Originally Posted by max venable
It doesn't matter how they beat them, they are still wins. W's are hard to come by in the NFL. The scary thing about the Ravens is their defense. They may not win by a lot, but a team that can win those close games with defense is just as scary as a team like the Bengals with a great offense. They are definately not a team that you can write off as a win.
Unbeaten Bengals keep cool
By GEOFF HOBSON
September 25, 2006
The Bengals defense sacked Pittsburgh quarterback Ben Roethlisberger three times on the day. (Getty Images)
PITTSBURGH - Pro Bowl right tackle Willie Anderson dragged into the locker room last Wednesday morning and chipper Bengals head coach Marvin Lewis handed him the shovel that has become a symbol of his team’s blue-collar focus and the one he pulls out for the grimiest tasks.
“We’re going to need it this week,” Lewis told him and on Sunday the shovel was placed in the middle of the visitors locker room here at Heinz Field before the Bengals went out and buried once and for all the Wild Card demons of last Jan. 8.
“Not that we played bad, but it just wasn’t clean,” said Anderson after the Bengals 28-20 victory fashioned in the fourth quarter. “And to still win, that’s when you know you’re making progress as a team and not just a team of individuals.”
The 3-0 Bengals tossed some dirt on the reeling 1-2 Steelers when they cashed two fumbles into 14 points in the middle of the fourth quarter that turned a 17-14 downer with the Bengals punting and eight minutes left in a grim game into 28-17 euphoria 57 seconds later.
“In the playoffs we were barely down (in the fourth quarter) and I think a lot guys including myself let emotions get the best of them,” said Houshmandzadeh, who scored the two touchdowns. “I think you learn. You learn. Everybody learns.”
Back in January, the Bengals let the yammering Steelers get to them in blowing a pair of 10-point leads after Pittsburgh's hit shelved quarterback Carson Palmer for the year with a devastating knee injury and wide receiver Chad Johnson peeled the paint off the walls with a halftime explosion because he had only caught two passes.
But this time Palmer engineered the fifth fourth-quarter comeback of his career and while the Steelers were penalized for excessive celebrating after their go-ahead touchdown and taunting after safety Mike Logan leered over long snapper Brad St. Louis following the Bengals’ final punt, Cincinnati calmly overcame:
Six sacks, the most Palmer has been dumped in his career and the most the Bengals have allowed since the Ravens pasted Jon Kitna six times on Dec. 7, 2003.
Three turnovers and Palmer’s second interception of the day that led to the Steelers’ go-ahead touchdown on running back Willie Parker’s one-yard run on fourth down to make it 17-14 with 5:43 left in third quarter.
The Steelers’ 170 rushing yards, the most the Bengals have allowed in a division game since they gave Pittsburgh 221 yards back on Oct. 23 in Pittsburgh’s 27-13 victory.
Running back Rudi Johnson’s 47 yards on 19 carries. Johnson, the AFC’s leading rusher coming in, had ripped off at least 97 yards in his last five AFC North games.
Just one catch from Pro Bowl receiver Chad Johnson, his lowest output in the Marvin Lewis era. It’s the first time he hasn’t caught at least two balls in a game since he got blanked by the Buccaneers on Sept. 29, 2002 in Akili Smith’s last Bengals appearance, a week after Johnson had one against Atlanta.
But the Bengals erased it all by recovering two fumbles within 50 seconds of the fourth quarter and Palmer hooking up with Houshmandzadeh twice within 54 seconds. Fittingly it was Houshmandzadeh who made the leaping, one-handed juggling grab for the last score (a 30-yarder over cornerback Deshea Townsend) because it was he who had told the team he felt badly for losing his cool against the Steelers in the playoffs and that he had learned it’s never over.
“I like the maturity on this team,” Anderson said. “I’ve been here 11 years and seen us when we weren’t very mature and worry about things we shouldn’t worry about.
“(The Steelers) unraveled us last season. They’re a team that plays good football and talks to you at the same time.”
Indeed, Palmer urged his guys in that fourth quarter to quit playing the Steelers’ game when he told the offense to shut up.
“They’re the Pittsburgh Steelers. They’re the defending world champions and a great football team and part of their mystique is they’re an intimidating team and a talking team,” Palmer said. “At the end of games we’ve caught ourselves talking. My message was just shut up and play. We don’t need to talk to them or tell them how good we’re playing. ... I think we’re a crafty team not to get into that game jawing back and forth. Some guy does and other guys grab him and pull him aside.”
Palmer saluted Johnson for keeping his cool. It was the sight of Palmer on the training table back in January that caused Johnson to crumble. After the game Sunday, instead, Johnson interviewed fellow wide receivers Houshmandzadeh and Chris Henry on “Chad’s Corner” on Fox 19 after they stepped up to grab Palmer’s four touchdown passes.
“Maturity,” said Johnson, who had warned he wouldn’t know how he would respond until an adverse day like this for him. “Last year in the playoff game I was frustrated and I went off. This year same situation … and I didn’t make a sound.”
