obviously defense, we're trying not to show a lot of what's going on, so we're trying to keep it as little as possible and let guys win some one-on-ones," Taylor said. "And today there were a lot of 50-50 plays that I thought Philly made, especially early in the game that gave them some extended drives there."

The problem with the Bengals' defense on Thursday night was that their starters did not win enough one-on-ones against a second-team offense. And they could look much worse facing starters when the regular season begins next month.

With a liability at defense, Burrow will have to be near perfect to qualify for the playoffs in 2025. It's a good thing that the first team received extra reps in the preseason this year so that they can hopefully get in rhythm before September.