"I just wanted to know what it felt like to leap in the stands," explained Goff. Who, bless him, is still wondering. Regardless, any time you get linemen broad-jumping into the seats, things are going well.

The Bengals found new life and a running back on the same afternoon. In fact, their new life looked a lot like a running back. Rudi Johnson had 182 tough-guy yards on 43 pile-driving carries. He wore grass stain everywhere but his teeth. It wasn't coincidence that the Bengals beat Houston 34-27.

As Goff allowed, "Rudi ran his heart out today. He was a machine. It was beautiful to see him run that hard. You'd see the replay and you're like, Wow, he's really hitting the holes."

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Photos of Sunday's game

Johnson had 60 yards in the first quarter. He had 100 with eight minutes left in the half. On the Bengals beautifully dirty, game-clinching drive, Johnson carried 10 of the 15 plays. Johnson allowed Marvin Lewis to play the way Marvin Lewis wants to play: Keep the ball, make first downs, let the other team make the mistakes. The Bengals had the ball an obscene 41 minutes.

On Sunday, it was all about Rudi. It was all about Three-Two.

Fans chanted Ru-di after every carry. They chanted Ru-di even before the snap. That's when you know you're big.

Rudi is Marvin's kind of guy, right down to the way he celebrates touchdowns which, god love him, is not to celebrate at all. After his two TDs, Johnson just dropped the ball. This - not dancing like a jock Rockette or firing pretend guns or taking imaginary photos or doing whatever you feel like doing in the blessed name of You - is the ultimate in jock cool. Ru-di is familiar with that part of the field. As Lewis said, "He scored a lot of touchdowns at Auburn."

Ask Johnson if he has ever celebrated himself after a touchdown, he says, "I dunno. It's not like something stands out. I just drop it and celebrate with my teammates."

Old School Rudi did Sunday what all successful backs do: He hit the holes aggressively, followed his blockers, kept his beer-keg legs moving and judged his cutbacks by watching the flow of the linebackers.

The fact that he broke a few longer runs was at least in part due to the dirty work done by none other than Peter Warrick, who caught only two balls, but threw his 190-pound body at lots of safeties while Johnson was running at glory. "He's the only receiver we got who has the want-to to block the way he did today," Willie Anderson said.

So for a week, it worked the way the coaches drew it up. It's confounding following these Bengals, who give you just enough rope to hang yourself by your own optimism. At 4-5, they're still a major Maybe in the AFC North. They go from playing so-so Houston to oh-no Kansas City. The only certainty is the game is at 1 p.m. Sunday.

If Johnson keeps churning, the whole mix looks better. The defense is off the field, Jon Kitna isn't overdoing it and throwing into double coverage. Mike Goff is working on his vertical leap. Rudi Johnson is scoring touchdowns like he has done it forever. He's dropping the ball in the end zone grass. Anticipating he'll be there again soon. Cool.

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E-mail pdaugherty@enquirer.com

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