Edition 23 “Go Back to St Louis”

The Bengals just escaped a near fatal loss to the Browns on the road.  Survival is a true sign of a playoff team in the rugged 17 week NFL season.  Only the few and proud survive to make the playoffs in this league of weekly battles.  So the Bengal improve to 3-1, tied for first in the AFC North.

These are all great things.  Obviously it was a little disappointing to go through a near heart attack to get the victory against a horrific Brown team.  The Browns stayed in the game solely through the heroic runs of Josh Cribbs, Shaun Roger’s gigantic wingspan, and the Bengals ineptitude on special teams.  This game truly showed the importance of special teams to winning a ball game.  So, by next week, nobody will care about how the Bengals won this game, just that they are 3-1 and tied atop the AFC North as they go into next week’s battle with the Ravens.

So the real story of the game in my eyes other than Carson coming up huge in the clutch again.  Brad St Louis?!  The man has been in the league for 10 seasons and traditionally has been a great snapper.  Yes, St Louis is a special teams snapper.  Meaning you have to snap the ball to the holder or back to the punter.  Then if you are on a punt, you get to run down the field and hit somebody in the mouth.  This is probably one of the world’s best and easiest jobs.  You get paid to snap a ball 5 to 10 times a game and you get to hit people.

I have heard of kickers going through slumps sometimes, or baseball players having slumps at the plate, but long snappers?  St. Louis almost single handedly blew this game for the Bengals with his inability to snap the ball 7 yards back to Kevin Huber.  Brad, do whatever you got to do to regain your consistency, or please let the Bengals sign a free agent snapper and be on your way back to St. Louis.

Either way hats off to Carson Palmer in showing his courage on that key 4th and 10 run.  Though Carson had a rough game for the majority, he came up big when he needed too and has led the Bengals atop the AFC North.

Stay tuned for Edition 24 coming soon.

-Kraze

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Edition 22 “Bob Stoops join Jim Tressel”

In the marquee game of the weekend, the speedy Canes of Miami defeated the Oklahoma Sooners.  Yes the Sooners are 2 and 2 as predicted in Edition 21.  Now I realize that they are missing their starting quarterback and reigning Heisman Trophy winner in Sam Bradford, but Stoops still is struggling to win big games.

“Big Game Bob” seems to be in a very similar predicament to a coach just up the road in Columbus.  Coach Stoops took over at Oklahoma in 1999 and won a National Title in 2000.  In his stretch as the coach at Oklahoma, the Sooners have won more games than any other FBS team.  One major problem though.  The man nicknamed “Big Game Bob” has lost 5 straight BCS Bowl games and 4 of  his last 5 against their biggest rival the Texas Longhorns. Does this sound familiar?

The man who wears the sweater vest every week won a National Title in his second season in 2002.  Since, he has lost 2 BCS National Championship games and 2 straight times to USC in primetime games.  Tressel has done great winning Big 10 Titles just as Stoops has done well in winning Big 12 titles, but he tends to lose the big BCS bowl games or big non conference games that are the marquee game of the weekend.

Now both Stoops and Tressel are strong coaches, but they cannot figure out how to win the big game.  Both better figure out how to do it soon.  Buckeye Nation and Soonerville do not like to just settle for second place.   These two programs are too proud, expecting and wanting to win national titles.

So I have two questions for you today. Is it time for Big Game Bob and the Sweater Vested man to rethink their coaching styles and approaches in order to win a second national title?  Which one of these coaches will be able to capture another National Championship first?

Stay tuned for Edition 23 coming soon.

-Kraze