Monday, October 25, 1999
With no chance to run, Dillon sits
Bengals favored passing game, star RB says
BY GEOFF HOBSON
The Cincinnati Enquirer
INDIANAPOLIS — Five stitches closed the gash in the right arm of Bengals running back Corey Dillon, but nothing could shut off the emotions he vented after Sunday's 31-10 loss to the Colts.
Dillon didn't play in the second half, saying he took himself out of the game because he saw no reason to risk more injury since the Bengals “abandoned” the running game.
“They weren't running the ball and they weren't going to,” said Dillon, who nicked a vein in his forearm on the Bengals' opening drive.
“What the hell? I'm not going back up in there and get something else injured. For what? I knew they were going straight to the pass. It's (21-3). You know how they do it. Abandon the run. So I'm not going to go back up in there ... It made no sense to me. So I don't want to hear it was because of the stitches or I wasn't performing. It wasn't that, they weren't running the damn ball anyway.”
Coach Bruce Coslet said he never asked Dillon to go back into the game and he made the call not to go with him in the second half. Dillon carries the ball in his left arm, but he needs his right for taking on defenders. He thinks he gashed the vein on a face mask, and it was difficult to stop bleeding.
“When he went back in, I didn't think he was effective,” Coslet said. “I asked the position coach if he thought he was effective and he said he didn't think so.”
Dillon said the coaches understood his situation, but he clearly doesn't understand why they don't give him the ball more. He missed the next two series, then got the ball three more times — twice for negative yards — and had a 10-yard run wiped out because of a hold.
Told it appeared the Bengals came out trying to run by giving it to him three straight times to open the game, Dillon said, “If that's what you want to call it ... They haven't been doing it for awhile. I'll just have to get used to it until the end of the season.”
Dillon, who ended up with just seven yards on six carries, came into the game as the NFL's leading rusher. His 112 carries were the seventh most in the NFL.
The losing is clearly getting to Dillon, one of the most intense and emotional Bengals. Coslet wasn't very happy when he heard that Dillon said the Colts were calling out the Bengals' plays before they ran them.
“That makes it kind of hard,” Dillon said.
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