Friday, December 02, 2011

Stop the Mighty Ginger: Bengals at Steelers Preview

For those of you that don't read the ol' blog regularly, the Mighty Ginger is Bengals quarterback Andy Dalton.  I call him that because he's already playing pretty damn well and he looks like this.

Dalton's stats haven't been overly impressive thus far this year -- he has 16 touchdown passes, 12 interceptions, and an 81.1 quarterback rating -- but he's proven to be more than capable of leading this young team to victory.  Cincinnati is 7-4 and they're 4-2 the road.  Had AJ Green not gotten hurt in the last game between these two teams, the Bengals could be 8-3 and the Steelers could be 8-3.  However, I'm not a big fan of "what if" scenarios, because that's basically saying, "if the things that caused me to lose had not happen, I would have won."  That means Cincy is 7-4 and the Steelers are 8-3 and neither team can afford to lose ground to Baltimore, which holds a tiebreaker over both teams.

Everything that I wrote in the last preview is still true.  These are two fairly evenly matched teams.  The Bengals are no longer the Bungles.  AJ Green is a hell of a player and Ike Taylor will have his hands full on Sunday.  They have an accomplished couple of cornerbacks and a solid front seven.  Their safeties are still suspect, but taking advantage of that would require Mike Wallace to hold onto the ball.  But, really, I'm not saying he can't do that.  He had a bad game against Kansas City and I think that he will make up for that on Sunday.

The thing is that not too much has changed since the last game.  Polamalu may be limited and may not play, but LaMarr Woodley will be back, Farrior will be back, and James Harrison is healthy.  As a matter of fact, this is the healthiest this team has been all season.  They'll also have Emmanuel Sanders back, which helps the return game.

Really, this is a game that they won about three weeks ago and should win again.  The big thing they need to keep in mind is Dalton.  He's no longer just some rookie quarterback.  I'm not promoting him to the upper tier of quarterbacks in the NFL, but he's better and more dangerous in the fourth quarter than the likes of Curtis Painter, Blaine Gabbert, or even Cam Newton and Christian Ponder.  Dalton has five fourth quarter comebacks this season and was one William Gay interception away from having six.

Perhaps the most important thing to keep in mind here is that Dalton is better than Tyler Palko.  The Steelers are healthy, they're more talented than the Bengals, and they're playing at home.  They could very well jump out to another early 14-0 lead on Cincinnati.  If that happens, they need to keep their foot on the gas and put as much distance between themselves and the Bengals on the scoreboard as possible.  Dalton's not John Freakin' Elway or even Frank Reich, but he's plenty good enough to overcome a deficit on the road against a team that's trying to sit on a lead (like they did against the Chiefs and Jaguars).

If they take care of the ball, force a couple of turnovers, stay aggressive, and keep the Mighty Ginger in check, they shouldn't have any problems winning this game.  That's a lot of "ifs" but I still think they get it done.

Prediction:
Steelers 23, Bengals 17

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