Broncos vs Bengals: Postgame

WHINE ON:

The Bengals get 4 time outs in the first half. Their DBs made early contact on almost every play and weren’t called on it all night. On one pass play they had defensive holding AND defensive pass interference. Neither was called. They tackled Rueben Droughns by his helmet, again no call.

Life isn’t fair and God hates me.

WHINE OFF

Sorry, but as a Broncos fan I was absolutely required to do that. If the same noncalls had gone Denver’s way I’d be happy as a pig in doodoo.




The simple fact is that regardless of officiating the Bengals came to win a football game. I have no idea what the Broncos came to do. I’m thinking it might be eat hotdogs. Or maybe it was to check out cheerleaders, because the Bengals have some hotties. Whatever it was, it damn sure wasn’t to play football.

The Bengals intensity was fabulous and any non-Broncos fan who watched the game must have been loving it. From first snap to last they played with an energy that would have made Ray Lewis proud.

Bengals QB Carson Palmer connected on just over half of his passes. But he was making the big hook ups exactly when he needed to and he went after Broncos stud CB Champ Bailey in exactly the right manner (deep go routes, leaving Bailey little opportunity to use his athleticism).

When Bailey did make a pick it was with no run back, which is typical of Denver.




Bailey’s counterpart, Bengals CB Deltha Oneal, had a very nice game and showed that there was a reason he was once taken in the first round (by Denver). He had three tackles plus an assist and an INT which he ran back for 29 yds.

Sadly it was never his physical ability that was in doubt during his time in Denver. It was his ability to shrug off failure, rather than let it hammer away at his confidence. I really liked him as a Bronco and I hope his problems are behind him, but I doubt that they are.

I’m too lazy to figure out the stats on this, but I’m betting that in the past ten years Denver has choked against very bad Bengals teams more often then they’ve choked against any other team in the league. And it isn’t a matter of a certain player or coach having Shanahan’s number. It’s happened under a variety of Bengals coaches and key personnel.

The really bizarre thing is that, without fail, after Cincinnati humiliates the Broncos they go right back to sucking and Denver goes back to playing well. In fact, this is all so regular that I’m starting to wonder if maybe the Bengals owner once caught Broncos owner Pat Bowlen snorting a line of coke in a hotel room with a hooker.

One thing that mystified me was Denver’s play calling. The deeper they got into their hole, the more conservative they played. The less that worked, but more they stuck with it.


And this was not like the Jacksonville game, which Denver dominated by a wide margin statistically, but still lost.

The Bengals won some important statistical battles (though they lost some odd ones, considering the score).

They gained 4 more yds per pass and 1.2 per play on average and had almost 50 more return yds.

But they had only 13 first downs vs Denver’s 22, held the ball for 2:29 less than Denver and were 0-5 in red zone (inside the Broncos 20 yd line) efficiency.

That’s right, they scored zero points in five attempts inside Denver’s 20 yd line and still won the game by 13 pts.

For Denver fans this was 3 hrs of disbelief and slow, mind-numbing agony. Thankfully it’s over, the Bengals can go back to being the Bengals and Denver owner Pat Bowlen can breathe a little easier, knowing that his secret life of drugs and prostitutes is safe for one more year.