By Marc Hardin
FOX Sports Ohio | Bengals Insider
Monday, November 15th, 2010
As it turns out, the banged-up Colts were ripe for the upset on Sunday at Lucas Oil Stadium.
But the Bengals were ripe for the picking.
Consequently, and not unexpectedly, Indianapolis picked off Cincinnati, 23-17, and all but snuffed any faint hopes of a repeat Bengals appearance in the playoffs.
Head coach Marvin Lewis' downtrodden men would need to run the table and win their final seven games, against five more playoff-caliber opponents and a Cleveland team that already has beaten them, to finish 9-7. That's a record that was good enough to get the Jets and Ravens into the playoffs last year but not good enough to qualify the Texans and Steelers.
It doesn't matter.
The Bengals, at 2-7, aren't going to win seven games in a row to close the regular-season schedule.
Nobody here is claiming to be some kind of Amazing Kreskin, but the proof that there is not a lot of belief that the Bengals can turn it around is in the piddly Paul Brown Stadium ticket sales for Sunday's home game against the Bills. Cincinnati isn't going to have a sellout for the first time in 57 games, so the Bengals have convinced a lot of folks around these parts that they're out of it and not worth watching.
The first Bengals game in seven years will be blacked out on network television in the Greater Cincinnati area because Sunday's contest won't be a sellout.
Nobody will need any convincing of the Bengals chances for making the playoffs if the Bills beat them on Sunday. A loss would bring the Bengals' total to eight. It would clinch their fourth non-winning season in five years under coach Lewis and hand a death sentence to their playoff hopes and maybe also their head coach's future with the team.
This is not an obituary.
That will come with the next Bengals loss which will bring the complete and utter realization in Cincinnati that the Bengals will be on the outside of the playoffs looking in for the 18th time in 20 years.
That was all but assured on Sunday after Cincinnati spotted the Colts 10 first-quarter points, much like they handed the Steelers 10 first-quarter points last week. Six of Sunday's gift points for the Colts came on Carson Palmer's third pick-six of the season, an interception returned 31 yards by Kelvin Hayden for a touchdown.
Much like they did against Pittsburgh, the Bengals staged a fourth-quarter rally against the Colts before falling short by one scoring possession. By then, there had been too many turnovers - three Palmer interceptions and two fumbles.
A week after the Steelers scored 17 points off Bengals turnovers, the Colts scored 17 points off Bengals turnovers.
It sounds like a broken record.
In fact, it's a broken team.
The Bengals lost their sixth straight game and everyone is to blame, even the wondrous and revived Terrell Owens, who said Sunday that he did not come out of his break full speed when he heard the linebacker during the fourth-quarter possession when Palmer threw a deep pass his way over the middle that was intercepted by Aaron Francisco.
On Sunday, the Cincinnati offense, on its second drive, handed the Colts seven points. The Bengals lost by six.
Last Sunday, special teams, on the game's first play, began paving a Pittsburgh path toward seven easy points following Bernard Scott's fumble on the opening kickoff. The Bengals lost by six.
Against Miami, the defense allowed a 96-yard drive into the end zone in the fourth quarter on a Dolphins rushing touchdown, which are about as rare as Bengals general managers. The drive was directed by Chad Henne, who is so good he lost his starting quarterback job within two weeks of engineering the eight-point road win.
