Cincinnati Bengals: 3 Reasons for win vs. Ravens in Week 17
By Kenn Korb
Looking back at the Cincinnati Bengals’ Week 17 victory over their rival Baltimore Ravens to help us understand how they came away with an incredible 31-27 win.
Who says Week 17 is meaningless? The Cincinnati Bengals may have been far out of the playoff picture at this point, but they didn’t play like it. An early lead was taken and lost, but a completely implausible late game-winning score allowed the Bengals to end the year with two straight wins over teams still trying to punch their own playoff tickets; in both cases, those losses are what sealed the fates of those franchises for the 2017 season.
It may not keep their coach around (scratch that; apparently it has), but this game was further proof of there being some actual talent still on this roster despite their struggles to consistently win this year.
Before answering any of the questions for the future just yet though, let’s look at how exactly Cincinnati succeeded in stealing away their rival’s playoff dreams.
3. Good Andy
16-of-31, 170 yards, no touchdowns, five turnovers, five sacks, 0.7 QBR. That’s Andy Dalton from the Week 1 matchup against the Ravens. It was perhaps the worst performance of his career against a team which has routinely made him look foolish even when his team has come away with a victory.
Just look at his career against that team. He may have entered this week as 6-6 against them, but his play has been as dramatically erratic against them as any franchise. He has some good games in there sure, but as we speak more than half of his matchups with them have resulted in poor performances. Not surprisingly, those awful showings by him have almost always ended in ugly losses for his team: his team is 1-6 against Baltimore when his passer rating is below 80.0 (6-0 when it is above that threshold).
There’s seemingly been no rhyme or reason to when Dalton would perform well or poor against this team, either. He’ll be a turnover machine one meeting, then commit none the next. He may throw for close to 300+ yards one time, then barely surpass 200 then next.
Which Dalton would appear in this one? Not the one from Week 1, apparently.
While he wasn’t amazing, Dalton was the exact sort of steady presence that critics wish he could be more often. Though his completion percentage and yards per attempt weren’t drastically better than the first meeting (in fact, his yards per attempt was worse), what he did alongside those areas made a huge difference.
After five turnovers and no touchdowns the first game, he completely flipped the script (three touchdowns, no turnovers). Five sacks in Week 1 were replaced by just one in Week 17. He didn’t make game-altering mistakes and kept the offense moving just enough against a high-quality defense that (usually) has his number to stay in position to win, and he threw the dagger to win the game.
If Good Andy could become a more permanent resident on the field, maybe games like this will actually hold postseason significance once again in Cincinnati someday soon.