It’s been 48 hours since we beat the Steelers, and it still feels good, but all is not well in Bengaldom. The Steelers squandered many opportunities to put us away:

1) They did not go for it on fourth and inches next to the goal line and went for a field goal. Last week they went for it against the Bears and scored a touchdown. Were they underestimating their opponent?
2) Jeff Reed misses a field goal. This guy has been good for the Steelers for so long. Why start sucking now?
3) Limas Sweed drops a pass in the end zone. The funniest thing I read today was this from a Steelers fan on a message board: “Sweed couldn’t catch the swine flu if he snorted it through a petri dish.” That’s funny.

Any one of those events could’ve ended the Bengals opportunity to make a miraculous comeback. Yesterday Marvin Lewis talked about how, “to a man,” the defense did not play well. Okay, the defense could’ve played better overall, I guess. The one play that sticks out in my mind is when Rey Maualuga leaves Willie “I like playing against the Bengals and no one else” Parker wide open to try to sack Ben. Not a good move. As soon as he left Parker the whole crowd groaned and Ben floated one right to Parker. I like Rey a lot, but that was a rookie mistake right there. Despite some defensive deficiencies, I am going to give the defense a pass. It could’ve been better, but their poor play is roughly 10,000 times better than anything we’ve ever had before. So I forgive them. Plus they made a huge stop when they needed to on the drive before the game-winning drive.

If I were Marvin, I would be more concerned about the poor overall play of the offense. It seems like we have enough tools to be one of the most dangerous offenses in the league. We’ve got a quarterback with a golden arm, talented wide receivers, and a running back who right now is 3rd in the league in rushing (I know! I can’t believe that either. Check for yourself on espn.com. I’ll wait for you… See?! Incredible!). During the game, Bengals fans all around me were calling for offensive coordinator Bob Bratowski’s head, along with the lives of his children and next of kin. Sarcastic and agitated Bengals fans: “Good one, Bob! The Steelers weren’t expecting a run up the middle on first down!” “Why didn’t we fire Bob when we had a chance?”

Okay, I, too, called for the firing of Bob the last couple of years. More than one pundit has pointed out the predictability of Bengals play calling. I can’t and won’t defend that.  A monkey on adderall has more of an imagination when it comes to calling offensive plays (I don’t quite get the comparsion either, but when in doubt, go with a monkey on drugs joke). When Mike Martz didn’t have a job, and if I owned the Bengals (god I wish I did), I would’ve jump all over that like Paris Hilton on a refrigerated hot dog. Still, on Sunday against the Steelers, I don’t think it was necessarily the play calling. I don’t think the Bengals executed as well as they could’ve. On the first play Carson completes a pass, but a penalty was called and that somehow derails everything. The Enquirer’s Joe Reedy gave Carson a C-minus because he wrote that Palmer’s passes were often too high or low. Carson is a six-year veteran, and I know he didn’t play much last year, but his performance outside the fourth quarter leaves a lot to be desired.

One thing that Geoff Hobson of Bengals.com notes was that we’re not doing a no huddle offense this year. Part of the reason is that we lack a reliable tight end to block for Carson. Many people outside of Cincinnati probably don’t know this, but the Bengals lost their starting tight end Reggie Kelly for the year. He was “just” a blocking tight end, but he was invaluable in blocking for Carson when they would go to no huddle. In other words, maybe one of the reasons why the offense hasn’t been very good is that Carson hasn’t gotten into a rhythm until later in the games. So far this year, the Bengals have been mostly crappy in the first half of the three games. In both the Broncos game and the Steelers, the offense didn’t come alive until the 4th quarters. In the Green Bay game, we were more consistent throughout the game, but Carson did throw two interceptions in the first two quarters of that game. By my count, the offense has had about four and a half quarters of good, efficient football. That would be good if we’ve played only one game and it had gone into overtime, but we’ve played THREE games. So only 33 percent of our offensive snaps have been effective. This is not good.  Every offense needs to find a rhythm, but we shouldn’t have to be down double digits in the fourth quarter for them to find this mythical “rhythm.”

Somebody commented today about how I didn’t seem “too excited” about the Bengals win. I’m still “excited,” but there are many sobering thoughts about how much the Bengals need to improve. We’ve had exactly zero games where we had a comfortable lead. I don’t know how much more I can take watching games like that. We have thirteen games to go, and right now we’re encountering a very tough stretch of games. I don’t care how bad the Browns have been, I will never in my life take the Browns for granted again. They always play us tough. And then we have the following teams: Ravens, Texans (who are confoundingly inconsistent and always dangerous), Bears, Raven, and Steelers. The Bengals can’t look past any of those teams. I’ll say this again, including the Browns!

We won’t be going to the playoffs if we don’t start performing more consistently on offense. That’s weird to say because that’s supposed to be our strength.  We’ll see what happens next week.