Tag Archives: Cincinnati Bengals

2012 NFL Playoffs: Wild Card Weekend Picks Against the Spread

The 2012 NFL Playoffs are here. Things kick off with Wild Card Weekend featuring four great matchups.

The highlights include Matthew Stafford and the high scoring Detroit Lions trying to keep pace with Drew Brees and the New Orleans Saints. Also on the slate is the Pittsburgh Steelers defense against the one and only Tim Tebow. It should be a fantastic weekend on games. Let’s find out who I like against the spread in Wild Card Weekend.

Home teams are in CAPS. Feel free to mock my picks the comments or challenge me by posting your own picks. The lines are courtesy of the sports betting website http://topbet.com/.

HOUSTON TEXANS (-3) over the Cincinnati Bengals

Detroit Lions (+10.5) over the NEW ORLEANS SAINTS

NEW YORK GIANTS (-3) over the Atlanta Falcons

DENVER BRONCOS (+9) over the Pittsburgh Steelers

Bill Belichick, Chad Ochocinco Talk About Twitter and More

New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick addressed the media this morning to discuss the recent additions of WR Chad Ochocinco and DL Albert Haynesworth. He also talked about the veteran cuts they had to make. There was some snarkiness by Belichick when asked about how the two additions will fit into how he does things.

Many are questioning how the colorful personalities will mesh with the Draconian program that Belichick runs.

Ochocinco also spoke with reporters this morning and said he’s willing to change to fit in in Foxboro.

“I’ll always be me. But there’s a certain way the Patriots do it, and I’ve always been a chameleon, and I’m going to do it the Patriot way, which is win,” he said.

He also knows Belichick doesn’t want him to be quite as outspoken and attention-seeking as he was with the Cincinnati Bengals.

“Bill, we had our talk and without him having to say anything, I’ll say, there’s no need for some of the things that have been before,” Ochocinco said.

On the additions of Haynesworth and Ochocinco:

Both of them came down pretty quickly. With the rules, obviously, we couldn’t enter into any conversations about those. But Mike Shanahan and I had some conversations there late one night and it all kind of came together pretty quickly. And so we had to get a few things worked out and so we did that and consummated the trade with Washington. And I spoke with Marvin [Lewis] and Mike Brown and eventually we got things worked out with Cincinnati as they were reporting to camp, before Chad reported there, so he was able to come here and we were able to get that finished. Those players are here, they obviously have a lot of catching up to do. We’re excited to have them.

Q: On Chad, he’s got a personality that interacts with the public, interacts with the media and he’s been very out there.

Bill Belichick: Any other news breaking stories?

Q: I’m on top of that. I’m wondering since it generally isn’t a way your players have acted.

Bill Belichick: I think every player on this team, every person on this team, has their own individual personality. None us are the same, so that’s probably a good thing.

Q: Have you asked him at all to relax with the Twitter and etcetera? We haven’t had a lot of tweets from him the past couple days.

Bill Belichick: That’s not something I follow, as you know. I don’t Twitter, I don’t MyFace, I don’t do any of those things, so I’d probably be the last to know.

Q: In your discussions with Albert Haynesworth, have you gotten a sense of whether football is important to him? Do you think it’s important to him?

Bill Belichick: Of course, otherwise I don’t think he would be playing football. But those are questions you can ask him. I don’t want to speak for him.

Q: How do you reconcile that the guy obviously has a long rap sheet off the field, with his ability to perform on the field, the way he played in ’07 and ’08? How do you reconcile those two things?

Bill Belichick: We did what we felt was best for the team.

Here’s Belichick’s complete transcript.

NFL Week 2: Two Key AFC Division Battles

ad extracting some answers with the two games, many fans have just been left with more questions.

New England Patriots at New York Jets

The days leading up to this week 2 matchup saw numerous pundits and so-called experts go on and on about how the Jets were in big trouble after their Monday night loss to the Baltimore Ravens.  Mark Sanchez isn’t truly NFL ready.  Rex Ryan has bit off more than he can chew (shocking).  Shonne Greene will get cut (okay that’s a lie, but he did show nothing in week 1).  By 4 pm or so Sunday afternoon, those same talking heads had to reconfigure their initial estimation.  After allowing 14 first half points to a vaunted Patriots offense, the Jets D shut that beast down from halftime on.  More shocking than that was the fact that the Jets offense actually showed a pulse.  Mark Sanchez played exceptionally well; although even a mediocre performance would’ve seemed great in comparison to his play in week one.  On a down note, the Jets may have lost CB Darrelle Revis for a few weeks to an injured hamstring.  Despite this worrisome news, the Jets have to be feeling a lot better about themselves.  Plus its always great to get that first win in the new stadium.

