12-14-2015, 01:22 AM
Sucks to make headlines in the New York Times for a day like today, but here we are...
Day of Disaster Befalls the Bengals’ March to the Playoffs
![[Image: 14SHPIGEL-articleLarge.jpg]](http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/12/14/sports/14SHPIGEL/14SHPIGEL-articleLarge.jpg)
Bengals quarterback Andy Dalton on the sideline Sunday after injuring his thumb.
FRANK VICTORES / ASSOCIATED PRESS
DECEMBER 13, 2015
On Pro Football
By BEN SHPIGEL
CINCINNATI — The Arizona Cardinals were rampaging through the N.F.L. last season, posting the best record in the league, until their quarterback got hurt. His left knee buckled, and soon so would they.
That quarterback, Carson Palmer, watched Arizona’s grand postseason plan evaporate. However talented they were, the Cardinals could not withstand his absence and went on to lose five of their last seven games, including the playoff opener. Their hopes for a division title, a first-round bye, a potential Super Bowl berth in their home stadium: all gone.
The Bengals, after the kind of disaster of a day at Paul Brown Stadium that alters the trajectory of a season, are in danger of becoming this year’s Cardinals.
The top seed in the conference entering Sunday, Cincinnati lost its quarterback, Andy Dalton, to a fractured thumb, as well as two other starters to injury. Dalton paced the sideline in the final three quarters of the Bengals’ 33-20 defeat to division rival Pittsburgh with his hand entombed in a cast, unable to prevent the latest nasty installment of this divisional feud — one that featured a pregame skirmish at midfield — from devolving into a rout. The Steelers’ victory, which drew them to within two games of Cincinnati with three left, delayed the Bengals’ coronation in the A.F.C. North by a week, if not more.
“I can’t worry about the playoffs,” Coach Marvin Lewis said.
But Lewis knows it is always about the playoffs for the Bengals (10-3), who have not won there since January 1991, or had a first-round bye since 1988. They have dropped their last seven postseason games, a stretch of sadness that has come to define the career of Dalton, Palmer’s successor here, who has lost four of them.
In the last four seasons.
The cruelest thing for Dalton is that he broke his thumb trying to make a tackle, after an interception. He had not thrown many of those this season. Only six, compared with 25 touchdowns, and his precision, supplemented by the game’s stingiest scoring defense, generated enthusiasm and optimism in a city inured to despair.
After Pittsburgh scored on its first drive, Dalton marched the Bengals to the Steelers’ 4-yard line before defensive lineman Stephon Tuitt lunged to grab a low shovel pass intended for Giovani Bernard. Dalton, after jamming his thumb against Tuitt, tried to grip a ball, and that is when he knew.
For all of Dalton’s struggles in the postseason (and excellence this season), the possibility exists that he may not be healthy enough to have the chance to redeem himself. Dalton declined to speculate on his timetable, saying he would reserve comment until after meeting with a hand specialist Monday, but he praised his backup, A. J. McCarron, who will start next week at San Francisco. Lewis offered no details on Dalton’s status other than that he will be out for “a bit.” Asked to elaborate on what that meant, Lewis said: “We’ll see. I can’t heal bones.”
Like those Cardinals, these Bengals are loaded on offense, with dynamic talents like receiver A. J. Green and running back Jeremy Hill and tight end Tyler Eifert (who sustained a concussion Sunday), and a defense fronted by the ferocious linemen Geno Atkins and Carlos Dunlap.
But the difference between Palmer and his backups, Drew Stanton and, later, Ryan Lindley, was steep, much as it is with Dalton and McCarron, a two-time national champion at Alabama who had thrown four career passes before Sunday.
“We’ve got something to fight for, and that’s to prove we’re a great football team,” offensive tackle Andrew Whitworth said. He added: “Instead of thinking about the pressure of having to win and people expecting you to win, right now people are going to doubt us. And that’s good. This team needs that.”
Those words could have been spoken three months ago in Dallas, where the Cowboys lost seven straight after their starter, Tony Romo, fractured his clavicle, but also four weeks ago in Denver, where the Broncos have won three of four since Brock Osweiler replaced an ailing (and ineffective) Peyton Manning.
“Our success is going to be dictated by how well we play around him,” Whitworth said.
By him, Whitworth meant McCarron, who completed 22 of 32 passes for 280 yards with two touchdowns but lamented his two interceptions, the first of which was returned 23 yards for a score by William Gay.
At 8-5, Pittsburgh is tied with Kansas City and the Jets but lag behind on tiebreakers. The Steelers are surging, though, just as the Bengals — who have lost three of five — are starting to flail.
A. J. Green vowed they would regroup behind the 25-year-old McCarron, who will be entrusted with preventing his teammates from suffering the same anguish as the 2014 Cardinals.
“I will do whatever I need to do to not let them down,” McCarron said.
That begins on Monday, when he will arrive early, he said, to review his mistakes, and when the Bengals will learn just how much time Dalton will miss. But on Sunday, as McCarron ambled into the interview room, he asked Jack Brennan, the team’s public relations director, where he should sit. Up there, Brennan pointed, directing him to a long table studded with microphones. McCarron sat right in the middle. Beneath the spotlight.
