ONE MO' THING, 9/19/11 EDITION
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A BENGALS MO-MENT, 9/19/11 EDITION
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THE RUNDOWN
You think that it is, it isn't that it isn't.
Guests
3:04 - Marvin Lewis
3:20 - Artrell Hawkins
5:50 - Dave Lapham
Topics
The Bengals. The Broncos. And glimmers of hope.
Is Steve Beuerlein still talking about AJ Green's TD?
Do we still need Carson Palmer updates?
Kicking or going...Marvin's big decision.
Plus we'll go around the NFL with Artrell and we'll delve into what's next for UC in the ever-shifting landscape of college sports. Joine me today at 3:04 on ESPN1530.
And while you're at it, sign up for two contests...
1) A VIP experience for our final Reds watch parrty next Tuesday at Dave and Busters
2) A chance to win a "Top Ten Players of All-Time" DVD from Showtime.
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A FEW MO THINGS, 9/19/11 EDITION
(Photo courtesy of Jeff Swinger/Cincinnati.com)
Programming Notes: You and I on ESPN1530 today. We have Marvin Lewis' news conference at 3:04, and Artrell Hawkins with me in studio all afternoon. Dave Lapham joins me from Bengals Line at 5:50.
The idea in sports, namely professional sports, is to win. The Bengals didn't do that yesterday. The idea isn't to have your defense easily shredded on the game's opening drive. The idea isn't to commit seven penalties, have a game-changing passes dropped, or to go one for 11 on third down. The idea is to convert on critical fourth and ones. The idea is to take a weakened opponent, playing short at major positions and surrounded by quarterback controversy, and beat them. In pro sports, very little matters except the score and who's on the winning side of it.
Yesterday's loss to the Broncos was heartbreaking, and the game's developments frustrating, but forming an opinion on what happened in Denver requires you to have actually watched the game because while the Bengals suffered a tough loss, you simply cannot ignore what we saw from Andy Dalton and his two biggest targets.
The redhead, in his first full NFL game, hardly looked green. He made throws beyond his years, delivering the ball perfectly on nearly every second-half completion, including the touchdown catch that Steve Beuerlein still can't believe was ruled a touchdown.
(Angry Bob Huggins fans have a easier time letting go than the CBS announcers did of that fact that Green's superb catch was a touchdown.)
He showed total command of the Bengals' offense and looked in complete control of his team, showing a poise and unflappability beyond his years. He showed no sign of panic, and you never got the sense that the game or pressure were too big for him. Dalton showed the confidence and control of a seasoned veteran on a team, and an offense, without many of them.
And he looked like he'd been playing with AJ for years. Dalton and Green connected ten times for 124 yards and that touchdown that Beuerlein is still probably bitching about. This season is about a lot of things, but how the chemistry between the team's first two draft picks is highest on the list. After season after season of watching players who'd been teammates for years struggle to get on the same page, it was refreshing to see Andy and AJ connect like they'd been together forever.
And it was refreshing to see some yards-after-catch. Jerome Simpson might have had more YAC on his 84-yard grab than any Bengals wideout had all last season. Simpson was hardly perfect...many of us surely went to bed thinking about his key fourth quarter drop....but he was at least productive, fitting the bill of Andy's complimentary weapon.
It's one game, and yet another loss, one that certainly stings and that we'll most definitely look back on as an opportunity lost if the Bengals end up being relevant late. But after watching the Andy, AJ, and Jerome show, Monday morning doesn't seem quite as deflating as it normally does.
-While I wrote that, Rey Maualuga missed two more tackles.
-With 3:09 to go, down 24-22, Marvin Lewis elected to go for it on fourth and one from the Denver 36 instead of having Mike Nugent try a 53 yard field goal. I wouldn't have started demolishing stuff in my house had they kicked, but I don't have much issue with going for it.
