Crash landing: Ohio's NFL teams inventing new ways to lose

Published Nov. 22, 2010 2:46 p.m. ET

foxsports

By Zac Jackson
FOX Sports Ohio
November 22, 2010

One of the first football games I saw in person last August -- the third one, if my memory serves me correctly -- went a little like this: Bengals punt, Bengals punt, Carson Palmer throws bomb to Terrell Owens, an uninterested and less-than-effective Michael Vick throws interceptions to Bengals second-team defense, Bengals win.

1. Now that the NFL season is in its stretch run, a couple of those things don't fit. A couple would qualify as foreshadowing. Mike Vick might be the MVP. Only Carolina is keeping the Bengals from being the worst team in the NFL. Palmer throws lots of bombs to T.O., but most of them come with the Bengals down big points. The Bengals were up big points against Buffalo -- yes, the Bills -- before the Bengals started playing like the University of Buffalo and getting clowned by some guy named Steve Johnson. That's now seven straight losses for a team that returned just about everybody from a team that ran the AFC North table last year, added T.O. and some rookie weapons and came into the year thinking big. They've now laid one really, really big stink bomb.

2. Here's T.O. after the game. Just priceless: "What