After last week’s embarrassing loss to the Browns on Monday Night Football, the Bengals bounced back during the short week in a big way. The offense was seemingly unstoppable yesterday after struggling to get anything going last week. With Ja’Marr Chase still out with a hip injury, the offense knew they needed to step up, and one player sticks out more than the rest: Joe Mixon.

Yesterday became the Joe Mixon Show very quickly. 

All season I’ve been writing about how he’s been struggling to get the run game going, and he finally figured it out this week. Although he lit up the field against a less than spectacular defense, it will give him more confidence going into the bye week and hopefully catapult him forward into the back half of the season. Before yesterday’s game, Mixon was having a career low average yards-per-carry, averaging around 3.4 yards-per-carry. He ended the game with 22 carries for 156 yards and four touchdowns, and four receptions for 58 yards and a touchdown. He is the first player in Bengals franchise history to have 5+ receiving/rushing touchdowns in a single game. All of these stats come in only three quarters of the game, as he was benched during the fourth quarter when the Bengals had a 42-7 lead over Carolina. 

Mixon wasn’t the only one contributing to the team on Sunday. Cincinnati’s defense tore the Panthers apart. They finished the game with two interceptions and a fumble recovery, as well as some highly entertaining celebrations following these turnovers. 

The pass game still seemed to struggle without Chase on the field. Joe Burrow threw for a respectable 22-of-28 for 206 yards and a touchdown, while also rushing for one as well. Tee Higgins had seven receptions for 60 yards, Tyler Boyd had five receptions for 44 yards, and Hayden Hurst had five receptions for 35 yards. Before Ja’Marr Chase’s hip injury, Higgins was averaging 75 yards-per-game, including a game where he left early due to a concussion. 

The offensive line played great like they have for most of the season, following a bad game at Cleveland. They only allowed Burrow to be sacked once for the second time this season. Given Mixon’s success on the run, they clearly had great blocks to open gaps for him to run though, helping the overall success of the team. 

If every aspect of this team can click at the same time in the same game, this team can have major success. The inconsistency in this team throughout the season is worrisome, and hopefully after the bye week, they will come out fighting in all aspects of the game.