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[ I Am Bengal – Hear Me Roar (Page 8)
] "Coach, how happy are you with the 12-4 record your guys have posted this year?" All I've heard all year from you media gits is "soft schedule" this, and "only beaten one team with a winning record all year" that... Listen. You can only beat the people they put in front of you, and that's just what we've done all damn year. This team is the real deal, and I tell you right now - there's no-one who wants to meet us in the post-season, no-one! ... "Do you plan on working Corey Dillon to the bone in the playoffs, or are you trusting Kitna enough to put the game in his hands if need be?" Corey's a big part of this team, that's no secret. But there's no way this is a one-man team, we've got playmakers all through the roster. I don't need to answer your question, I think Jon already showed in the New Orleans game that he's got the skills and the balls to get it done when it counts, and he's got the weapons around him to help him make that happen. ... "Are You Looking Into getting a New Quarterback or staying with Akili Smith? Do You Think its Time to start a new generation with Running Backs and rebuild? Release Dillon or Keep Dillon and pick up a young stud you can turn into a great Running Back? Don't get me wrong, you got a good team, but you think rebuilding would put the team ahead and ahead?" Excuse me? Did I hear you right? You're asking me if I'm looking to replace a 3rd-year player who's the AFC's top-rated passer? Is that the question? Oh, no, no, you're asking if I'm going to trade away a 25-year-old guy who's the league MVP, who's rushed for more than fifteen hundred yards and scored 22 touchdowns on the season? And you're asking this the week before the biggest game of our season? Do you think I'm insane? Did the damn Colts send you? Now, I'm going to say this nice and slow, so you can follow me - Akili is my man, and Corey is the best halfback in the league, bar none. I love those guys so much, I'm naming my next kid Dillonsmith. No, I'm not going to replace them. Jesus! ... "Have You Thought about any Off-Season moves you WANT to make?" Well, I think we all realise that this defence is a bit of a work-in-progress. I'd like us to be in a position to base our scheme around a 4-3 next year, but that's going to lead to more pressure to perform falling on, specifically, our defensive tackles and our secondary, so I envision bringing in some extra players to strengthen us in those areas. To make it clear, though, it's not my intention to necessarily replace any of our present roster - the starting spots will be there to be won by whoever shows me they want it the most. ... "Do You Think that Corey Dillon will have a good game or will he choke? Akili Smith hasn't been in the playoffs for heaven who knows, how do you think this is going to effect Akili Smith, Corey Dillon, and the rest of the team since they haven't been in the playoffs for a long time and have no experience for many years?" Well, Akili won't be going to the playoffs this year either, unless he's actually Wolverine in disguise and heals that torn pec way quicker than the doctors say he will. But don't worry about Corey, he'll do great. I'll say it again - best halfback in the NFL, without exception. The idea that this team's got no playoff experience is a bit of a red herring, though. We've got four starters who've actually been to the big show - Bernardo Harris won with the Packers in '97, Lorenzo Neal was the starting fullback for the Titans when they lost Superbowl 35, Sam Adams won Superbowl 36 with Baltimore, and Joe Andruzzi, of course, was a Patriot last year. There's plenty of veteran savvy in this team - and hey, at the end of the day, no-one expects anything from us, so all the pressure is on whoever we're playing. We're just going to get out there and give it all we've got, no excuses and no regrets. ... "I know its a little early to talk about it but, Are You Interested from Pittsburgh Charlie Batch? Are you thinking of getting a backup for Akili Smith other then Batch in the OFF-Season? If so what do you think of QB Anthony Wright?" Jon Kitna's done a great job stepping in for Akili but, yeah, I'd definitely like to have another mobile young quarterback on the roster. I like Wright from what I've seen of him, Batch I don't know as well, and there's another, Joey Harrington's backup in Detroit - McMahon, is