Ben Bergin

I’m not sure Marvin Lewis is a Bengals fan. I say this because when Carlos Dunlap pounced on a Pierre Garcon fumble and stormed home to seal victory over the Colts, Marvin was wondering if Dunlap should have worked the clock (haha, I know, some of you will note the irony there). I was wondering how I could send Dunlap cash, my car keys, the rights to my unborn children, and anything else he fancies. When Dunlap charged home like a LeBron James break away (OK, OK, not a LeBron James break away in the 2011 Finals) or, if you prefer, the way we’d like our running backs to, it marked a remarkably un-Bengals-like game in a season that has most onlookers, at the least, puzzled.

Last year, the missed extra point would have been symptomatic of our team. This year, the way we came back from it just might be.

Arguably the Bengals are the number one defense in the NFL right now. Furthermore, we contained the previously unstoppable Bills0 offense, holding them to a mere thirteen points. Rey Maualuga finally looked like everybody’s favourite player. Atkins, Johnson, and Dunlap ran riot. On the offense, A.J. Green ignited the come back with two outrageous deep catches. Gresham carried the team on his large shoulders. Benson ploughed over a hundred yards, Nugent hit the winning field goal. So I know, there are a lot of candidates. But yet, at the same time, there is only one.

It is difficult to hate the Bills. Some teams, of course, are easy to loathe: Pittsburgh Steelers, Baltimore Browns, New Jersey Jets, and so on. Some people like the Bills because of the swashbuckling way they are upsetting the mostly obnoxious AFC East. I like the Bills because TV producers love cutting to quarterbacks on the sideline staring at clipboards. Whilst most quarterbacks appear to be looking with fervent concentration at helpful tips such as: “Important—Don’t Throw Interceptions” in big block letters, Ryan Fitzpatrick looks as though he’s working on Fermat’s Last Theorum.

"Uh oh...."

In the cult TV comedy sketch series The Fast Show there is a character called Dave. Dave lives in the middle of pub debates and, bless him, is immediately swayed by whichever opinion he heard most recently. If one of his friends says The Godfather is the greatest movie ever he will immediately, convincingly extol the virtues of the perfectly scored family dynamics, the complex morality of their world, the beauty of Pacino and Brando’s performances. Yet, as soon as another pal argues that Casablanca is superior, Dave is unequivocally taken with Ingrid Bergman’s beauty, Bogart’s wit, and the incomparable ending.

For the Broncos, who had Tim Tebow lining up as a receiver for most of the game,  the victory was somewhat Pyrrhic. For the Bengals it was…well…moral? Certainly a heartbreaking loss to Denver was no impediment to a strong season two years ago (In fact, what proved to be the winning TD looked eerily similar). And sitting at 1-1 was exactly where we were both that year of AFC North Championshipness and also this last year of "I’d rather sit on the couch watching Deal Or No Deal whilst eating Cheez-Its on Sundays than receive tens of millions of dollars to play for you ever again." So nothing to be read into that.