Former Patriots’ safety Rodney Harrison brought up an interesting point last night on “Football Night in America” when he said that the Bengals would lay down against the Jets so that they didn’t have to face the Texans next week in the first round.
At the time, I thought Harrison was reaching. No professional football team with professional players would just allow an opponent to walk all over them. Players and coaches have egos the size of California and would never concede anything before the game started. At the very least, I figured the Bengals would play most of their starters until the second quarter or even half time and then pull them for the second half.
But then the game started and watching the Bengals was like watching monkeys slap each other for three hours. Cincinnati was absolutely horrendous in every phase of the game, including things as simple as lining up to get the snap off. They had no interest in stopping Thomas Jones defensively and even less interest in trying to score offensively.
I still doubt that Marvin Lewis got his players together and said, “Go out there and trip over yourselves for 60 minutes.” But one has to wonder if the Bengals didn’t have ulterior motives last night. Think about it, had they beaten the Jets, they would have had to play a Houston team that had already smacked them in Cincinnati during the regular season. If they lost, they got to face that same Jets team with a rookie quarterback making his first postseason appearance on the road. Why would the Bengals go all out for a semi-meaningless game?
I feel bad for the Texans, because they clearly were hosed by the Bengals’ effort last night. I couldn’t imagine being a Houston player that didn’t turn the game on until the second half, hoping that when they tuned in that they would at least see a close game. Instead, they saw J.T. O’Sullivan run around the field like Brucie from the remake of “The Longest Yard.”
