Sportsfrog.com

…and finally with access again to a computer and a minute to think, I can state, safely, that the 2006 version of the Bengals is one of the all-time choke artists that the long-suffering (self-inflicted, mind you) franchise has ever unleashed on the NFL.

The popular explanation for the choke, culimating in a cover-your-eyes historically bad season-on-the-line game in Denver (four turnovers, numerous killer penalties, one all-time critically bad snap), is that somehow karma for all the arrests caught up with them. To which I say, bullshit. The off-season (and in-season) law-breaking has nothing to do and had nothing to do with the on-field failures of that team. Look at Sunday, for instance. I saw:

—Carson Palmer (unarrested) airmail numerous passes and fail to put points on the board when he needed to.

—Chad Johnson (unarrested), continuing a season long and career long trend of coming up teenie weenie in big games, drop criticial passes and commit an egregious motion penalty negating a 74-yard touchdown pass to Chris Henry (arrested a bunch, yet came up big here)

—Rudi Johnson (unarrested), fumble for the third game in a row, this one a giant momentum killer.

—Brad St. Louis (unarrested) make a bad snap for the ages on an extra point that was, ahem, kinda important.

—Marvin Lewis (unarrested) continuing a disturbing season long habit of getting badly outcoached coming out of the locker room.

In short, the reasons for the in-game failure, and season long failure, have been, entirely, due to alleged stars for the Bengals coming up small on the field. 1-5 against playoff teams in the AFC. More excuses than you can begin to fathom. At some point that team has to grow up, and that growing needs to occur on the field. The arrests? Fun for the easy joke. But far easier to address than what really plagues that team, which is an inability to do what it takes when the time comes. This quote from Palmer is a bit telling:

“‘It might have come down to us being tight, being nervous, scared,’ suggested Palmer, though he couldn’t say for sure. He didn’t have his Ouija board. ‘The coaches talked all week about what a big game this was. It was overstressed.’”

The size of the Bengals’ stones at this point? Microscopic. Fixing THAT, dare I say, will be far more important than waiting to see which name comes across the blotter next.