Sprint Game Ball Of The Week

Why in the world would we offer a gameball to a Bengals player from a game that the Bengals lost? Sounds foolish, doesn't it. Like some idiot actually arguing that a tomato is a fruit. I mean, c'mon. No one puts fruit on a cheeseburger.

But we have to pay the bills, that's why.

Hey, be grateful for it, or else you'd accidentally find yourself reading about how dastardly evil you are as Bengals fans, hell bent on kicking puppies and spitting in people's foods, yelling, "you'll have that" and crashing through the window like you were in the middle of an epic Terminator fight; because every Terminator fight has someone crashing through some window. You are the type of person that will find yourself escorted from the airplane, while laughing at those people that have to sigh really loud so they know that you know that they're totally annoyed.

That being said, this week we're giving our gameball to Bob Bratkowski. Totally kidding. For only the third time in his career, Carson Palmer threw for over 400 yards (all losses if you can believe it) during the Bengals 39-32 loss on Sunday to the Atlanta Falcons. During his performance, he recorded 36 completions (second-most in career) for a 72% completion rate. It's the fifth time in his career that Palmer recorded at least three touchdowns and no interceptions.

Led by Palmer during the team's 22-point explosion in the third quarter, the Bengals offense played so well, that they only encountered two third down situations, and the second one led to a 64-yard touchdown pass to Jordan Shipley -- who sort of did most of the work. Why Palmer and not Shipley, who deserves as much praise for his work on Sunday as Palmer? Well, there's the whole 412 yards passing, the three touchdowns and the 116.4 passer rating thing. But after a couple of weeks in which we piled on Palmer, whose three interceptions leads to 17 points, we felt a little bit sorry and hopefully when he reads this, he'll be all kinds of excited.

Other nominations include:

• Jordan Shipley: six receptions, 131 yards receiving, TD
• Chad Ochocinco: 10 receptions, 108 yards receiving, TD
• Terrell Owens: 9 receptions, 88 yards receiving, TD