it? - that I think would be a nice fit for what we're doing here. It all depends on who's available, really. ... "Coach, don't you think it was inappropriate to run up the score in the Buffalo game with that last second field goal? Do you think that will possibly come back to bite you?" Heh. What would have come back to bite me would be a couple of Rottweilers owned by a guy called Little Frankie if I hadn't covered the spread. Um - if there're any league officials watching... heh, heh. What a kidder. Just a joke, guys. Honest. Nah, if being a Jet fan all these years has taught me anything, it's "Screw Buffalo Every Chance You Get". And hey, it's not my fault they suck. ... And now for the science-part... The AFC playoff seedings look like this: 1 Steelers 14-2 The Patriots sneak into the playoffs despite both Tom Brady and Troy Brown being knocked out for the season. The Jets, despite wins over both Denver and Oakland, can’t quite overcome the fact that almost their entire starting defence is on the sidelines, and the Cleveland Oranges can’t quite overcome the fact that they’re the Cleveland Oranges. Madden, in a display of frightening realism, had the Miami Dolphins start strongly then self-destruct and vanish like the autumn leaves once December rolled around. Aha. Aha. Aha. As predicted, the AFC South managed to produce not a single winning record, thanks in part to our beating three out of four teams in that division during the course of the regular season. We get the chance to complete the set when we travel to the RCA Dome to face Indianapolis in the Bengals’ first play-off game in over ten years. Not the best news, but it could have been worse. If we can knock these jokers over, Oakland await next week. In the NFC, the big guns are the 14-2 Rams, sans Faulk for the remainder of the year, and the 12-4 Eagles. The remaining spots are filled by the Bucs, the Pack (both 9-7), the Giants (10-6) and the 49ers (8-8). Let’s have a look at some numbers, shall we? Come on, it’ll be fun! OFFENCE Passing
(League rank: 7th) Receiving Rushing
(League rank: 4th) DEFENCE Tackles Tackles For Loss Sacks Interceptions As the season went on, our front 7 just got better and better, and will be the cornerstone of the defence next year, perhaps with an upgrade at DT to play alongside Sam Adams and eliminate the weakness we still have against power rushers operating between the tackles. Linebackers Simmons and Spikes were the leaders of the unit – Spikes’ total of 10 tackles behind the line made even more impressive when you remember he missed 6 games this season with injury. The primary concern, however, remains the secondary – too often, good work up front was wasted by cornerbacks who weren’t quick enough or good enough to keep their assigned players under wraps. We’ve snuck through this far thanks to a soft schedule, but I’ll be amazed if our pass defence survives the examination it’ll get in the post-season. SPECIAL TEAMS Oh, and yours truly was voted Coach Of The Year, despite trailing Mike Martz and Bill Cowher in the polls for most of the season. Huzzah, and all that. ... Here we go, then. Wildcard weekend. The tiger-striped lads go to Indianapolis for the biggest game of our season. I scan the injury report beforehand, looking for some potential problem with Edge, Payton or Marvin, but no dice. It’s going to be as it should be – the best we’ve got against the best they’ve got. Wouldn’t have it any other way, baby, YEAH! The mood in the locker-room is edgy but focussed, nervous but ready. “One shot, lads.” I say. “One chance to take all the jokes about the Cincinnati Bungles and shove it down people’s throats ‘till they damned well choke. We can go hard, or we can go home. The choice is down to each and every one of you. Now, let’s get out there, and give that team of overpaid primadonnas the game of their fricking lives...” We lose the toss, usually a bad omen, and particularly in this case, where an early, easy score against us might knock whatever little confidence our defence has picked up in recent weeks. I needn’t have worried, the D swarming all over Edgerrin James right from the whistle and forcing the Colts three and out. The crowd volume goes spiking up, and Jon Kitna leads our offence out to start our first series. We start as we mean to go on, Corey Dillon thumping right up into the guts of the Indianapolis defence, slowly but surely driving them back. On 3rd and inches at the 6, we huddle up in the goal-line set, Kitna play-fakes to Dillon up the middle and rolls out left into a naked bootleg. The combination of the receivers’ routes and the play-action draw the whole defence the wrong way, and Kitna goes over to open the scoring. 