If you watched Sunday's win, or have found yourself reading these pages in recent days (God bless you, by the way), there's no contest on whom this week's Sprint Game Ball of the Week should go to. In fact the only question you're asking is, what the heck took you so long getting this post up. To answer your completely intrusive and unreasonable question, it's the week leading up to Christmas and this is when I finally get off my Who Dey can and actually shop. I'm not a procrastinator, I just... well, yea, I'm totally a procrastinator.
This will be the first Game Ball we've handed out during a win since the Bengals last won a game against the Carolina Panthers. At the time, we gave the Game Ball to Mike Zimmer, for leading a defense that only allowed two third down conversions, four turnovers and a 4.6 yards/play average. Granted, we didn't know just had bad the Carolina Panthers would be at the time, but still, it was a tremendous defensive performance, considering the Bengals defense would reside much of the season ranked in the 20s, instead of the single-digit domination crew we had so expected.
During Sunday's 19-17 win over the Cleveland Browns, Bengals running back Cedric Benson recorded a season-high 150 yards rushing on a season-high 31 rush attempts. Benson also scored the Bengals lone touchdown early in the second quarter to complete a 10-play, 91-yard drive that tied the game at seven.
Benson would go on to record 75 yards rushing in both halves, including seven runs that picked up first downs. Fifteen of Benson's 31 rush attempts gained at least five yards. Broken down by downs, Benson averaged 5.3 yards/rush on second down, often putting the Bengals into third-and-short situations to help sustain drives to consume over 38 minutes on the clock.
Good job Cedric. You can swing by the house to pick up your award -- my autograph and a game of Madden.