Week 11: Battle of Ohio - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Sunday had to be one of the oddest games I have ever seen the Bengals be a part of. Fortunately, the Bengals were on the good end of the oddities.

 

Here’s the Week 11 Good, the Bad and the Ugly…

 

The Good

Special Teams – In my weekly preview, I called the special teams of both the Bengals and Browns a push…apparently I was way off! The Bengals special teams won this game – and conversely, the Browns special teams lost the game. The Browns special teams gave up 2 blocked punts, 1 TD, committed a 15 yard unnecessary roughness penalty and gave up a 27 yard punt return to Adam Jones to put the Bengals in FG position with under 1 minute to play in the first quarter. That is a seasons’ worth of blunders all wrapped into one game.

a)      Kevin Huber

Kevin Huber was busy Sunday – busy good! With 9 punts, Huber had a 45.3 net (6.8 yards better than his counterpart), 3 more punts inside the 20 and 1 66 yard, field position changing punt into the wind and rain. Huber is the most underappreciated, under discussed weapon the Bengals have.

 

b)      Shawn Williams 

When the Bengals took Williams in the 4^th round, I expected to see him starting by some point in the year. Thanks to the solid play by Iloka, Williams has played very little, but he made a huge special teams impact on Sunday. After finally getting on the scoreboard Sunday, getting the momentum and pulling to 13-7, the Bengals held the Browns to a 3 and out. On the ensuing punt, Williams tipped it causing the punt to travel just 9 yards, leaving the Bengals with the ball at the Cleveland 38. It was a huge play that built on the momentum James Harrison started with his pick.

 

c)       Jayson DiManche 

Another guy that hasn’t seen much of the stat sheet in 2013, DiManche got on there in a big way on Sunday, recording the Bengals second blocked punt of the second quarter and having it run back 24 yards for a TD and 21-13 lead.

 

d)      Tony Dye

Admit it, when you saw #44 heading into the endzone, you asked who the hell is #44? At the start of the week Tony Dye was a practice squad player that had never played in an NFL game. By Sunday afternoon, thanks to the Crocker injury, not only had Dye been active for his first NFL game, he had scored his first NFL touchdown. Not a bad week.

 

e)      Adam Jones 

At the end of the half, with under a minute to play, the Bengals put Jones back on the punt return hoping he could provide some magic and put the Bengals in position for a few more points before half. Good call. Jones took the punt 27 yards and put the Bengals in FG range for 3 more second quarter points.

 

Defense – The defense as a whole played well on Sunday. After 2 games with 5 TDs and 0 INTs, the Bengals forced Campbell into 3 picks and despite the inept offense, the defense held the Browns to just 10 points. And, though the Browns had 330 yards, 114 of those came on 2 plays. There were a number of great individual efforts as well:

a)      Vontaze Burfict –

With all respect to Luke Kuechly, I believe Burfict is the best LB in the NFL right now. On Sunday, Burfict had a forced fumble, which he returned for a TD, and added 15 more tackles to give him a league leading 118 tackles entering the bye week.

 

b)      Vinnie Rey –

In just 3 starts, Rey now has 44 tackles, 3 sacks, 4 passes defensed and 1 interception. Those 44 tackles are 13 more than his career total (31) and rank him 5^th on the team (with one more start, he will likely move into 2^nd behind Burfict).

 

c)       James Harrison –

With just 26 tackles and 2 sacks, Harrison’s year would have to be considered a disappointment so far, but Sunday was his most impactful game as a Bengals. It was Harrison’s impressive interception and highlight real TD return that sparked the Bengals from a 0-13 deficit to a 31-13 lead. Though the TD was nullified by an (iffy penalty), the Jim Brownesque run lit a fire under the crowd, and more importantly, the team, turning what looked like a devastating loss into a lopsided victory.

 

d)      The Defensive Line –

On Sunday, the line contributed 3 sacks, 4 passes defensed and 7 QB hits. While the Browns did run for 102 rushing yards on just 19 carries (5.2 ypc), the 102 yards was the Bengals exact average, they gave up 0 yards to Campbell, and take away the one 43 yard run, and the line held Cleveland to just 59 yards on their other 18 carries (3.3 ypc).

 

 

The Run Game – While 106 yards on 31 carries (3.4 ypc) is nothing that catches the eye, it is impressive when you figure the Browns run defense was ranked 6^th coming into the game, giving up just 98.2 ypg and Bernard was able to average 4.5 ypc.

 

Mohamed Sanu – Only 11 receiving yards, but he did have a TD and one beautifully thrown back shoulder pass touch pass to Bernard down the sideline which looked like a Pro Bowl caliber QB threw it. In his two years in the league, Sanu is now 2/2 passing for 98 yards and a TD. And, to be honest, he may throw a prettier ball than Dalton. No matter, he provides the offense a lot of versatility.