7-0. It can’t last, of course, it never does. On the next drive, James dodges Takeo Spikes 3 yards deep in the backfield and then no-one else lays a finger on him the whole 74 yards to the endzone. Christ. 7-7. Our offence looks frankly stunned at this display of defensive ineptitude, and promptly goes 3-and-out. Manning gets the ball back and on the first play of the next drive hits tight end Marcus Pollard for a 37 yard catch and run. He drops back on the next snap, gets hit as he throws and yet somehow still manages to launch a 27-yard bullet between two defenders that Marvin Harrison takes in at the Cincinnati 8. That’s practically point-blank for Edge, and all of a sudden we’re down 7-14. We need a quick response to regain the momentum, and we get it. Corey Dillon takes the ball sliding between guard and tackle, and tremendous blocking sees every defender get sealed inside but the safeties and a cornerback. Dillon cuts inside to beat the CB and strong safety, then angles back out to burn off the FS, picks up a block from Peter Warrick and is gone, gone, gone, 42 yards for the touchdown. 14-14, and I officially declare this shootout open! The defence has had a chance to catch its breath, and puts the Colts 3-and-out once more. This, and a sharp punt return by Chad Johnson, sees us set up at halfway. Daniel Graham, who’s been quiet to this point, drags right across the field and takes the catch, breaking away to the tune of 21 yards. But there we stall, Kitna missing a wide open Graham on a 3rd-down play-pass, and with two and a half minutes to play in the half Gary Anderson hooks his kick wide. I'm getting a bad feeling about all of this... Manning seems utterly, infuriatingly immune to pressure. He’s hit on two of three passes but still gets them away perfectly, taking the Colts 70 yards in just under a minute, the final play being a twenty-yard connection to Marcus Pollard at the back of the endzone which puts us behind 14-21. The man's a fricking Terminator, it's the only reasonable explanation. He can't be argued with, he can't be reasoned with, He doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear and he absolutely will not stop, ever, until we're out of the frigging playoffs... Yeah, well. With 1:15 to play we flood the weak zone on a play-pass, and Kitna hits Warrick over the middle to the tune of 27 yards. Hustling to the line, we run one of my favourite plays, the I-Form quick slant. The corners stay tight on Warrick and Jackson, but fall asleep covering Graham, who makes a good adjustment to take a ball thrown slightly behind him for another 24 yards. I curse under my breath – if Kitna had led his man instead of underthrowing, that was a pretty cast-iron TD. Nadgers. Staying in the no-huddle, Dillon takes a quick sweep right for 13, putting him over 100 in the first half, and we take our last timeout with the ball on the 9 and 35 ticks left. Going to split-backs, we identify the Colts’ intention to play zone with motion, then flood the strong side, Graham getting wide open on an out-pattern along the goal-line to level the scores at 21. Of course, 30 seconds is easily enough to score on our defence, and the Peytonator proves it, ending the half with a 70-yard connection to Wayne and taking us in with the score CIN 21-28 IND. Already it looks as if whoever ends up with the last possession is going to take this one... We can’t stop the pass, they can’t stop the run. Although thinking about it, we also can’t stop the run much, and they can’t stop the pass all that great, either. So. With neither team capable of forcing a turnover, this looks like it could be a bit of a high-scorer. The half-time discussion is all about eliminating mistakes, about sticking to our game-plan (that’d be run, run, run, run some more, for those of you unfamiliar with it...) and not letting Indianapolis get away. This lot are scared of you, I say. They’re right there for the taking – they don’t want any part of us, we’ve got them, we just need to execute, and it’s absolutely vital that we score first in the second half... Our special teams play has looked feisty all day, having come close to breaking a big one a couple of times