3 Winners, 2 Losers in Chargers-Bengals: Young stars propel Bolts to primetime victory

Ladd McConkey and Tuli Tuipulotu both authored big performances to help the Chargers beat the Bengals 34-27 on Sunday Night Football.

The Chargers needed big games from numerous players on Sunday night to make sure they escaped the surging Bengals. Truly, many more names could have been included in this week’s winners and losers, but we decided on two and two.

Let’s go ahead and dive in.

Winners

WR Ladd McConkey

While teammate Quentin Johnston may be scoring the touchdowns, McConkey has continued to be the most-productive receiver on the Chargers as a rookie. It also happens that McConkey’s catches are coming at pivotal moments.

With the score tied at 27-27 and the Chargers offense staring at a clock with 45 seconds left while positioned at their own 16-yard line, McConkey made two massive plays back-to-back to single-handedly get the Chargers into field goal range. The first was a 28-yard grab near the right sideline on a beautiful out-breaking cut. Following the Chargers’ second timeout of the half, Herbert found McConley again on a deep crossing route near the other sideline for another 27 yards which put them at the Bengals 29.

From there, J.K. Dobbins took care of the rest.

McConkey ended the game with six receptions for a career-high 123 yards and has surely solidified himself as the Chargers’ bonafide WR1 for the 2024 season and potentially for years to come.

EDGE Tuli Tuipulotu

After posting two sacks against the Titans a week ago, Tuli followed up that performance with another 1.5 sacks in place of the injured Khalil Mack who missed Sunday night with a lingering groin injury. He also posted two big tackles for loss that helped keep the Bengals behind the chains for most of the night.

After going without a sack through the first six games of the season, Tuli has wracked up all seven of his sacks in the past four games, alone. In that same span, he’s also notched six of his eight total tackles for loss on the year.

In a year where Mack has not posted as many sacks as expected up to this point, it’s been a refreshing scene to see younger players step up when it’s needed most. The Chargers really got a good one in Tuipulotu.

Losers

CB Ja’Sir Taylor

Taylor has had a rough go of it as of late.

Against the Titans a week ago, he was dusted by Calvin Ridley for a 42-yard touchdown. Facing the Bengals on Sunday night, he was one of two players in coverage on Tee Higgins on the massive touchdown that helped bring the Bengals to within a touchdown in the third quarter.

Earlier today, Pro Football Focus dropped their grades from last night’s game and Taylor ended up as the lowest-graded player on the entire team with a 38.9, which included a team-low 37.2 in coverage.

DT Otito Ogbonnia

Tito almost cost the Chargers the game when he was flagged for roughing the passer on a play that ended in an interception for his defense. The former fifth-round pick broke free of a block up the middle and proceeded to take Burrow down just as he got off a pass. Now all of that sounds like a great thing for a defensive lineman to do, but the mistake here was that Tito landed on Burrow with all of his weight.

He did not try to fall to the side or roll off of him immediately in any way. That’s the quickest way to draw a flag when landing a hit on the quarterback in today’s NFL and it nearly cost the Chargers the game. Tito is not a green rookie by any means at this point. He should know the nuance around hitting quarterbacks by now.

I’ve truly felt Tito has been a better player than his PFF grades have suggested in recent weeks, but this one was hard to ignore. He’s got to nip some of these things before they potentiall cause problems in future games with even more at stake.