A few thoughts on the game

I went to today's game and have some thoughts. I wish I'd taken some pictures to include but, being the short-sighted person I am, I forgot to. Today's game was typical of the Bengals we've come to know and love; it included the emotional high, the outright anger and the feeling of relief at the end. Anyways, I thought I'd just pitch in some thoughts about what happened.

First of all, the spot where I sat- behind the home sideline between the 15 and 20, 8-10 rows back, was the territory of the #1 Bengals fan. I always thought the gag was stupid, but after being in that section he's actually pretty awesome. He was actually a factor in getting his section to be loud, which is cool. Pretty random thing, but I just thought I'd share. Another thing that was interesting was that the guy behind me was wearing an Andrew Hawkins jersey. He told me he had to get it custom on NFL.com. Wearing an Andrew Hawkins jersey is pretty much the coolest thing ever, and you could tell the guy was a true fan because of it.

Jerome Simpson's flip into the end zone was FILTHY. I've seen guys dive over people into the end zone, but I've never seen someone do a full flip over a defender and land on their feet. I just got home and I'm writing this up, but I plan to go into the gamethread and see what the reactions were once I'm done. That really got the crowd going, and the sideline erupted as well.

I would guess that the cameras showed this, but if they didn't I'll tell you. Things got chippy after Nuge made the field goal to put us up 23-0. There was a lot of shoving and Clark Harris somehow lost his helmet. As you may expect, Whit was physically dominating someone before he got pulled off.

I'm not sure what the scouting people will have to say about this, but from what I saw Mike McGlynn looked pretty decent. I saw at least one screen play where he put someone on their back with a big block, and I didn't see him getting dominated as much as I would have expected. It's possible that he was horrible and I didn't notice, but he seemed good to me.

I took note of seeing a lot of fire from Carlos Dunlap and Pacman Jones. Those two really wanted to win the game, especially Dunlap. They were both trying to get the crowd and their teammates going all throughout. I saw Dunlap before the big plays of a few drives, and he seemed extremely focused on pressuring the QB. Great to have him healthy again.

The crowd was very positive throughout the game, even when the team started sucking a little bit. I've seen a lot of fans be extremely pessimistic in the past, but I think this young team has gotten to all of us; even when the Bengals were playing terrible football, the crowd was more about trying to motivate our own guys than getting upset and booing or something. It was very cool to see.

Alright, those are just a couple thoughts on the game. Very entertaining, and it was great to come out with a win then hear that the Jets lost. WHO DEY!