already. The Colts kick off for the second half, and the ball’s taken in by Chad “Fumbleitis” Johnson at the 8. He heads straight upfield then angles left, shooting across the face of two would-be tacklers, then turning up so that a third defender only half-wraps him up, giving a chance to break the tackle. Suddenly, Johnson spots a gap away to his right – and almost before he’s seen it, he’s through it, the sudden change of direction just too much for any Indianapolis player to live with, and in the blink of an eye Johnson’s in the open-field and no-one’s going to get close as he takes it to the house for a 92-yard kickoff return, his second return TD of the season. Okay. So it’s now basically a 1-half game, the scores tied up at 28. You can see it coming a mile off. A 2-play drive, the second being a 75-yard pass from the Peytonator to Marvin Harrison, and just like that the momentum’s shifted back to the Colts as they go up 28-35. Their D comes out inspired, and a sack of Kitna on 3rd and 3 forces us to punt once more. But all of a sudden, the offences are getting cramped all over, Takeo Spikes and Brian Simmons combining to keep Edgerrin James a non-factor, then Marcus Pollard putting the ball on the carpet on 3rd and 10, and it’s the Colts’ turn to punt. But right now Chad Johnson is echoing his big cousin Keyshawn and telling us just to get him the damn ball and let him make a play – and he does, taking the ball at our 10, backpedaling to buy space before cutting back the way he came, finding the seam and dodging and dancing through the tackles all the way to Indianapolis territory. Sweeeeeet. And just the spark we need. Dillon hammers up the middle and keeps going to the tune of 23 yards, then on 3rd-and-8 that world-renowned scrambling quarterback, Jon Kitna, rolls out and keeps rolling. He makes a move that looks like it’s being replayed in slow-motion, but is good enough to fake out the 3 covering linebackers and allow him to slide down for the 1st. He’ll never do that again, think the Colts. Oh, blimey, he has! Kitna gets down to the 4, then wisely hands the job over to first Corey Dillon (to the 1-foot line) and then who else but Lorenzo Neal, our resident blunt object, who bulldozes in to level the score yet again. This is starting to become a bit tedious. The Colts’ first play from scrimmage sees Manning hit Wayne in the flat right on the sideline, then Wayne break a couple of tackles and vanish downfield for 70 yards and another TD... At first glance, though, it looked like he stepped out of bounds, so my flag hits the deck, and to the booth it goes... and yeah, there’s no doubt about it, he takes the catch, his left foot shifts a little to help him keep his balance as he’s tackled and steps a good three inches over the white line before he zips away and embarrasses my secondary yet again... Plain as a Bulgarian pinup, no question, back he comes. Except he doesn’t, does he? Because we seem to have Mr. Magoo officiating, who can’t see a damned thing wrong with the play. Christ. No amount of shouting, screaming, pleading or jumping up and down purple with rage can change Hawkeye’s mind, and so we’re down 35-42, five minutes left to play. God damn. We’ve been wounded now, and as we all know, twice-armed is he who hath quarrel just. Or something like that. We grind down the field, taking no prisoners, overcoming a 4th and inches at halfway with a thunderous Lorenzo Neal run, and drive right up to the Indianapolis 7-yard line, where we hit trouble. On a 3rd and 3 we go for the lot, but the quick-slant to Willie Jackson is defended, leaving us in a bit of a hole. If in doubt, go to Dillon, and Mister Reliable crashes up the middle, gets knocked back short (Christ!) before driving back in and picking up the couple of yards required with second-effort... then puts the rock on the ground (Double Christ!). A mad scramble follows until Daniel Graham falls on the ball at the 2, and most of the two teams fall on Graham, bruising his hip to the point where he’ll have no further part in the game (Double Christ with a side-order of the Madonna!). Before things can get any worse, Corey punches it in, and were tied up again, this time at 42, with less than two minutes on the clock. Too long, too long, far too long... On 2nd and 10, Andre Dyson finally jumps a Marvin Harrison pattern and gets a great play on the ball... but bats it down when he surely could have picked it off. DAMN. On 