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Photo courtesy of
bengals.com
Cincinnati Bengals
quarterback Andy Dalton set up in the pocket against the Pittsburg
Steelers Sunday night. The Cats dropped a 24-17 decision to the
Steelers.
Bengals dealing
with third straight loss
bengals.com
The Steelers did what they didn’t do all year Sunday night and won a
road game by holding a fourth-quarter lead with their running game that
finally drained the clock instead of their patience in Sunday night's
24-17 victory over the Bengals at sold-out Paul Brown Stadium.
The NBC audience was supposed to see an "Orange Out" with the crowd of
63,411 urged to wear the colors. Instead Pittsburgh's anti-Green
movement changed the hue when it held the NFL's leading wide receiver
to a career-low eight yards.
Wide receiver A.J. Green's one catch was a touchdown, but it couldn't
save quarterback Andy Dalton from also playing his least productive NFL
game for four quarters with 105 yards passing. And it couldn't save his
team from losing three straight for the first time since Dalton assumed
command Opening Day of '11 and dipping under .500 for the only time
since the Bengals dropped the 13-8 game to San Francisco at PBS last
Sept. 25 to go to 1-2.
At 3-4 and heading into a bye, both the Bengals playoff hopes and their
offense are hanging precariously by the proverbial thread. The good
news is they're heading into a bye. The bad news is they're heading
into a bye.
Pittsburgh's Ben Roethlisberger, the first of three straight Super
Bowl-winning quarterbacks the Bengals face at PBS over these three
games that run from Sunday night to Nov. 11, chopped up the Bengals
with ease when he converted nine of his first 13 third downs and
completed 27 of 37 balls for 278 yards against a sluggish pass rush
from the front four.
"The schedule doesn't get any easier," said Bengals cornerback Leon
Hall. "We've got to go back and look at the last three games."
Now that Roethlisberger beat the Bengals with a backup running back
racing for 122 yards, a backup center and backup right tackle playing
well enough give him enough time to hit 73 percent of his passes,
Denver's Peyton Manning and the Giants' Eli Manning loom Nov. 4-11,
respectively.
"We have an opportunity to regroup. A chance to look at ourselves for a
couple of days and move forward and come back get ready for two home
games in a row, which are big," said head coach Marvin Lewis. "We can
get back to even and go from there. That's what we have to do. Right
now we have to focus on that."
The view is a bit disjointed on offense, where the Bengals played the
second half with their third center of the season when both Kyle Cook
(ankle) and Jeff Faine (hamstring) were on the sidelines helping rookie
Trevor Robinson.
With Green taken out of the game by Steelers defensive coordinator Dick
LeBeau's soft zone like he had when he played against former Bengals
wide receiver Chad Johnson (Dalton targeted Green six times for that
one catch), the Bengals leading receivers were rookie Mohamed Sanu and
second-year man Ryan Whalen making their first catches of the season,
seven of them for just 58 yards.
Not helping the receiver mix was the fact rookie speed receiver Marvin
Jones was supposed to play the most of his career Sunday but he never
got the chance when he sprained his knee blocking on a kickoff and he
could be out as much as four weeks as the Bengals try to find Green's
T.J. Houshmandzadeh and Chris Henry. No one with any consistency has
emerged. For instance, Dalton took five shots at tight end Jermaine
Gresham and got three catches for 19 yards.
For this article and more, go to www.bengals.com
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