I think I have calmed down sufficiently since I came home from the Bengals preseason game against the Rams.  I breathed in and out of a paper bag and took some propofol mixed with lidocaine (I feel strangely sleepy now and I want to hang out at Chuck-E-Cheese and get a pet chimpanzee… hmm…).  The last blog was all doom and gloom.  I’m definitely not doing a 180 in this blog and say, “By golly, I was really mistaken and the Bengals were really awesome, by gosh, by gee,” but I would like to add some positive thoughts.  There MAY be a sliver lining here… I hope.

First and foremost is the offensive line.  Marvin Lewis vigorously defended the O-line’s play on Thursday evening.  The OL was not perfect by far.  Offensive guard Bobbie Williams himself said that they need to play better.  But only one of the six sacks on Thursday was directly attributed to poor play by an offensive lineman (and that dude was a backup who will probably (hopefully) be cut).  The rest were because of missed blocking assignments by running backs or tight ends.  Does this make me feel better?  Not much.  Whenever I see the first team offense allow any of our QBs to get sacked… I’m just having visions of our 0-8 start from last year.  There are two things, though, that can be taken away from this assessment of the game: 1)  These are correctable gaffes.  If the RB and TE are not in the right spot at the right time, that can be studied on film and fixed through practice.  2)  It was a FAKE game.  Preseason defensive schemes are usually very vanilla and don’t offer any exotic looking schemes like we see every year with the Ravens and the Steelers defense.  Vanilla defensive schemes mean a vanilla game plan from the offense.  The coaches didn’t really plan for the Rams blitzing from all angles like they did.

Not to say I fully knew this as I was watching the game, but it did seem like the Rams were coming at us from everywhere and our offensive players were like, “What the hell guys?  This is preseason!”  Even with that said, I am still very nervous about our QB protection.  I’d have to look this up, but I think Marvin’s line about how “It wasn’t the OL’s fault for the pass protection breakdown” sounds eerily similar to what he said last year during the preseason… and then we gave up 51 sacks over the course of the season.  I distinctly remember last season thinking, “We can fix the OL, we’ll be fine, we can fix it.”  But it wasn’t all the OL’s fault.  T.J. Houshmandzadeh and Chad Eightfive didn’t play hardly at all during the preseason, and they weren’t creating much separation from the corners, leading Carson to hold on to the ball and getting sacked.  Our run game was horrendous with Chris “I was a first round pick because why?” Perry.

And here are two outright positives from the game: Chris “I can’t believe I’m not in jail” Henry is a freak of nature.  He has a caught 3 TDs in the past 3 games.  The last one he just out ran everyone to the end zone and caught a pass from Palmer the Lesser.  For all the bad press he’s received and all the negative attention he has been given, the dude is good.  For once I’m glad he’s on my team.  And Bernard “I might be the next Bengal to go to jail but they took a chance on me because of my talent” Scott ran 54 yards on 8 carries for an average of 6.8.  On one play it was 3rd and 21 and they gave it to Scott… he ran 22.  I didn’t see it myself (I stormed out of the stadium at half time like a spurned lover), but that’s pretty darn good.  On Hard Knocks they were talking about how Scott won the backup position.  I’m happy about that.

So as I step back and take a deep breath, I don’t think it’s the end of the world as we know it (wait for 2012!  Seriously, if you believe the world will end in 2012… well, I just don’t have nice things to say about you).  The Bengals are far from being an elite team, and they are far from competing for the AFC North crown.  But they won’t be last year’s team.  They can’t be last year’s team.  Our receivers this year have been practicing all preseason and they seem to be one of the strengths of the team, we’ve got a (somewhat) healthy Palmer, and the run game will be improved.  The defense… is a work in progress.  Right now the #1 way to describe the 2009 Bengals so far has been inconsistent.  The pass protection won’t be perfect, nor will the defense, but I feel we have the talent to improve and at least be more competitive this year.