Is Sunday's Game Winnable Any More For Patriots?

Forget Cleveland. Lose to Cincinnati at home and you might as well bring back Clive Rush. Or Ron Erhardt. Or Rod Rust.

Because if the Patriots can’t even beat the lowly Bengals at home, Bill Belichick may want to run and hide permamently. Things will get more ugly than Fred Sanford’s Aunt Esther. Paper bags won’t do the trick at Foxborough Stadium; you’ll need body bags instead, after what the fans may do to themselves.

Patriots/Bengals Close-up
Where:	Foxborough Stadium Foxborough, Mass.
When:	Sunday 11/19 1:00 PM EDT
TV:	CBS WBZ TV-4 in Boston
DSS:	DirecTV Channel 709, 940
Latest Line:	Patriots by 7
Team Records:	Patriots 2-8 Bengals 2-8

The Patriots are pretty bad this year. But nobody north of New York City and east of Albany ever imagined that the Cincinnati game would turn into a “losable” game. In this year of the First Half Schedule From Hell, Patriot Nation looked to the two Ohio teams for some peace and comfort. That and something called “two wins”.

Ain’t gonna happen. Cleveland took care of that last week. That 19-11 slop of a game has turned this previously “easy” game into a potential embarrassment. Actually, the word “embarrassed” is not accurate. If Cincinnati wins Sunday, you might describe Patriot Nation as “suicidal” rather than “embarrassed”.

There’s no way the Patriots could possibly lose to Cincinnati. Is there? That’s what we all thought about Cleveland, though.

Both the Patriots and the Bengals are 2-8. This matchup ranks right down there with the infamous Ken Sims Bowl of 1981, where 1-14 Baltimore (the Colts, natch) took on 2-13 New England. The loser got the first pick in the 1982 draft. Baltimore won, 23-21, and the Pats got Sims. The Pats got the fate they deserved, as Sims spent more time on crutches than on opposing quarterbacks.

You’d think the Bengals would be easy. Akili Smith won’t play, and he hasn’t been anywhere near what a number three draft pick should be. Stop Corey Dillon and you stop Cincinnati. Simple.

Denver thought that a few weeks back. That game was one of the real locks of that week. Denver over Cincinnati. There was just one problem, though. Denver couldn’t stop Dillon. Guess what?

You know what. Dillon broke Walter Payton’s 23-year-old single game rushing record with 278 yards gained. Cincinnati won the game, 31-21. This was against the same Bronco team that handed Oakland their second loss of the season four nights ago.

The Broncos have shown inconsistencies this year, though. I mean, this team lost to the Patriots. At home. Yikes.

Does that make things better for the Patriots as they prepare for Dillon and his gang?

The Bengals have been a study in why it’s not always a good idea to just hand over the team to your son. The Celtics have ThanksDad (Paul Gaston), who presides over a Celtic franchise that is a shell of what it was like under Dad Don. In Cincinnati, Mike Brown is their ThanksDad, except a lot worse.

Paul Brown is one of the most heralded NFL geniuses in history. He founded two separate NFL franchises, and both saw good to great success. But he lost both franchises to a bunch of knuckleheads, and it’s not clear whether or not that brings more glory to Brown’s good name or shame for allowing what happened to happen.

Losing the Browns to Art Modell was a shady, underhanded deal, and that franchise now resides in Baltimore. But where the Bengals are concerned, Brown handed the team over to son Mike, and the team has slid down the abyss for over ten years, with no end in sight as long as son Mike insists on playing owner.

It is very hard to believe that this is the same Bengals team that played in Super Bowls XVI and XXIII. This is the same team that featured great players like Ken Anderson (current offensive coordinator), Anthony Munoz, Lemar Parrish, and the wacky Cris Collinsworth. The Bengals gave a lot to the NFL, in the form of striped uniforms, an AFC title game in minus-40 degree weather, and the Ickey Shuffle.

But from their inception up until about 1990, this team was always respectable at least and powerful at best. When the Patriots notched one of the franchise’s landmark victories in 1985, it was against these Bengals. It was a win at home in the season finale that clinched a playoff spot and launched their run towards Super Bowl XX, but that 34-23 win was against a very tough Bengal team that finished one game out of first place in the AFC Central.

Maybe the Bengals are paying for the sins of Bo Jackson. It was in the Bengals’ 1990 playoff game against Oakland where Jackson suffered his hip pointer that ended his football career, and his baseball career wasn’t that far behind. The Bengals have been the pits ever since, and no team in the NFL finished with a worse record in the 1990s than Cincinnati (52-108 for the decade).