Baltimore Ravens at Cincinnati Bengals

Prior to the start of the 2010 NFL season, most prognosticators had the Bengals and Ravens as the top two teams fighting it out for the AFC North crown.  Both teams certainly brought firepower to this division battle, particularly on the offensive side, with Baltimore adding WR Anquan Boldin and Cincinnati bringing in Terrell “That’s My Quarterback” Owens.  Apparently, a few of us forgot that both teams also had some pretty good defenses.  If you want to know whether defense ruled in this game, just consider that the Bengals won by kicking five field goals.  Actually, Cincinnati was lucky to get that many three-pointers, with two occurring as a result of more-than-questionable penalties against the Ravens.  Of course, Baltimore didn’t do itself any favors either.  Quarterback Joe Flacco looked lost all throughout the game, throwing a total of four interceptions.  It was definitely the worst start of the third-year QB’s career.  Ravens fans may be quiet now, but a few more performances like that will surely awaken the Mark Bulger fan club.  One thing is for sure, the Bengals have had the Ravens’ number of late, and the teams’ next matchup in Baltimore later this season will be a heated affair.

Bengals Chances Not Looking Good in 2010

The Cincinnati Bengals were one of the surprises of the NFL last season finishing 10-6 and winning the tough, AFC North.

In the offseason the Bengals signed Terrell Owens, Antonio Bryant, and drafted Jermaine Gresham and Jordan Shipley to help bolster their weak passing game.

All signs are looking good in Cincinnati for the first time in a long time, with many “experts” pegging them as a Super Bowl dark horse.

Though the site Cold Hard Fotball Facts would beg to differ. They broke down why the Bengals offseason additions will do little to help them and that Owens will actually hurt them.

ONE – The Bengals already made a long list of moves to improve its dreadful passing game of 2009 here in the off-season.

They signed Antonio Bryant away from Tampa, a 29-year-old receiver who indicated in 2008 that he could be fairly productive (83 catches, 1,248 yards, 7 TD) when paired with a decent quarterback (Jeff Garcia). They signed free-agent Matt Jones, the rangy former Arkansas QB who finally produced a decent season with the Jaguars in 2008 (65 catches, 761 yards, 2 TD). They devoted their No. 1 pick to Oklahoma’s Jermaine Gresham, the mostly highly touted tight end in the draft this year. And they devoted their third pick to Jordan Shipley, the uber-productive wideout who was Colt McCoy’s batterymate during the most prolific passing seasons in Longhorns history.

Adding a volatile, aging, me-first receiver to the corps will do nothing but inhibit the development of these receivers, especially the rookies.

TWO – The 36-year-old Owens is well past his prime. TO was still super-productive with Dallas in 2007 (81 catches, 1,355 yards, tremendous 16.7 YPA and 15 TD). But older players hit the wall hard and fast in the NFL (helloooooo LT!) and Owens followed up his great 2007 campaign with a pair of mediocre years in Dallas and Buffalo (average 62 catches, 840 yards, 7.5 TDs).

T.O. turns 37 in December and it’s unreasonable to expect him to be an impact player. In fact, the list of all the receivers in history who produced 1,000-yard seasons after age 36 is a very short one: Jerry Rice.

THREE – Owens is a dick. To use the old editor’s joke, we avoid clichés like the plague. But there is one cliché that applies here: the definition of insanity is doing something over and over expecting a different outcome. Well, we’ve seen four teams now regret putting T.O. on their roster: San Francisco, Philadelphia, Dallas and Buffalo. He shot his way out of three of those towns, with high-profile blow-ups with his Pro Bowl quarterbacks (Garcia, Donovan McNabb, Tony Romo).

So history tells us that we can expect T.O. to quickly turn on his teammates, and his fragile QB in particular, when things don’t go according to the irrational plan that he and the organization harbor in their minds. Given this history, Cincy’s decision to sign T.O. reeks of desperation or cynicism: it’s not a move to improve the product on the field; it’s a move to drum up PR and sell a couple jerseys and tickets.

FOUR – Wide receiver is the last thing you need to build a winner. We’ve chronicled this fact through the years. Receivers are easily the least impactful players on the football field – at least as far as their correlation to victory goes. A receiver can only prove that impact player when all the other pieces are in place: great offensive line, great quarterback, solid, two-pronged offensive attack, and a legit defense. Then, and only then, do big-star receivers bring a turbo boost to your team that might lead to a title.

Otherwise, as we’ve seen throughout the ages, teams can win big and win consistently without so-called “star” receivers. The 1960s Packers won five championships without superstar receivers; the 1980s 49ers won two Super Bowls with a good but not great corps of receivers before Jerry Rice arrived on the scene; the 2000s Patriots won three Super Bowls with a corps of castoff receivers nobody heard about before or since; the 2000s Steelers won two Super Bowls with a top receiver known more for laying out defensive backs than for setting pass-catching records.

