The official work week for the Bengals as they get ready for the Steelers started today, and did so with a QB sent home due to the flu.
The team sent QB Andy Dalton home from practice because he came down with the flu, the latest Bengals player to miss time with an illness going through the team.
The Bengals say they feel that he will be fully recovered by the time they go to Pittsburgh.
They also expect to have receiver A.J. Green back. He bruised his upper right arm during a win over Denver on Monday night and failed to make a catch.
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DrGeorge
December 26, 2014 at 10:14 am
In today’s Post-Gazette, Bob Smizik argues that teams without a statistically great defense can win the Super Bowl. But season stats are misleading in the playoffs. What is more important is how well the team is playing at that moment. For example, when the Steelers last won the Super Bowl, our #1 defense almost gave the game away in the 4th Qtr. when Kurt Warner and Larry Fitzgerald exploited the holes in our secondary. The offense had to come from behind to win.
Anid all the Pittsburgh Super Bowl talk, it’s time for a reality check.
The 2014 Steelers defense has improved wondrously in recent games, and it looked especially good against the Chiefs last week, without Ike Taylor of Troy Polamalu. But it is still an average defense. Our CBs (Gay, McCain, Blake) and Safeties (Mitchell, Allen) are not likely to strike fear into the heart of the better QBs – like A. Rodgers, T. Brady, and Russell Wilson – who we will have to face in the playoffs. In our last six games, we have lost to the Saints (D. Brees is a premier QB) and the Jets (Vick is a backup QB), and we struggled to beat the Titans, Falcons, and Chiefs. We did beat the Bengals 42-21 three games back, and we are favored to beat them again on Sunday – but then A. Dalton is not a top tier passing QB. Against top QBs, we have a victory over Luck and a loss to Brees, and in both games, the opposition scored 32 points or more. In short, it is premature to speak of the Steelers’ defense as being Super Bowl worthy.
Worse, our offense doesn’t look like a Super Bowl contender, either. Over the last six games, the Steelers have scored less than 30 points in the games they’ve won, except against the Bengals, and struggled against bad teams all year. On Sunday, the Bengals will be playing on only six days rest. That’s hardly a defining test. We ought to win the game and the division. But whether we can beat the top teams in the NFL remains to be seen.
DrGeorge
December 27, 2014 at 8:04 pm
Correction: the author of the P-G article is Ray Fittipaldo.