On my way home from work today, I saw a
Bengals hat in the middle of the road, crushed and flattened. I knew
how it felt.
Yesterday was a gross-out game, one
that makes you pray that the Cleveland Browns defense is amazing and
that the Cincinnati offense really isn't as putrid as it seemed.
Andy Dalton looked bamboozled and, once again, inaccurate. Jay
Gruden gave into his impulse to throw it every down despite the
Dalton struggles and suddenly the tandem wouldn't stop passing to the
sidelines for incompletions. Screen plays and play-actions were slow
developing, the tipped passes became officially ridiculous, and
offensive predictability was in the air among the Lake Eerie tang.
Ray Horton and his Brownies were on to something yesterday and were
one step ahead of Gruden and company all day. Logical adjustments
were not enough, or perhaps absent altogether.
The defense was okay, playing hard and
trying to make plays, but the corners couldn't stop the simplest of
slant routes on third down. I was disappointed at either the lack of
perceived blitzes or the inability to bother the quarterback if they
were dialed up more than it seemed. Limiting a team to 17 points
typically wins games in the NFL, but not when the offense is as scary
as a spider in the kitchen sink.
The first-quarter is closed out with a
black, or in this case, brown eye. The sky is by no means falling
and the Bengals are unlikely to match these kinds of displays of
ineptitude throughout the remainder of the season, but the concerns
voiced here are real and deep-rooted and will be closely monitored by
a growing number of skeptics.
Mojokong—football's larynx.
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