 

The Gresham TD – When Dalton threw this pass, I said a few 4-letter words. Gresham was triple covered and Dalton really had no business making the throw. With that being said, he placed it in there nicely, and surprisingly, Gresham hauled it in…supporting my theory that Gresham does a better job making the tough catch over the easy catch (see his drop earlier in the game for an example).

 

Pass Protection – Coming into the game, the Browns were ranked 5^th in the NFL with 31 sacks and the banged up Bengals line had surrendered 10 sacks in the last 2 games. The line held up better than anyone could have expected, 0 sacks and 1 QB hit. Unfortunately Dalton didn’t take advantage of the great protection.

 

Dre Kirkpatrick Sighting – He was beat on the long touchdown, but he had good coverage on the play and just fell victim to a really good pass by Campbell. Other than that play, he had a good game, came up with a sack, 2 tackles and a pass defensed. Heck, he even bounced back from an injury!

 

The Bad

Where to start? The tough question here is what constitutes just Bad and what constitutes Ugly?

The Start of the Game – The game could not have started worse for the Bengals and I can’t even put much of the blame on play calling because penalties and interceptions basically threw any plan Gruden had out the window.

 

The Inability to Get Their Playmakers the Ball – This I can blame on Gruden. While BJGE had a decent game, I still don’t understand how your least effective weapon lead the team in touches/targets (16). Take a look at the touches/targets on Sunday: BJGE (16), Bernard (15), Gresham (6), Sanu (6), Green (5), Jones (2), Hawkins (2), Alex Smith (1) and Eifert (1). How does a game plan call for BJGE to have more than 1.5x the touches of Green, Jones, Hawkins and Eifert combined? And how does a game plan call for 3 of your top 4 targets being BJGE, Gresham and Sanu? And better yet, how does the game plan call for Alex Smith to have the same amount of targets as Eifert? This type of a game plan is exactly what concerns me about Gruden.

 

Gresham – I gave Gresham his well-deserved credit for his nice catch and fight to get in the endzone, but for every play like that, you get the stupid penalty on the first drive (which was declined) where you seed Gresham looking perplexed by the call that EVERYONE in the stadium and on TV saw; or you get the wide open dropped 10 yard pass on 2^nd and 20 with the team down 13 and looking for any spark. Gresham is like the movie “50 First Dates,” except every time Jermaine wakes up, he is a rookie again.

 

 

The Ugly

Dalton – It is getting more and more difficult to defend Andy Dalton. In the first quarter, Dalton was 3/8 for 22 yards, threw 2 INTs (1 returned for TD), 1 ball batted down and received a well-deserved smattering of boos…and not the kind they charge $8.25 for. Hell, in the first quarter, the Bengals had more penalty yards (45) and the Browns defense had more yards on interception returns (45) than the Bengals had as an offense (13). Dalton had completed 1 more pass to his team (3) as he did to the opposing team (2), and during one stretch of QB bloopers, had 3 straight passes with the following results: interception, pick 6, batted down pass. That is what we call a bad stretch. Right now, the only consistent thing in Dalton’s game seems to be his weekly first quarter struggles. If the Bengals want to advance in the playoffs, Dalton has to learn these games start at 1pm, not 1:30.

 

Green: The lack of stats on Sunday are not Green’s fault. The second interception is not Green’s fault either. However, if you listen to Marvin and Green, the first interception (which started the Bengals tailspin) was Green’s fault for running the wrong route on what was apparently an option route. If after the first interception on Sunday you screamed at your TV “who the *%$# was Dalton throwing to?” Apparently the answer was Green. The route called for Green to go inside or outside based on the coverage – according to Marvin and Green, Green zigged when he should have zagged. During the bye week, Green needs to do 3 things: 1) work on catching the good throws that hit him in the hands, 2) break up the bad passes so they are just bad passes and not interceptions, and 3) run the correct routes.

 

Penalties: After 11 games, you are what the stats say you are, and according to the stats, the Bengals are an undisciplined team. On Sunday, they collected another 8 penalties for 64 yards, one of which negated a touchdown.

 

The Offense as a Whole – On the Bengals scoring drives the offense was responsible for the following yard totals: 22, 38, 0, 0, 9, 52 and 4 yards. That is 7 scoring drives covering a total of 125 yards. Of those 7 drives, 6 were either scored by the defense or special teams, or were set up by a turnover. That is great for the defense and special teams. Not so much for the offense. 

 

Cheerleader Outfits: While the outfits were not limited to the first quarter, did anyone notice the outfits the BenGals were sporting? They didn’t even look NFL licensed – they looked like they were purchased illegally from a Chinese flea market! The Bengals “B” was not in proper proportion, it was the wrong color and the shirts were just overall terrible! I just hope the uniform police that take such pride in fining players for socks being too high, towels being too long, etc. fines the cheerleaders, cheerleader coach, as well as the Bengals organization as a whole for that uniform blunder.