FIVE – The Bengals really need a quarterback more than anything else. We know it’s not PC to point out Carson Palmer’s flaws as a quarterback. But we’ve done it anyway, most notably back in January, before Cincy’s playoff game against the Jets.

We told Paul Daugherty of the Cincinnati Enquirer that Palmer simply is not a legit Super Bowl-caliber NFL quarterback. We laid out all the reasons for these Cold, Hard Football Facts right there in black and white.

Our analysis, as you know, is as sure and true as the flow of the Ohio River past Paul Brown Stadium. So what happened? That’s right: Palmer simply did not perform at a winning level against New York’s mighty pass defense: he completed just 18 of 36 passes for 146 yards, a dreadful 4.06 YPA, 1 TD, 1 INT and a 58.3 passer rating in a 24-14 loss.

Palmer’s been given six years to prove himself as a Super Bowl-caliber quarterback. Clearly injuries have inhibited his career, especially the gruesome one he suffered in the early moments of the 2005 wildcard game against the Steelers. He also missed most of the 2008 campaign.

But the Cold, Hard Football Facts are the Cold, Hard Football Facts: and what they tell us is that Palmer doesn’t have the stuff to lead the Bengals to a Super Bowl – no matter how many repugnant, self-centered aging wideouts they put around him.

The Bengals, for their part, paired two explosive wideouts (Ochocinco and T.J. Houshmandzadeh) for pretty much the entire past decade. The Bengals, and their offense, have nothing to show for it.

Training Camp Injury Bug

Training Camps are starting to head into full gear now and with that comes the unfortunate but unavoidable injury bug.

In the past two days alone 3 starters went down with season ending injuries.

It doesn’t get much worse than losing a valued member of the team just as the summer starts and in some cases before full pads are even on.

For the Eagles, Panthers, and Bengals who were the teams to suffer these injuries and now have to deal with them we feel your pain.

Kemoeatu (torn Achilles tendon) was one of three players to suffer season ending injuries recently

Let’s start with Stewart Bradley, middle linebacker of the Philadelphia Eagles.

Bradley tor his ACL in practice on Sunday but actually walked off the field under his own power but the injury proved to be much more serious.

Bradley led the Eagles in tackles last season in only his first year as a starter.  Many expected a breakout season from Bradley but that will have to wait a year.  He wore the defensive headset and his leadership will be missed.

The Eagles will replace him with Omar Gaither, who actually started in the middle in 2007 but is not the same caliber player that Bradley is.  The Eagles also just signed former Chargers linebacker Matt Wilhelm for depth.

Six Teams that could make the Playoffs in '09

With the parity that exists in the NFL today every team has hope that they can make the playoffs at the start of the season.  Last year saw the Dolphins and the Falcons both finish 11-5 and made the playoffs after winning four games combined in 2007.  As for 2009 here are six teams that I think can make the playoffs after missing them in 2008.

New England Patriots- The Patriots are an easy pick to make it back to the playoffs.  They went 11-5 last season in doing so became the first team since 1985 to do.  They did all of that without star quarterback Tom Brady who is set to come back from injury after getting injured in Week 1 of last season.  The Pats threw in a seventh round quarterback who hadn’t started a game since high school and they went 11-5.  I’d expect better this year with a future hall of famer at quarterback.

Bengals Draft Review

Cincinnati Bengals
Picks: OT Andre Smith, LB Rey Maualuga, DE Michael Johnson, TE Chase Coffman, C Jonathan Luigs, P Kevin Huber, CB Morgan Trent, RB Bernard Scott, RB Fui Vakapuna, DT Clinton McDonald, WR Freddie Brown

The Bengals had another disappointing year in 2008.  From the drama with Chad Ocho Cinco, to the injuries of Carson Palmer and their defense the Bengals had a rough year all around.  With the 6th overall pick the Bengals selected Alabama offensive tackle Andre Smith.  Smith was considered a top pick in the draft but his stock took a hit in the off season when he left the combine abruptly without telling anyone and concerns about his character arose.  There is no doubting his talent though and he certainly has the potential to be a pro bowl player.  In the second round the Bengals got a potential steal in Rey Maualuga.  Maualuga could have gone in the first round and will be reunited with ex teammate Keith Rivers in Cincinnati. Michael Johnson, who they took in the third round, also has questions about his character and work ethic but has flashed talent at times in college but never put it all together.  Chase Coffman should give them a good receiving option at tight end that they haven’t had in awhile.  Jonathan Luigs was a nice pick in the fourth round and could start right away at center.  The selection of Bernard Scott was an odd one.  They needed a running back but Scott has been arrested five times and been to four different colleges.  Not the smartest pick for a team that has had so much trouble with their players getting in trouble.  The Bengals selected good players but don’t seem to factor in character at all when making draft selections and Smith and Johnson are boom or bust prospects.
Grade: B-