Monday, September 13, 1999
Maybe not same old Bengals
BY PAUL DAUGHERTY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Two bags of intravenous fluid dripped into Jeff Blake's body, fed by the needle stuck into the crook of his left arm. As he sat in the visiting locker room, listening to the last nine minutes of the game on the radio, Tennessee scored, and scored again. The game dripped away, as most of them do, hope to failure, Sunday after Sunday. Drip, drip, drip.
The Titans beat the Bengals, 36-35, on a field goal with eight seconds to play. It was the most bizarre, unusual game in recent Bengals history. The outcome was familiar, though. The result was no mystery.
It's got to turn, doesn't it? The losing, the disappointment, the cynicism, the anger. It's got to stop, if only by accident.
Let it be soon. Good grief, let it be soon.
It's not a leap of logic to say the Bengals lost because Blake dried up. If Blake's body didn't rebel at the sticky 90-degree heat, cramp up and refuse to play, Cincinnati doesn't have Scott Covington playing quarterback on third-and-10, when one first down might have clinched the win.
Until he left on a cart with 9:15 to go, Blake was terrific. He was who he said he could be, if given the starting job and unleashed from the role of dropback quarterback.
Blake made all the throws: A 3-yard blooping TD toss to Tony McGee. An 80-yard, rainmaking bomb to Darnay Scott that was called back, and all the throws in between, including the critical 7- and 8-yard tosses to make first downs and keep drives alive.
When the passes weren't there, Blake ran, 11 times for 90 yards and not once for his life.
Then he tried one more, a deep slant to Scott in the end zone, before the muscles in his legs bunched like an accordion. The Bengals have lost lots of ways in the last 10 years, but maybe never because of dehydration.
“My body just shut down. If you can't move, you can't move,” said Blake.
The Bengals need to move this week. They will need an IV for their psyches. If they are the “new” Bengals as they profess, they will return Sunday to Cinergy Field and beat San Diego. As line coach Paul Alexander told fullback Brian Milne while leaving the locker room for the team bus, “Take it out on the Chargers next week.”
This is a week for Bruce Coslet to earn his money. It is a week for the coach to set a tone for his young team. It's not the slump-shouldered tone he sets on the sidelines, when things don't go well.
Because for the first time in almost forever, when the players say they're not the Same Old Bengals (SOBs), they may be right.
Call me nuts. But the Bengals had almost no shot Sunday, for every reason you could imagine, and they nearly stole one. They fell behind 26-7 in the first half and scored 28 straight points.
They didn't tank it. This, fans, is improvement.
Tennessee was opening a new stadium. Cincinnati had been tweaking its roster right to the end. The Titans were far better than Cincinnati, having finished 8-8 the last three years, while wandering Nashville and the state of Tennessee until their stadium was finished.
When the Titans blew out to a 19-point edge, logic suggested you'd be better served turning off the tube and taking a nap. Dreaming of Sam Wyche, maybe.
But the Bengals made it 26-15, then 26-21, then 35-26 with 7:56 to play. “Everybody thought we were going to win,” said linebacker Takeo Spikes.
Another team might have held on. The Bengals didn't know how. As Blake listened on the radio, the defense crumbled and the offense died. This is how it has worked in Cincinnati for a very long time.
“Ten years, man. Ten years,” Spikes was saying. The question had been, “Does a team have to learn how to win?” Spikes, a winner in college and as a rookie last year, answered by suggesting a decade of losing can't be unlearned in a few weeks.
For 59 minutes and 52 seconds Sunday, the clouds parted, though. The sky stopped falling and the other shoe didn't drop. Then it did. Bizarre game, routine outcome.
There are two ways the Bengals can turn after their most recent punch in the gut, and everyone is very familiar with one of them.
“If we play like that every week, we'll win more than we lose,” Blake said, and you've got to believe him. You've got to look on the bright side, given the alternative.
Enquirer columnist Paul Daugherty welcomes your comments at 758-8454.
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