I'll keep it 100. After last week's performance + Andy Dalton's postgame response to the Red Ryder BB gun comment, I'm inherently biased against the Bengals for the duration of this season.
That bugged the **** out of me and I still ain't over it. #facts #spicyHOTtake
But it ain't like I said anything outlandish. If you want to take a bigger picture view and look at their current record...cool. I'll also take a bigger picture view and look at what how Marvin Lewis coached teams routinely trip themselves up when the spotlight is on them. Reality is even with all this "Bengals are different this year" talk, they're still in the same boat until they shut everyone up in January.
Maybe we should be used to the same song & dance by now, but like I said earlier, I was lowkey thinking it might be different this time and they wouldn't commit stupid errors or mishandle a late game situation.
Notice how I didn't attack Andy today though. I had more of an issue with the coach and his/their in-game blunders.
1:23 left in the game, you're on THEIR 33, you have two timeouts left, they have NONE. You're already in FG range and control the rest of the game. You decide to chuck the ball 2 out of 3 times (stopping the clock + shaving only 20 seconds overall) and fail to pick up a 1st down that would've prevented or contained a final drive by Arizona.
And then a straight up idiotic unsportsmanlike penalty that turns a FG with a higher degree of difficulty into a chip shot for the W.
We're obviously gonna re-visit this down the line one way or another. Just keep these last 2 games in mind if the seeding and home/road doesn't go their way for the playoffs...