These two teams haven’t met in a while. The Patriots lead the all-time series versus the Bengals, 9-7. Their last meeting was in 1994, when the teams put on retro uniforms in the 75th aniversary of the NFL and the Pats won, 31-28 at Riverfront Stadium. The previous year, Bill Parcells notched his second career win as Patriot head coach by defeating Cincinnati, 7-2. Drew Bledsoe was the winning pitcher, and Vincent Brisby hit a three-run homer.

The most lopsided Patriot win in this series was the initial meeting in 1968, when the Boston Pats beat the Bengals, 33-14 at Fenway Park. The Patriots could dearly use this kind of win on Sunday, and up until last week at Cleveland, nobody had any reason to think otherwise.

How bad have the Bengals become?

Bruce Coslet, who had many distinguised years as its tight end many years ago, quit a few weeks back as their head coach. Former defensive coordinator Dick LeBeau took over, whose only claim to fame is that he was one of the rushers Detroit sent in to try and block Tom Dempsey’s 63-yard field goal in 1970. Right now, LeBeau is charged with rebuilding this sorry team, but most football fans look at him and think of the old TV show Hogan’s Heroes.

LeBeau scored big with the win over Denver, but Dillon had a big hand in that. Outside of Dillon, the Bengals literally have no stars. They have nobody anyone outside of Cincinnati can name outside of Smith and Peter Warrick. John Copeland, Takeo Spikes and Brian Simmons might jog a few memories.

Smith was taken with the third pick in last year’s draft. Currently Smith is injured, and Scott Mitchell is at the helm. Mitchell is a well-traveled vet whose most recent stint was with Detroit. Smith is still an unproven commodity at the pro level, but he represents the franchise’s best hope for future success, especially if Dillon bolts as a free agent this year. That would devastate Cincinnati beyond belief, a team that is already the second-worst offense in the AFC.

The Bengals would have loved to have traded up to get either LaVar Arrington or Courtney Brown this year. But they “settled” for Warrick at four, and he should form a formidable tandem with Smith when the quarterback heals up. Ty Law should draw Warrick, and absent of a monster game from Darnay Scott, Warrick shouldn’t pose a major problem. At least not this year.

Defensively, the Bengals have a lot of no-names. Copeland, Spikes and Simmons are their studs on defense, but that’s where it stops. They have the fourth-worst defense in the AFC, and are fourth-worst against the run.

But they have two wins. The other win they own is against (gulp) the team the Patriots couldn’t beat last week. Any team can win on any given Sunday. Start sweating, Patriot Nation.

On paper, this is still an easy Patriot win. You have no idea how bad this Bengal team is. Except at running back and perhaps at wideout, the Patriots have this team by a mile in talent. Ye Gods, it’s not even close.

But after last week, “on paper” might just as well relate to matters of the bathroom. The Bengals could very well win. This was the other “automatic” win on the Patriot schedule this year. The first one went up in flames. At least this one is at home, but that could turn out to be worse, not better.

For instance, how is the Fox fan base going to take this 2-8 jazz? Who’s to say that the crowd won’t spend the entire afternoon screaming for Michael Bishop to play? What if 70% of the crowd comes out wearing paper bags over their heads like Bob Lobel wants them to do? You don’t think the crowd might be more of a distraction to the players rather than support? If I were a Patriot player, I might feel a wee bit better if this game were at Paul Brown Stadium rather than Foxborough.

And God help the Patriots if they pull a Jet meltdown and fall behind early. Then you’ve got 1976 and that ugly Monday night Jets game again. My dad was at that game, and witnessed the attendant who was trying to revive a heart attack victim get urinated on by some drunk.

Maybe guys like me ought to shut up. If the Patriot players read too much into what guys like Kevin Mannix, Ron Borges, Jim Donaldson and I write, they’ll come out tight and scared and have no chance, even against a bad team like Cincinnati. The fourth estate can psyche out a team better than their opponent quite often.

In that case, here’s to a widespread case of total amnesia. Cleveland never happened. Matter of fact, neither did the Jets. Or Buffalo. Or Minnesota.

The Pats are really 8-2, and should win by 46 points Sunday. There. Y’all feel better now?

About Bob George

Covering Boston Sports since 1997. Native of Worcester, Mass. Attended UMass and Univ of Michigan. Lives in California. Just recently retired after 40 years of public school teaching. Podcasts on YouTube at @thepic4139

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