Nugent is 5 for 13 from 50+, and while the thin Denver air usually aides kickers, that's hardly a gimmie. The Bengals had time to get the ball back (which they did), two timeouts to burn (which they did), and had moved the ball effectively enough to feel confident in their ability to get the required yard. Trying the kick might have been the safer play, but it was a gamble worth taking.
The issue I have is with the play call...using play action is getting a little too cute. Load up, up front, hand it to Ced, move the chains, and continue the drive.
-Cedric Benson needed new pants yesterday.
From Joe Reedy....
There were enough missed opportunities in this game to last a season and considering the fact that this came against a Denver squad that was reeling injuries, this one could be one of the more frustrating losses of Marvin Lewis’ tenure. Andy Dalton and the young receiving corps grew up on Sunday but the fact remains that they are 1-1.
From Mike Chambers of The Denver Post...
Cincinnati's top two rookies delivered like veterans Sunday.
Wide receiver A.J. Green and quarterback Andy Dalton were selected fourth and 35th, respectively, in the 2011 draft — but both looked like perennial NFL stars despite a 24-22 loss to the Broncos.
From Jerome Simpson....
ESPN.com's Jamison Hensley....
There is no doubt that Dalton has the look and composure of a successful quarterback. Still, it's only his second start. Let's see how he holds up against the Ravens and Steelers instead of the injury-stricken Denver defense.
And since we just can't quit Carson Palmer, whom I certainly didn't miss yesterday, here's Peter King...
I think, just to set the record straight, Carson Palmer never went back to Cincinnati during training camp to plead for his job back, or to plead for them to deal him. Neither did his agent, David Dunn. Nothing's changed there: Palmer wants to play, but not for Cincinnati.
I do not see that changing this season, unless the Bengals choose to trade him before the Week 6 trading deadline. The only way that has a chance of happening is if a desperate team offers the Bengals a second-round pick for him. I don't see that happening, the way Palmer's played the last two years. No one knows if he's a premier player anymore.
-Random thoughts from a day of NFL gorging...The Ravens will not arrive until they win games like yesterday's. Baltimore had Pittsburgh hangover....I think everyone watching Ben Roethlisberger's knee buckle thought he would be done for the season. Speaking of Ben, when the Steelers lost the Super Bowl last season, did he become a bad person again or is he still redeemed?...Last week Tony Romo was too mentally and physically soft to come through in big moments. Today, he's the toughest person on the planet....Rey Maualuga just missed another tackle....Kerry Collins reminds me a lot of Brett Favre from a year ago...Cam Newton reminds me of the guy I thought could play QB in the NFL.
-On Friday I lamented the fact that I didn't get to talk with Jennifer England while she was at Oktoberfest Zinzinnati. Sometimes though, good things do happen to great people like me. She and her handlers accommodated me Saturday morning, allowing me to creep her out while we recorded video.
-I'd like to be excited about Cincinnati 59 Akron 14, but a) Akron might be the worst football team in the country and b) the uncertainty surrounding the Big East and where UC might end up in the latest round of conference reshuffling trumped a game that saw eight different Bearcats score touchdowns.
Where they end up, and which schools they're with, is anyone's guess. What fairly obvious is that the Big East as we've come to know it here, is done. Even schools like UC, Louisville (Which is claiming their intentions to stay in the Big East. No one believes them.), West Virginia, and the non-football schools stay in the league, and even if the league stays the same, we're essentially talking about a new league for a school that has already changed conferences three times within the last 20 years.
And that league might include schools like Iowa State. Yay! Or Baylor. Wow! Or Texas Tech! Oh boy!
I for one, can't wait for the rivalry with the Iowa State Cyclones to naturally evolve. Maybe UC will get a chance to exact revenge for getting robbed in the 1997 NCAA Tournament.
Cincinnati is in a tough spot here, with a very limited athletic budget, and lacking overly impressive facilities. The whole athletic department is in transition, with a new AD first and foremost needing to do fund raising that Mike Thomas was either unwilling or unable to do. This is a critical time for the University, with the college sports dynamic changing and with the school, at least for now, idly sitting by and watching.