3rd and 10, there’s finally evidence that Manning might be human, a Sam Adams hit causing his pass to turn into a wobbly duck that necessities Ismael having to come all the way back to the line of scrimmage to make a catch, just before he buried by a vengeful Bengal secondary. But the tension’s gotten to both sides, and Kitna misses three passes (the second looking like a sideline catch by backup TE Matt Schobel until a booth review declared it an incompletion. Oh, NOW you can see where out-of-bounds is, can you?), leading to another punt with just over a minute left. Still too damned long... And it is, too. The first play sees Paytonator to Harrison for 33, putting the Colts at our 35 and well within range for Vanderjagt, another Cyberdyne Industries construct if ever I saw one. Manning, the lucky recipient of yet another monstrous hit from Sam Adams, limps off to let Brock Huard administer the coup de grace. They shove James up the middle for no gain, then take their time getting to the line, running off the clock, before tossing the ball back to Edge WHO’S IMMEDIATELY FLATTENED BY TAKEO SPIKES FOR A LOSS OF 5 YARDS PUSHING THE COLTS BACK OUT OF FIELD-GOAL RANGE! I cackle insanely, the crowd are stunned, the clock runs out, and this is going to overtime, with both Tony Dungy and myself praying to whatever Gods we believe in that the coin-toss goes our way... It’s my personal deities who are the stronger, obviously, and the coin falls in our favour. With not a microsecond’s thought, we elect to receive, and after yet another decent kick return, set up on our 30. The crowd are now at a fever-pitch, but we’re shutting them out, we set, and we go. Go three and out, that is. Oh, criminy. It’s a decent punt by Nick Harris, finally having a good game for us, and the Colts are pinned at their 20. Manning’s still out, and Huard hasn’t quite gotten into the rhythm of the game yet, and so these two high-powered offences start the overtime period with three plays and a punt apiece. Chad Johnson is still firing on all cylinders, though, taking the ball at our 20, then slithering through a seam all the way to halfway. I punch the air in exaltation – God knows the lad’s had his problems this year, particularly keeping hold of the ball, but when we needed him, he’s come through. And this is it, it’s so close, I can taste it. Corey Dillon slides off-tackle all the way to the 34, and we go into our shell, three runs up the gut netting a total of 6 yards... Out comes Gary Anderson and the field-goal unit to attempt a 45-yarder, and here we go, this is our season... Snap. Hold. Kick. It’s a beauty, absolutely dead on line, straight at the centre-support... And short. Way short. Oh God. The Colts come out firing, Huard’s first pass finding Pollard at halfway, and it’s all falling apart, they’re going to grind this out and there’s nothing we can do... Oh, oh, OH! Three huge plays from Spikes, Simmons and Lamont Thompson, and the Colts are punting AGAIN, with less than 2 minutes left in overtime! Come on, boys, come ON, one last effort, that’s all it needs! The ball arcs up into the air, and drops toward our 10, Johnson standing underneath it. Down it comes, into the 2nd-year receiver’s arms... And back out again. And onto the floor. And fallen on. By. The. Colts. Indianapolis are jubilant. We’re just shell-shocked. It’s the very first turnover of the game. Vanderjagt slots the formality of the field-goal from our 8, and that’s it. We’re done for the year. Final score: CIN 42-45 IND (OT). So near, and yet so far. Johnson is just distraught, devastated to think that it’s his mistake that’s cost us the game, repeating to me over and over again how sorry he is, even as I try to tell the poor kid that we wouldn’t even had been close without the 250-plus return yards he’d racked up on kicks and punts this afternoon. I mean it, too, he and Corey Dillon have been the stars of the show for us, and even as I’m feeling shocked and numb, I know that we’ll be back and we’ll be better next season. It won’t be as easy – we’re not the surprise package anymore, no-one will be taking us lightly like they did this year – but I know, I just know, that one day soon this team is going to the Big Show, and I’m going to be there with them. One day soon, we’re going to bring a World Championship to Bengalville. And that’s a promise. [
^ back to top ] (c) daniel roe 2003 |
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