A FEW MO' THINGS, 10/15/12
Here's an actual free fall that doesn't involve a Cincinnati sports team.
Last Sunday at 1:00, I sat in Paul Brown Stadium ready to watch a 3-1 Bengals team play a home game against a beatable team, just hours after I'd watched the Reds find an improbable way to win their first postseason game in 17 years. There was hope, excitement, giddiness, and an unsaid appreciation for what we hoped would be the golden age of Cincinnati sports.
By 4:00 yesterday, the Reds had blown a series is mildly spectacular fashion and the Bengals had been beaten twice.
What a difference 171 hours makes.
Turn the ball over four times, and you're going to lose.
Mismanage the end of a half and leave points on the field, and you're going to lose.
Leave scoring situations in the hands of referees and clock operators, and you're going to lose.
Fail to consistently get positive yardage in the running game, you're going to lose.
Kick away opportunities in the red zone, you're going to lose.
Commit key penalties in important situations, you're going to lose.
The Bengals did those things. They lost.
I'll give some credit to the Browns, who won a game I've been dreading for weeks. At some point, they were going to beat someone. It was likely to come at home, and it was likely going to come against a team hellbent on giving them game away.
The Bengals gave, the Browns took.
The Cincinnati offense continues to mix the spectacular with the stagnant. Jermaine Gresham beats coverage and goes 55 yards for a touchdown to end one series, then drops a ball on a third down pass to end another. The hit on two touchdowns of over 50 yards, yet had eight drives of three plays or less.
It's maddening.
The defense is just as frustrating. For a long time yesterday, they held their own. From the 9:39 mark in the second quarter until the 5:13 mark in the third, the Browns had seven possessions, ran 23 plays, and gained a grand total of 20 yards. It was the kind of defensive effort that's tough to keep up against even the worst offenses, but that stretch was bracketed by three touchdown drives on 92, 66, and 63 yards.
That ain't gonna work.
And this team's margin for error it too think for them to Bungle situations like the one they jobbed up at the end of the first half. With no timeouts, Andy Dalton's final pass of the half was complete for 25 yards right down the middle of the field. AJ Green couldn't get out of bounds, the Bengals couldn't get to the line of scrimmage quickly enough, and while they should have been give a chance to kick a field goal with :01 left, the Bengals should have managed the clock and situation better.
The Bengals' margin for error is way too small to screw up the small things. Mediocre teams must take advantage of every opportunity.
And make no mistake, the Bengals right now are decidedly mediocre.
The good news is, so is everyone else....
Exactly three teams in the AFC have winning records, and if Denver beats San Diego tonight, we'll have two. The Bengals could be one of seven teams in the conference at 3-3 by the end of the night.
And then there's this....
In a league where unpredictability is the norm, this might be the most unpredictable season ever. I think I would rather give money to one of those Nigerian e-mailer than make a bet on an NFL game right now. I look at this schedule and I see a bunch of games the Bengals could lose. I look at the same schedule and I see a bunch of games the Bengals could win.
I look at the final ten games and I see plenty of capable quarterbacks: Roethlisberger (x2), Peyton and Eli Manning, Carson Palmer, Phillip Rivers, Tony Romo, Mike Vick, and Joe Flacco.
I look at the final ten games and I see opponents who's combined record right now is 23-26. As vaunted as the Bengals remaining schedule might look at first glance, only three games are against teams that currently have winning records.
After six weeks, I have no feel for most of the teams the Bengals have in front of them. That's not a huge problem. But after those six weeks, I have no feel for what the Bengals are either.
That most definitely is.
Outside Perspectives
From ESPN's John Clayton....
The Bengals' 34-24 loss to the Cleveland Browns was the most baffling of the day. Dalton threw for 381 yards, but he's clearly having trouble in the shotgun because of bad blocking.
From Jason Cole of Yahoo!....
Hate to say it, but the Cincinnati Bengals' defense is hideous. Yeah, one of the touchdowns allowed Sunday by the Bengals in a loss to the Cleveland Browns came on an interception return. But the Bengals have allowed 27 or more points in four of six games. The only teams they have stopped are Jacksonville, which has the worst offense in the league, and Miami, which won with a rookie quarterback.
From Clark Judge of CBS Sports....
Sorry, but I can't see Cincinnati going to the top of the AFC North anymore -- not after the past two weeks. The Bengals had to take advantage of the first half of the schedule, with a six-game swing that looked easy, and they screwed the pooch -- going 3-3, thanks to back-to-back losses to Miami and Cleveland. Now, look at their next three games -- Pittsburgh, Denver and the New York Giants -- and tell me why we should believe they'll be OK.
From my favorite NFL writer, whom I agree with here 10000000%
Why does the NFL kick extra points anymore?
Through the Sunday night game, the 90th game of the season, kickers had made 429 of 430 extra points this year.
Since the opening days of 2010, including playoffs, kickers have made 2,976 extra points out of 2,996 attempted -- 99.3 percent -- in 624 games. Twenty misses in 624 games. That means an extra point has been missed, on average, once every 31-and-a-quarter games. What exactly is the purpose of making fans, TV viewers and bored special teams go through the motions of 45 seconds spotting, lining up and booting a 19-yard kick through the uprights? It's anachronistic. It's a waste of time for everyone.
Some coaches, most recently Bill Belichick in 2011, have railed against the meaninglessness of the extra point. I think it's time for the Competition Committee to discuss during committee meetings next spring a good alternative. Either move the line of scrimmage for the extra point back to the 25-yard line, or force teams to go for two after a touchdown, or force teams to dropkick the extra point, the way the Patriots did with Doug Flutie in the last game of the 2005 season. But it's time to do something.
-The Cardinals advancing to the NLCS was a nice kick to the nuts to Reds fans who were still writing in pain after beaten punched in the gut Thursday. But at least the home team didn't do this.
-Bobby Knight will call SEC games this season, which means he'll call some UK games, just not UK home games. That, as pointed out here, is a farce.
-Ladies and gentlemen, the worst football uniforms of the season....
-I may be the only person in Cincinnati who's still watching the baseball playoffs. Yesterday afternoon I watched the Yankees' hitters do their best Houston Astros impression and I watched the second base umpire butcher a call. An argument ensued. In the amount of time it took Joe Girardi to come out and yell at the ump, they could've watched replay and quickly reverse the call.
Baseball not using replay is like someone insisting on using a road map instead of a GPS.
-This post is non-sports related and mildly political, but it's dead-on.
-I've listened to a lot of sports-talk radio since the Reds' season ended. I hosted three hours on Saturday. I hear plenty of different types of phone calls. I take it as a point of pride that my callers on Saturday were some of the most level-headed I've heard since the meltdown.
Help me with this though, on different shows I've heard variations of people blaming fans. Either we're too negative, too positive, not supportive enough, too blindly loyal, or we didn't gobble up every available ticket even though some games were necessitated less than 24 hours before they were played.
(By the way, there were large pockets of empty seats at both Yankee Stadium and AT&T Park this weekend)
Since when did a team's failure fall at the feet of the fans. Help me with this via email.
-More later, including #MoHawkMonday at 3:04 today on ESPN1530. Here's an aroused weather man.
