Thursday, December 27, 2001
Bengals better? Just barely
By Tim Sullivan
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Dick LeBeau is quite right. The Cincinnati Bengals are indeed “closing the gap.”
Last year, they were a football team trying to bridge the Pacific. This year, they've built a little pontoon pier that extends out past the breakers. It's a small step, to be sure, but it beats the tar out of laying trans-oceanic cable or hiring a general manager.
It's enough to qualify as progress without raising expectations to the point where someone actually might be expected to produce. It is a triumph of glacial gradualism and imperceptible achievement, like erosion or rust. It is what the Bengals do best.
With two games to go in another stultifying season, the home team already has matched its four victories of last year. That the Bengals won their fourth game almost two months ago and haven't won since might suggest the gap-closing has hit a snag, but both the coach and the owner/overseer assure us closer inspection reveals quantum leaps in quality.
“We have made progress,” LeBeau said at his Wednesday news conference. “... I feel very confident that another offseason will get us where we want to go.”
“It isn't as though we were overmatched like a year ago,” owner Mike Brown told www.Bengals.com. “We are contending and we just are falling short. We feel badly about that. I can see some light at the end of the tunnel. There's a foundation here. If we can get one or two things improved, I think we can win more games.”
If this chorus of organizational optimism sounds faintly familiar, it should. The Bengals have gone 11 years without a winning season, but management never fails to have a solution in sight.
Ticket pitch
It's always one or two plays or one or two players separating the Bengals from a big push for the playoffs. This is the annual pitch, right before the season-ticket renewals go out in the mail.
Just a little more tinkering should do the trick. That has been the company line since the end of the Sam Wyche era. And maybe this time it's true. If the Bengals can locate the right quarterback before their developing defense grows too old and/or expensive, prosperity could be right around the corner.
Conversely, should injuries or contract hassles befall linebackers Takeo Spikes and Brian Simmons, the Dave Shula era might come to be viewed as the good old days.
“I think we're a better team,” Simmons said Wednesday. “I don't think it's the truth because they (LeBeau and Brown) say it. The last four, five, six games, we've had a chance to win. Last year's team or the one the year before would have been in a lot of laughers this year, and we would have been the ones being laughed at.”
Improved pass rush and Simmons' improved health have enabled the Bengals defense to keep more games competitive into the fourth quarter. Yet the 2001 bottom line is virtually identical to that of 2000. Last year, only one of the Bengals' 12 losses was by fewer than eight points. This year, the Bengals have lost twice by seven points or fewer.
Passing yardage is slightly up with Jon Kitna at the controls, but interceptions have nearly doubled. Meanwhile, rushing yardage has declined by almost 1yard per carry. LeBeau's defense may be better, but only by one-tenth of a yard per play. Kicker Neil Rackers has the same field-goal stats as he finished with last season: 12-for-21.
Building no hopes
None of this represents the progress Bengals fans want to see. Neither does the friction between Kitna and his receivers enhance public confidence in the product.
About 1:45p.m. Wednesday, Kitna was performing a passing drill with his Sunday antagonist, Chad Johnson. The rookie receiver lined up to the quarterback's right but not as far right as the playbook prescribed.
With his right hand, Kitna repositioned Johnson several steps closer to the sideline. With his right arm, Kitna then overthrew the receiver.
It was one of those magical moments when a whole lousy season can be seen in microcosm. Next year, presumably, things will be different.
Contact Tim Sullivan at 768-8456; fax: 768-8550; e-mail: tsullivan@enquirer.com. Cincinnati.Com keyword: Sullivan.
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SULLIVAN: Bengals better? Just barely
