A FEW MO' THINGS, 12/24/12
Let me get this straight....
The Bengals, long one of the NFL’s laughingstock franchises and the source of so many of my frustrations as a sports fan, fielded a team yesterday that played a critical game on the road against the Steelers, the team that normally treats the Bengals like they’re the slutty office assistant – not very seriously and only when they need entertaining – and scored a grand total of zero offensive touchdowns while committing two debilitating turnovers, all the while their coach exhibited almost-hallucinogenic decision-making…
….and they won?
The Bengals? Beat the Steelers? On the road? In what amounted to a must-win? After doing everything they could to give it away?
That really happened?
The Bengals, in their history have won games that carried bigger stakes. God knows they’ve played better, and they’ve undeniably had victories that didn’t include some of the downright silly coaching moves that accompanied yesterday’s win, but I can’t recall a more emotionally-draining, tense, and all-around gratifying win since I’ve been rooting for this franchise.
I still can’t believe they won.
Admit it, with 3:16 to, after the insane decision to have Josh Brown try a 56-yard field goal, the questions were no longer about whether the Bengals would win or lose, but whether you’d stick around to see the game end and how many broken household items would be left in your way when the game ended. The script might have been different, but the story familiar, the Bengals losing the kind of the game the Bengals only lose, in such a Bengals way to lose.
Only the Bengals didn’t lose.
If Marvin Lewis was the hideous-looking chick that looks like her face was rolled over by a tank, Mike Tomlin was her uglier, heavier friend with hints of facial hair that she tags along with when she goes out to meet guys. Mike saw Marvin’s 4th and 22 (dumb), and his 56-yard field goal (dumber), and Jay Gruden’s third and one deep pass play (dumbest) and first countered with a long field goal of his own, the raised the ante by not playing for overtime and having Ben Roethlisberger and the shaky Steelers offense try to drive down the field after starting at their own 11.
It was like Marvin and Mike agreed to share each other’s playoff money, but that neither actually wanted to earn said playoff money.
The coaching decisions highlighted the day, but didn’t dominate it. The best Bengals defense of my lifetime was incredible yesterday, not just because of Pittsburgh’s ineptitude, and not just because of sacks, pressures, the pick-six, or Reggie Nelson’s Immaculate Interception (raise your hand if you’re tired of hearing about Franco F’ing Harris and Frenchy F’ing Fuqua), but because of how many times they had to come up absolutely huge after their offense came up with absolutely nothing.
Time and again, after failed drives, with the next Steelers score looming as potentially game and season ending, the Bengals stopped them. In some of the most pressure-filled situations this defense has ever faced, they came up big. Every. Single. Time.
This is a legitimately great defense, with a front four led by a guy in Geno Atkins who was simply unblockable yesterday, and a secondary that barely resembles the unit we watched during the first half of the season. The Bengals will face an uphill battle wherever they go in the playoffs, but this D will give them a puncher’s chance against anyone.
So will AJ Green.
Yes, AJ owned one of the game’s biggest mistakes, but he also had the season’s biggest catch, the 21-yard haul that set up Josh Brown’s game winner. AJ Green, you might conclude, is pretty good.
So are Josh Brown and Kevin Huber.
Yes, Josh Brown should own the kicking job. No, that’s not an overreaction. Neither is it to say that Kevin Huber was the best and most important
And it’s no overreaction to call yesterday’s win one of the most gratifying ever.
Sure, it would’ve been great for the Bengals to go to Heinz Field and roll over the Steelers. It would’ve been fun to watch the Bengals grind out the clock in the final quarter and it would’ve been enjoyable to watch Andy Dalton take a knee a few times while those ugly yellow seats emptied out, but winning they way they did, while not necessarily good for anything within throwing distance of the remote, was both extraordinarily satisfying and oddly appropriate.
The Steelers are the team against whom nothing comes easy, and if the Bengals are ever going to be the kind of team we want them to, beating the Steelers, and in some respects, becoming more like the Steelers, will be mandatory. It’d be a stretch the say that the Bengals have accomplished either, but at some point, they were going to have to win games like yesterday’s, even if it meant winning games like yesterday’s.
And if the Bengals will ever get to where most of us want them to go, they’ll have to exorcise some demons and wash away some frustrations on the way. Josh Brown’s ball going through the uprights felt like both an exorcism and a cleansing.
We’ve seen the Bengals lose so many different types of ways, and we’ve seen them lose so often to the Steelers that the mere idea of them winning that game, against that team, in that stadium, in that manner, with that much on the line, is still pretty hard to believe.
Maybe it’s time to start believing something else.
-It is a lot more fun to worry about things like frontcourt scoring, poor free-throw shooting, a propensity for shooting too many threes, depth, playing time, the offensive inefficiency of big men, the best player’s shot selection, poor offensive flow in the halfcourt, and other nagging issues when your team is sitting there with a 12-0 record.
The Bearcats are fun to watch, and they’ve got a team with a chance for a special season, and public momentum (9,200+ on Saturday) is building, but they’re not a team without some issues.
Don’t let the winning obscure flaws. And don’t let use inevitable losses to come (I know, it’s very un-21st Century to acknowledge looming imperfection), as a reason amplify them.
-When I think of Ryan Freel, I don’t think of how hard he played. I don’t think of how overaggressive he could be on the base paths or how he sometimes recklessly chased down balls in the outfield. I don’t think of how dirty his uniform would be, even in the early innings. I don’t think about how he was such a memorable player on some otherwise forgettable Reds teams. I don’t think about baseball at all.
I think about a 36 year-old man, with so many of life’s possibilities in front of him. I think of a father and a husband, leaving an unconscionable amount of grief behind him.
I think of despair, and I wonder how sad and helpless one must feel to take their life.
I think of the head trauma he suffered, and I wonder what could’ve been done medically to minimize the damage.
I think of the people who came and went from his life. I wonder who wasn’t there for him in his moments of need and I wonder how lonely he felt. I wonder who might have abandoned or betrayed him. I wonder why he felt as if he had no one to turn to.
I don’t think of the ballplayer, because ballplayers are supposed to make us happy. I think of a man, a tortured soul, and a suicide that’s just left me feeling very, very, sad.
