By the second quarter, his shirt-tail was already out of his pants, flapping in the fall breeze, giving I-don't-give-a-damn notice. The TV cameras got up close, almost into his head, and what you noticed about that was Corey Dillon's eyes, which were cold and hard like a gunman's. Today, someone was going to pay.

        I used to write that Dillon ran angry. He hit holes and linebackers like they'd cursed his mother. It must be hard, I'd said, to run so fast with such a big chip on your shoulder.

        That was three years ago. Dillon was a rookie, and on one fierce and glowing Thursday night, he took his whole world out on the Tennessee Titans. Dillon ran for 246 yards, and you swore you'd never see anything like that again.

Corey Dillon stiff-arms LB Al Wilson. (Patrick Reddy photos) | ZOOM |

        Now it's three years later, and the best view of Corey Dillon was from behind, 50 yards downfield, on the seat of your pants. That would have been Bengals right guard Mike Goff in the fourth quarter. Goff and fullback Clif Groce had just exploded the left side of the Denver Broncos defense, and Dillon was off again, down the right sideline, a snowplow out of control, 65 yards to the endzone.

        And then Goff said to himself, sitting on the Paul Brown Stadium sod, “You just keep running, Corey. I'm just going to lay here and watch you make history.”

        Corey Dillon-ated the Broncos. Sorry you didn't see it. Sorry you weren't among the 60,000 or so who watched Corey Dillon be better for a day than Jim Brown and Walter Payton and Barry Sanders and Eric Dickerson. Better than anyone who ever played.

        It was history, 278 yards of it, in an average burst of nearly 13 yards, against a good defense that was laying for him. The Bengals don't pass. They can't. They were last in the league before the game; they're below that now. Fourteen yards, two completions. None after the first quarter. The Broncos slammed eight, nine players into their front wall and dared Dillon to smash their mouths.

Dillon leaves safety Billy Jenkins eating grass on a 37-yard run. | ZOOM |

        He did just that. After Dillon escaped the first wall of pursuit, “He usually had one guy to beat,” said tackle John Jackson, “and he beat the hell out of him.”

        “He was like a beast,” said Brandon Bennett. “Like a wild animal.”

        Or, as Takeo Spikes put it, “That was some video game stuff right there.”

        Dillon pulled his shoulder pads off after the game. He was wearing a white T-shirt underneath, on which he'd written “The Lord Is My Rock” with a Sharpie pen. He said it was the first time he'd worn it.

        I asked him if he still ran mean. I wondered if he were still the angry young man who emptied out his frustrations on Sunday afternoons. Dillon smiled.

        “I'm totally different. Spiritually, I'm somewhere else. As a rookie, I had issues and problems. I still do. But I've got that spiritual guidance now.”

        Asked for a couple-word description of how he ran Sunday, Dillon said, “One. One word. Hard. If I gain one yard, it's going to be a hard one yard.”

        Dillon set the tone for a team that decided it'd had enough. “I think everyone was kind of fed up with being stepped on,” was how Dillon put it. Early in the game, when there was nowhere to run, Dillon played 1-on-11, Corey against the world. Later, when the line started creating space, Dillon banged into the secondary, giving Broncos cornerback Terrell Buckley bad memories.

        In the fourth quarter, Dillon ran for 108 yards. The Broncos didn't want to tackle him anymore.

        “Corey was gettin' attitude, then more attitude,” said Bennett. “It was anger. Anger and heart.”

        We won't see it again. At least until the next time. The Bengals have made a lot of history lately, all of it bad. They might not be done. You don't win many games in the NFL playing offense like the 1975 Nebraska Corhuskers.

        But for a day, it was a roar and a thunder. Corey Dillon broke a record; the Bengals broke a funk.

        “I think I might have to blow a game check this week,” Dillon said. He will take his linemen out to dinner. “They're all part of this history thing.”

Record-Breaking Day! Gallery of 20 photos Dillon runs 'til they drop Dillon does his heroes one better Warrick relieved to win again Defense does its part Mitchell's play: run and stun Bengals favored to beat Browns Fans: 'It's about time' Bengals-Broncos Statistics

• Return to Bengals front page...