- http://nyti.ms/220yORK
Day of Disaster Befalls the Bengals’ March to the Playoffs
- [/url]
- [url=https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnyti.ms%2F220yORK&text=Day%20of%20Disaster%20Befalls%20the%20Bengals%26%238217%3B%20March%20to%20the%20Playoffs%20]
Bengals quarterback Andy Dalton on the sideline Sunday after injuring his thumb.
FRANK VICTORES / ASSOCIATED PRESS
DECEMBER 13, 2015
On Pro Football
By BEN SHPIGEL
CINCINNATI — The Arizona Cardinals were rampaging through the N.F.L. last season, posting the best record in the league, until their quarterback got hurt. His left knee buckled, and soon so would they.
That quarterback, Carson Palmer, watched Arizona’s grand postseason plan evaporate. However talented they were, the Cardinals could not withstand his absence and went on to lose five of their last seven games, including the playoff opener. Their hopes for a division title, a first-round bye, a potential Super Bowl berth in their home stadium: all gone.
The Bengals, after the kind of disaster of a day at Paul Brown Stadium that alters the trajectory of a season, are in danger of becoming this year’s Cardinals.
The top seed in the conference entering Sunday, Cincinnati lost its quarterback, Andy Dalton, to a fractured thumb, as well as two other starters to injury. Dalton paced the sideline in the final three quarters of the Bengals’ 33-20 defeat to division rival Pittsburgh with his hand entombed in a cast, unable to prevent the latest nasty installment of this divisional feud — one that featured a pregame skirmish at midfield — from devolving into a rout. The Steelers’ victory, which drew them to within two games of Cincinnati with three left, delayed the Bengals’ coronation in the A.F.C. North by a week, if not more.
“I can’t worry about the playoffs,” Coach Marvin Lewis said.
But Lewis knows it is always about the playoffs for the Bengals (10-3), who have not won there since January 1991, or had a first-round bye since 1988. They have dropped their last seven postseason games, a stretch of sadness that has come to define the career of Dalton, Palmer’s successor here, who has lost four of them.
In the last four seasons.
The cruelest thing for Dalton is that he broke his thumb trying to make a tackle, after an interception. He had not thrown many of those this season. Only six, compared with 25 touchdowns, and his precision, supplemented by the game’s stingiest scoring defense, generated enthusiasm and optimism in a city inured to despair.
After Pittsburgh scored on its first drive, Dalton marched the Bengals to the Steelers’ 4-yard line before defensive lineman Stephon Tuitt lunged to grab a low shovel pass intended for Giovani Bernard. Dalton, after jamming his thumb against Tuitt, tried to grip a ball, and that is when he knew.
For all of Dalton’s struggles in the postseason (and excellence this season), the possibility exists that he may not be healthy enough to have the chance to redeem himself. Dalton declined to speculate on his timetable, saying he would reserve comment until after meeting with a hand specialist Monday, but he praised his backup, A. J. McCarron, who will start next week at San Francisco. Lewis offered no details on Dalton’s status other than that he will be out for “a bit.” Asked to elaborate on what that meant, Lewis said: “We’ll see. I can’t heal bones.”
Like those Cardinals, these Bengals are loaded on offense, with dynamic talents like receiver A. J. Green and running back Jeremy Hill and tight end Tyler Eifert (who sustained a concussion Sunday), and a defense fronted by the ferocious linemen Geno Atkins and Carlos Dunlap.
But the difference between Palmer and his backups, Drew Stanton and, later, Ryan Lindley, was steep, much as it is with Dalton and McCarron, a two-time national champion at Alabama who had thrown four career passes before Sunday.
“We’ve got something to fight for, and that’s to prove we’re a great football team,” offensive tackle Andrew Whitworth said. He added: “Instead of thinking about the pressure of having to win and people expecting you to win, right now people are going to doubt us. And that’s good. This team needs that.”
Those words could have been spoken three months ago in Dallas, where the Cowboys lost seven straight after their starter, Tony Romo, fractured his clavicle, but also four weeks ago in Denver, where the Broncos have won three of four since Brock Osweiler replaced an ailing (and ineffective) Peyton Manning.
“Our success is going to be dictated by how well we play around him,” Whitworth said.
By him, Whitworth meant McCarron, who completed 22 of 32 passes for 280 yards with two touchdowns but lamented his two interceptions, the first of which was returned 23 yards for a score by William Gay.
At 8-5, Pittsburgh is tied with Kansas City and the Jets but lag behind on tiebreakers. The Steelers are surging, though, just as the Bengals — who have lost three of five — are starting to flail.
A. J. Green vowed they would regroup behind the 25-year-old McCarron, who will be entrusted with preventing his teammates from suffering the same anguish as the 2014 Cardinals.
“I will do whatever I need to do to not let them down,” McCarron said.
That begins on Monday, when he will arrive early, he said, to review his mistakes, and when the Bengals will learn just how much time Dalton will miss. But on Sunday, as McCarron ambled into the interview room, he asked Jack Brennan, the team’s public relations director, where he should sit. Up there, Brennan pointed, directing him to a long table studded with microphones. McCarron sat right in the middle. Beneath the spotlight.
