The
game of football is largely shapeless. The prolate spheroid that is
the shape of the actual ball is but one of the many oddities of the
sport. Throw in a league of 32 teams with 53 men on each roster and
the strangeness is virtually limitless.
Over
the years, we as an interested populace have found some comfortable
parameters of expectation to work within. Now we can somewhat
accurately predict the outcomes of games and seasons.
This
game, though, seems to have no handle to grasp. It's the most
slippery Bengals game I can remember. How do you call a game like
this?
It's
strange that the Bengals schedule is encased with Ravens bookends.
That Monday Night game was so long ago it seems surreal and
nightmarish. Perhaps is was the lateness of the hour or the
looseness of the rye, but the whole event is blurry. I remember a
deflating ass-kicking followed by waves of panic, but not much detail
in general.
The
good news is that I don't have to remember it. Things turned around
for the Stripes and they're a different team than the one that
crapped the bed in the opener. They didn't have Pat Sims then.
The
Pat Sims effect is real. He isn't their best player—he's a damn
fine run-stuffer—but once he rejoined the ranks, the defense
snapped into place and the Zim Clan was once more. Now their back to
the bare-knuckle brawling bunch we grew to love last year, led by the
most fearsome front four in football. Baltimore faces a much stiffer
opponent this time around and may need to think of the health of
their quarterback during various stages of the game on Sunday. If
Joe Flacco is getting roughed up, he may have an abbreviated outing.
The
hard part is knowing the mind-state of these teams. The Bengals have
won six out of seven but haven't exactly been blowing the barn doors
off lately. The Ravens are pulling out of a nosedive and regained a
dose of much-needed confidence with a nice win against the Giants
last week. Both teams are going to the playoffs, yet neither want to
lose momentum and back into the tournament. Players want to win but
they don't want to get hurt. Coaches want to show as little strategy
as possible to the following Wild-Card week opponent, yet still look
respectable in their duties. It doesn't get weirder.
Marvin
Lewis talked earlier in the week about how his young players need the
reps more than the rest. A reporter reminded him of how he rested
his starters the last two times his team had clinched a postseason
birth, and Marv fired back, “Yeah, and how did that go?” This
team is too young to know it's place in the league. It doesn't know
that it should panic against the good teams. Doesn't know it's not
supposed to make the playoffs. Marvin just tells them to do it and
they do it.
The
Bengals will play hard and probably win. I don't know about
Baltimore. They're settling into a new playcaller, have a lot of
guys hurt, and seem off kilter. If Cincinnati can contain Ray Rice,
they should win. I expect sackos on Flacco and a couple of
turnovers. I think BenJarvus Green-Ellis has a good enough game to
give everybody confidence in him again, and I think Dalton doesn't
have to do too much in the finale.
It
would be fitting if the Bengals should have to play Baltimore again
the following week to make things even weirder. Who knows where this
strange rabbit hole will take us next? In football no one ever
knows. Ever.
Bengals
22, Ravens 15
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