NFL Winners and Losers: Cincinnati Bengals, Super Bowl contenders
OK, we’ve been down this road with the Cincinnati Bengals before. They look good, the roster looks fantastic, but we all know they will disappoint in January.
I don’t think that will happen this season. The Cincinnati Bengals are very good, and they need to be stamped as legitimate Super Bowl contenders.
Dismiss the Bengals if you wish, but they’re for real. If anyone is going to stop the New England Patriots train in the AFC, it’s the Bengals, unless the Denver Broncos somehow get their offense to play near the same level as their fine defense.
Who is the second-best team in the AFC? The Baltimore Ravens are 0-3. The Buffalo Bills look fine, but if you’re eliminating the Bengals because they haven’t won in January, then Buffalo’s not your team either. The Indianapolis Colts really exciting you? Is it really the Broncos, who came into Week 3 with the least efficient offense in the NFL?
The Bengals went on the road in Week 1 and beat the Oakland Raiders. Oakland is 2-0 since. The past two weeks Cincinnati beat the San Diego Chargers and Baltimore Ravens, two teams that posted winning records last season. Their resume after three weeks is strong. And with the Pittsburgh Steelers missing Ben Roethlisberger for at least four-to-five, or maybe six weeks (that’s “at least” … I think the Steelers would happily sign up for five or six weeks right now), the Bengals have a great shot to build a big lead in the AFC North.
There’s no reason, if you look at the roster and don’t dwell on what has happened in postseasons past, that the Bengals can’t win big. A.J. Green is on a rare level of truly elite receivers. Tight end Tyler Eifert has become a viable weapon. Few teams have two backs as good as Jeremy Hill and Giovani Bernard. The defense is very talented.
And now we get to the elephant in the room.
Yes, it’s hard to buy into Andy Dalton as a Super Bowl quarterback. But Dalton has had moments of success, and he is off to a blazing start in 2015. He has eight touchdowns and one interception, and a 121 rating. He has a better rating at this moment than Tom Brady. When the Bengals were down twice in the fourth quarter Sunday against the Ravens, he threw two touchdown passes (albeit with a lot of help from Green) to lead Cincinnati to the win. The Bengals don’t need Dalton to be a 121 rating quarterback, which is good because there’s no chance he continues this pace. But Dalton doesn’t need to be great. He just needs to be good, and obviously better in the playoffs than he has been in Cincinnati’s four straight playoff losses.
Narratives can be true, at least until they change. At one point Michael Jordan was the guy who couldn’t win the big one, and back in the day folks used to believe you absolutely needed a great running game to win a Super Bowl. Things change. Just because the Bengals have lost four playoff games in a row doesn’t mean they’re precluded from changing that this season.
Time to face it: Unless you want to see the Patriots back in the Super Bowl, you better hope that this Bengals start is for real. They might be the AFC’s best hope at knocking off the champs.
Here are the rest of the winners and losers from Week 3 in the NFL:
WINNERS
Philadelphia Eagles: The Eagles looked like the New York Jets did for the first two weeks of the season. The Jets looked like the Eagles did for the first two weeks. That’s why the NFL is so popular. You can never predict it.
What did the Eagles do in the first two weeks that gave anyone hope that they could win at the Jets? They were a mess on offense and not too great on defense either. But it all clicked on Sunday in a 24-17 win. Instead of 0-3 and mostly done, the Eagles are a palatable 1-2.
It will be very interesting now what Chip Kelly does when DeMarco Murray returns. Murray was out Sunday with a hamstring injury. Mathews, a very good back when healthy, filled in and had 128 total yards and a touchdown in a very tough matchup. Murray has struggled badly, though it’s just two weeks. Would Kelly go right back to him or ride the hot hand?
NFC South: I’ll go on a limb and say the NFC South won’t have a champion with a losing record for a season straight season.
The Atlanta Falcons and Carolina Panthers are each 3-0, and Sunday’s wins weren’t easy. The Falcons faced three separate 14-point deficits but came back and beat the Dallas Cowboys 39-28. Devonta Freeman was great, with 141 rushing yards and three touchdowns. The Falcons offense is really explosive, and played well on Sunday in the comeback.
The Panthers were also down early, as the New Orleans Saints took a 10-0 lead. But Cam Newton played very well, with 315 yards, 134 of which went to tight end Greg Olsen. Newton rushed for a touchdown too.
