Week Two: At Denver L 22-24

 

Summary:

Not exactly what you can call a “moral” victory. The Broncos suck. Plus they were playing without roughly 10 starters for a lot of the game. So if the Bengals (and their fans) have any delusions of being a candidate for significance this year, they really needed to win this game. The play calling was predictably suspect – not attempting a 53 yard field goal for the late fourth quarter lead (hey, Bengals coaching staff, the ball travels farther in the thin air – remember all those kickoffs that nearly hit the uprights,) repeatedly running it right up the gut on 3rd and short, for a 1 yard loss, forgetting Cedric Benson was on the team for large stretches of the game, etc, etc. The Defense was not very impressive. Ole’ man MaGahee - functioning on his second left knee and third right knee - ran for over 100, and some dude who’s name I forget already (#87) looked like Jerry Rice against the secondary, who’s multiple blown coverages lead to at least two Broncos TD’s. That said, the Bengals passing game continues to be light years ahead of where you would expect with a rookie QB throwing to first and second and third year guys. And the team, showed again this week that it has significantly more chutzpa, albeit in a losing effort, than last year’s version – twice putting themselves in position to win the game late in the 4th after being down 17-3, early in the third and 24-15 midway through the 4th.

 

Goals Not Accomplished:

• Win two games. Week two, and near-ultimate futility is still very much an option. 1-15 would be pretty bad, but not as bad as the Chiefs who are currently starin’ down the barrel at 0-16 right about now..
  
• Win two road games. I guess we’ll always have the Cleveland game. Not too many winnable road games left to witness, maybe @JAX or @SEA.
  
• Throw the ball to Jermaine Gresham more than any other receiving target. After the way AJ Green looked I may have to slightly amend this goal. It’s tough to argue with the passing results on Sunday, though it is still distressing that Gresham returned to the ranks of 5th option. I’m hoping this was because AJ Green and Jerome Simpson were running wide open all day.
  
• Have 5 or less penalties in a game. Nope. A little more Bengals like this week, 7 penalties. Not terrible, but certainly didn’t help themselves in that category. There were several holding calls on returns that cost a lot of field position.
  
• Don’t challenge a call’s that are clearly correct. I don’t remember any Bengals’ challenges.
  
• Give the ball to Benson. Only 16 attempts for Ced, and only 20 rushing attempts all day. I know, I know, they were behind 2 scores most of the day, and the Broncos were offering very little resistance to the pass, but Ced had it working early and then they pretty much just shelved the running game altogether. The result, many 3rd and longs, many Bronco blitzes -some of which the Bengals killed them on - but a lot more punts
  

 

 

Goals accomplished:

• Don’t turn the ball over. 0 turnovers. Still pretty amazed by that one. Rookie QB making his 2st start, threw the ball 41 times and really only had 1 or 2 close calls all day – and those were tipped balls. Amazing. Through 6 quarters, I’m thoroughly impressed by Dalton. He doesn’t have a huge arm, and he failed to hit a couple of wide open guys in stride, costing some serious RAC yards yesterday, but the dude has yet to make a really bad decision, uncanny. Well...there was the matter of that sack…
  

 

 

Non Goal related comments:

• AJ Green is the most talented wide receiver the Bengals have had since I’ve been watching (circa 1986).
  
• If Jerome Simpson had surer hands, he’d be in the top 5 on that list as well.
  
• The Secondary is basically Leon Hall, and four other dudes.
  
• The Linebackers suck as a group.
  

Agreed. I think Caldwell is better. Not even sure its close.

 

Depends what you mean by better? If you mean faster and just a better athlete then no doubt Caldwell is better. However if you judge it on receivers smarts and finding the holes in the defense, and better hands then it is Shipley. There is a reason Shipley beat out Caldwell for that slot receiver as a rookie. So I have no idea where you can say it is not even close when it comes to who is better. What has Caldwell done to show that? The one good thing is Caldwell does have experience in the slot, so it really shouldn't hurt.

 

(By the way I am not saying that Caldwell isn't better, he might be. However he has shown nothing really to back up your statement, especially the part about it not being close. Also since Caldwell got beat out by Shipley last year too.)