Both football and basketball have struggled to retain fans in recent years, and financial support at least seems to have dried up. They're no closer to doing anything with Nippert than they were before Brian Kelly went 34-6. The basketball arena remains outdated and sterile. And the football program has already had a tough time keeping coaches during arguably the most successful and relevant stretch in UC history.
I'm not sure where UC fits in the ever-changing landscape of college sports, and I'm not sure how the school will fit in among whomever they're affiliated with within their league, but I do know that I feel pretty shaky about the future of my favorite college basketball and football teams.
-From e-mailer Keith....
I'm an Akron grad. The Zips cheerleader you put on the blog today is not hot. The Zip dance team chicks are. Please replace with the picture attached and do my alma mater proud! 
-This is dead-on. From Andrea Adelson...
We should be immune by now, invulnerable to surprise and numb to shock. The conference shuffle has trampled geographic boundaries, turned league names into oxymorons and destroyed age-old rivalries. So Syracuse and Pittsburgh now want to abandon the Big East? What's the big deal?
Except this one is different.
This is not Colorado and Utah slithering off to the Pac-10 or even Texas A&M jumping ship to the SEC.
his is Syracuse, a founding member of the Big East, slinking off to the greener-for-now fields of the ACC.
In 1979, Syracuse -- following the vision of founder and first commissioner Dave Gavitt -- joined forces with six other schools and formed the Big East. Along the way, the Orange came to define the league as much as any conference member.
Outside of Madison Square Garden, no building represented the magnitude of the Big East better than the Carrier Dome.
From Derrick Coleman to Billy Owens to Carmelo Anthony to Hakim Warrick to Gerry McNamara, only a handful of schools can match the college star-power wattage of the Orange. And in the Mount Rushmore of coaches who have personified the league, the chin-in-his-hand image of Jim Boeheim stands alongside John Thompson, Lou Carnesecca and Jim Calhoun.
Now, on the same weekend Gavitt died of congestive heart failure at the age of 73, Syracuse has helped bury the league he so adored.
Because this is the end of the Big East. Let's not kid ourselves here.
When ACC commissioner John Swofford says he is comfortable with 14 members but is not "philosophically opposed" to 16, you can bet Rutgers and Connecticut are among the schools he is not "philosophically opposed" to filching. A source at UConn says that school is aggressively pursuing a spot in the ACC.
This is happening, folks.
Sure, the Big East may continue in some bastardized form. Plenty of desperate programs already are reaching out, frantic to abandon their own Titanic and jump aboard the merely listing Big East.
But you don't replace an iconic school like Syracuse and a competitive, big-market powerhouse like Pittsburgh with, say, Iowa State and Baylor and call it an even swap.
You don't remove two basketball programs whose brash and sometimes brute style have epitomized the league, and say it is business as usual.
-Ohio State will get players back in a few weeks, and there's no question they'll help. Unfortunately, a quarterback isn't one of them. They're not winning anything meaningful with Joe Bauserman playing quarterback. And while Braxton Miller can at least run while Bauserman stands there with a dumb look on his face, it's hard to imagine that guy beating anyone of any consequence either.
-I enjoy Miller Lite more than anyone alive, but isn't the whole "you lack the right chromosomes if you don't like this product" so 2006?
-Here's some grandmas at a Michigan tailgate shotgunning canned waters.
-Aside from talking about another great Reds TweetUp, I have nothing on what the Reds did this weekend. The Brewers are good. The Reds are bad. The Brewers are on a march to the postseason, the Reds are on a death march to the offseason.
The good folks at Yahoo asked me to do a season recap for them. The idea is too sentence each team who didn't make the postseason to detention. I gladly accepted the assignment.
-Joe Morgan gladly accepted this assignment.
I will accept an assignment today at 3:04 on ESPN1530. Listen and tell me how I did. Follow me on Twitter and send me your favorite kind of fish. Here's a girl sucking back a beer, then getting some love from The Man.
