Bengals Week 1, off to a good start but…

Wow, what a game. I think *most* Bengals fans expected a win. But nobody expected this.

The talk of the town today will be the ‘D’ and with good reason.

When a team give you 6 turnovers, or a +4 differential you need to win by more than 7, and the game shouldn’t come down to a goal line stand.

The O? What the… Carson is awesome, no doubt about it, but that might as well have been Kitna. No wait, Kitna would have made a few more of those short passes that were just bad. Over thrown, on the wrong shoulder, behind the receiver. Was he trying to get TJ killed? Carson didn’t have a good night.

The D? Much more aggressive than anyone thought, but if it wasn’t for the fact that the Ravens ‘gave’ us this game by virtue of (6) turnovers. It would have been much uglier.

The corners still need work. A more mobile QB would have killed us last night.

Rudi, lets talk about Rudi. 18 carries for 50 years, one of those a 15 yarder, nice, but the highlight still was his give away. 1 good run by Rudi late in the game isn’t what we need. We’ll take it, but Rudi needs to make an impact, early in the game, not when the game is already decided. Take away the 15 yarder and you have 17 carries for 35 yards. That’s horrible, I don’t care who the other defense is. His fumble let the Ravens back in the game. I certainly hope he’s buying the defense dinner because they saved his bacon.

All in all though, that was probably one of the most up/down/exciting Bengal games I’ve watched in a long time.

Chad? That celebration was weak…

Bengaldom happens in Denver.

Are you surprised? It’s really sad that I wasn’t surprised at all.

In fact I picked them to lose today, 31-17 and I wasn’t that far off.

I expected they’d come out ‘flat’ in this big game like in others past and I wasn’t off by much there either. That opening pick was awesome, then the Bengals gave it right back.

It’s sad that I wasn’t even worried with they were winning at half-time because I could feel it, I knew they’d blow it.

I really didn’t expect a bad snap to be the clincher.

Both Chad and Chris Henry dropped balls, catchable balls. Henry showed a little more effort, just a little but still not enough to win.

Rudi, was Rudi, he ran harder than I expected but also coughed up the ball.

I look forward to positive changes on this team for next year. Perhaps an offensive line, and a running back would be good. A solid third receiver would be nice as well but not until we get some D.

Unfortunately the Bengals will lose again on New Years Eve and finish 8-8. Go ahead write it down. The Steelers got spanked by Baltimore today and are out for sure. They are going to be fired up.

The Bengals? I don’t think they know what that means yet.

I can’t wait to hear Marvin’s feedback this week. (We didn’t play that well, and we gave the ball away. But we played hard and a bad snap cost us the game).

How many games have the Bengals had to climb back in only to lose on a bad call, bad play or bad snap? I’m sure that’s 4 of their wins this year. This team isn’t supposed to be in that position.

Bengals STINK it up on Monday night football!

Wow!, no I really mean Wow!

Now, mind you I didn’t really expect them to win. Certainly I wanted, and hoped they would but I didn’t really expect it. I didn’t expect them to be so embarrassing. This is just the ticket to get the Bengals more prime time games let me tell you.

Chad Dropped 2 balls, Chris Henry is a piece of work, he didn’t eve reach for 3 balls that were catch-able, and even T.J. Who’sYourMamma dropped at least one. Although I give T.J. a lot of credit, he didn’t quit. I think Chad quit, and I don’t think C. Henry ever got started.

Joe Theisman is an idiot. I don’t know if you heard his comments or paid any attention to them. In the beginning of the show he said; “The colts run defense is ranked 32nd in the NFL, the only reason they aren’t ranked lower is because there aren’t 39 teams in the league”. So for a Defense that had given up 550 yards running in the last two games, you’d want to run the ball against them no? Later he said; “The Bengals game plan was fatally flawed, they tried to run from the start and you can’t do that against this team”. What an idiot.

Now as soon as you get behind as the Bengals did, which was exactly what they could not afford to do, they still ran the ball more than they should and didn’t get the results.

Rudi, isn’t all that folks, he never has been. If the line isn’t doing all the work and pushing the D around, Rudi gets nothing. He doesn’t have a move to save his life. When our O-line is as busted up as it was, we needed him (or someone) in the backfield keeping Carson from getting killed.

The Bengals won’t make the playoffs this year (as if that’s a big surprise at this point) bu write it down. My post season schedule has just opened up.

I hope this is the gateway to better things. Marvin you know who your players are and who the guys are that are just along for the ride. It’s time to cut them lose, and dare I say that might include your defensive coordinator too.

The last 3 weeks the defense has been extremely over-rated, they have only been successful because of who they’ve played. Put a decent team on the field and they are done.