Johnson had the one catch for 11 yards, but Anderson said he saw him hang with his blocking (“he didn’t complain”) and stick his helmet into the fray.
“I think Chad has grown up. He used to let things frustrate him and get in his head,” Palmer said. “I also think he knows there are going to be games he has nine catches for 140 yards and two touchdowns. I think he knows the ball is going to come to him. If not this week, then the next week or the next four weeks. I think he’s grown up and matured a lot.”
In his postgame news conference, head coach Marvin Lewis said it was the lessons that the Steelers taught them back on Jan. 8 as well as their trip to the Super Bowl title that helped along what happened Sunday.
“There were a lot of negatives,” Lewis said. “And we were able to overcome it with a lot of negatives.”
Right guard Bobbie Williams looked at Anderson’s shovel on a table in the locker room and agreed that it had been the classic “shovel game.” A game where the Bengals didn’t look up from digging no matter how bad it got. Anderson had gone to the Paul Brown Stadium maintenance department back before the Bengals upset the unbeaten Chiefs in Lewis’s first season and got the shovel, and it still makes big trips.
“One for the books,” Williams said.
Even though Palmer said he played badly, Anderson thought his four touchdown passes were a fitting symbol of what kind of team this is.
“We’ve got a bunch of fighters. We’ve got some flashy guys, but the core of the team is rock-solid guys,” Anderson said. “Even the flashy guys ... for (Palmer) to come back how he came back, there was something spiritual about it. We needed a rock. That’s the kind of team we have. He fought back the same way this team is always coming back.”
Palmer said he didn’t have vengeance on his mind. He just wanted to get another AFC North road win under his belt. Anderson thought the Bengals finally had cut the moment down to size, acknowledging that the first game against Pittsburgh last season and the Wild Card game had been too big for them.
The talk at the hotel Sunday morning had been that while this was a big game, what would you call the Patriots next week, and Tampa Bay after that, and Baltimore twice and ...
“It’s a tough ride; there are a lot of big games like this,” Anderson said. “When we looked at the schedule for this season it was, ‘Come on NFL. Good dog.’ If you said in April we’d be 3-0 and Carson was back playing, they’d say, ‘Are you’re crazy?’ ”
On Sunday, the Bengals didn’t go crazy. Just cool.
Yep, and like it or not, we still have the toughest schedule in the league. We face the Patriots, they get the Bills. We play the Colts, they play the Titans. The Ravens could easily get more breaks than us because of their schedule, although the tell-all game will be this week against Denver. If the Bengals win next week against the Pats and the Ravens lose to the Broncos, it will look like a one trick pony in the AFC North.
Its also easy to look back three weeks into the season and say Tampa is a bad team as well. After all, when the two played, the standings were 0-0 and the Bucs the year before made the playoffs while the Ravens did not, but I digress.
And here's the cherry on top of our Bengals' sundae:
I was just getting ready to start a new thread about this week's cover and then I saw that this thread had been bumped...I figured it was because of the new cover.
How cool is that? Second Sports Illustrated cover in just a few months.
For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism.
Here's an updated Bengals SI cover history:
For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism.
My new background!!!And here's the cherry on top of our Bengals' sundae:
Great looking cover!!
Who Dey!
"Strickland Propane... Taste the meat, not the heat." - Hank Hill
This pic is from this week's SI.
Look how high off the ground TJ is. Is that sick or what?
For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism.
I'm sure Wayne will have the Reds humming along like Lewis's Bengals next year.:
“And when finally they sense that some position cannot be sustained, they do not re-examine their ideas. Instead, they simply change the subject.” Jamie Galbraith
The Bengals missed the playoffs in year 2, as well, another 8-8I'm sure Wayne will have the Reds humming along like Lewis's Bengals next year.
The difference is: I'll be right.The Bengals missed the playoffs in year 2, as well, another 8-8
“And when finally they sense that some position cannot be sustained, they do not re-examine their ideas. Instead, they simply change the subject.” Jamie Galbraith
Yea, that's what those others thought, too. Of course, its not a real hard stance to take, seeing it is a 50/50 shot. Really going out on a predictive limb there.
Uh. You're the one making comparisons to Lewis. In your mind, it's clearly not a 50/50 shot. It's a leadpipe cinch.
My point is to say, rightly, that what Marvin Lewis has done is nothing short of miraculous, considering how awful the franchise was when he took over. His getting them to competition as quickly as he did is nothing short of a masterstroke. Your saying, on the other hand, that Wayne will see similar results in the same time frame is what I contend with; the Reds that he inherited weren't in as bad a shape as Marvin's Bengals, and it's absolutely positively going to take more than next season to see playoff caliber results from the Reds. I'd say the Reds have an outside shot at contention in 2008, but every last thing is going to have to go right.
“And when finally they sense that some position cannot be sustained, they do not re-examine their ideas. Instead, they simply change the subject.” Jamie Galbraith
i.e. No more getting taken out to the woodshed by Bowden or any other GMs.
I think people continue to downplay just how badly Krivsky has put us behind the eight-ball heading into this off-season by squandering what could have been two very valuable trading chips.
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