The Saints and Tampa Bay Buccaneers don’t look very good early this season, but the top two teams in the division are OK. It should be a fun race, with the victor emerging with a winning record this time.
Carson Palmer: It’s not often you see a quarterback turn a corner in his mid-30s.
Palmer came to the Cardinals at age 34. He was not very good with the Oakland Raiders, though it’s also fair to say that the Raiders of a few years ago weren’t going to help anyone. But Palmer got with Cardinals coach Bruce Arians and has had a career renaissance.
Arizona looks like a contender as well, in the NFC. The Cardinals destroyed the San Francisco 49ers 47-7 on Sunday. A couple pick-sixes by the defense added to the score, but the offense did its job too. Palmer had 311 yards. Larry Fitzgerald is back to being a dangerous threat, as he had 134 yards and both scores. And speaking of rejuvenation, Chris Johnson had 110 yards and two touchdowns. Who saw that coming a month ago?
The Cardinals are 19-6 when Palmer starts for them. It has been a marvelous fit.
Jack Del Rio: After one week, it had to be hard for the Oakland Raiders coach to convince his team that it wouldn’t turn into the same old Raiders. They had just been blasted by the Bengals in a home opener. But two games later the Raiders have as much momentum as they’ve had in many, many years.
The Raiders followed up a nice win over the Ravens in Week 2 by going on the road and beating the Cleveland Browns. That’s no small thing for the franchise. The Raiders were 2-22 the past three years in road games.
There should be a lot of hope. Derek Carr looks like a franchise quarterback. He had 314 yards and two touchdowns. Latavius Murray had 139 rushing yards. Amari Cooper had 134 receiving yards. There’s a lot to like in Oakland.
The Raiders aren’t a complete team. The defense needs a lot of work and the overall depth on the roster needs to improve. But it’s looking up in Oakland.
Marcus Mariota: I’m sold. The Tennessee Titans rookie is good. Really, really good. He plays like a longtime veteran from the pocket. He has a fantastic arm and knows where to go with it. He was fantastic when the Titans were down eight points late in the and needed a long drive to tie it. It’s just that …
LOSERS
Titans coach Ken Whisenhunt and his two-point conversion call: You have a rookie quarterback who was devastating on the move in college and can run as well as anyone at the position in the NFL. So, after a penalty puts the ball at the 1-yard line for a two-point try to tie the game, what do you do?
If you’re the Titans, you line up in a horrible, predictable tight formation and hand it to the fullback. Yeah.
It was terrible. Because it was obvious what the play was going to be just by how Tennessee lined up, the Colts had little trouble stuffing fullback Jalston Fowler. Fowler tried running backward, he got tackled for about a 15-yard loss and got hurt too. The Colts won 35-33.
It probably won’t end up as the worst play call in the NFL this season. Actually, it might.
Everyone on the Bears except punter Pat O’Donnell: What a day for O’Donnell!
He got to punt 10 times on Sunday against the Seattle Seahawks. That’s a pretty cool treat. Every time the Bears had a drive, he finished it with a punt. That’s a big-time contribution. And he had 384 yards, which is a huge day. Nobody can say O’Donnell didn’t earn his money. It can be said nobody on the Bears’ offense earned their paychecks, considering they were shut out and had 146 yards.
Anyone who believed in “49ers 20, Vikings 3” after Week 1: That result looks weirder by the day.
The 49ers looked great on opening night. Minnesota looked awful. But the Vikings had a very impressive 31-14 win over the San Diego Chargers on Sunday to improve to 2-1. The 49ers, since Week 1, have been outscored 90-25, and 15 of those points by San Francisco were useless fourth-quarter points last week in a blowout against Pittsburgh.
Last year we had the Tennessee Titans beating the Kansas City Chiefs at Arrowhead Stadium in Week 1 to stare in wonder at all season. This season it seems like we’ll never figure out what happened in that opener at Levi’s Stadium.
St. Louis Rams: If you can’t beat the Pittsburgh Steelers, at home, when they score just 12 points and lose their quarterback to a knee injury, then it’s probably just not your season. Speaking of weird Week 1 outcomes, the Rams beating the Seahawks might make us scratch our heads all year too.
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Frank Schwab is the editor of Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @YahooSchwab
