Bengals and Jets Rematch Will Be More Competitive

Nobody except for the Bengals themselves is quite sure how the AFC North champion Bengals went about playing the Jets in the final week of the season. All that’s for sure is that they were blown out 37-0 against a Jets team that faced a do-or-die situation. We can speculate all we want about how hard the Bengals played or how conservative their game plan was knowing that if they lost they would face the Jets in a rematch the following week. Other than the fact that the Jets won and earned a playoff birth and consequently a rematch with the Bengals, how the game was played and how it led to the outcome it did is meaningless today. Sure the two teams will dissect film from the game, and the Bengals will get more out of the dissection than the Jets will, but Saturday’s playoff game won’t yield the same outcome as in week 17. I don’t foresee a blowout and I can’t imagine the team scoring more than 45 points combined.

A football team’s competitive nature tells me the Bengals would have liked the week 17 game with the Jets to be closer no matter how conservative the game plan was. Also, when players “go through the motions” and don’t play 100%, they run the risk of injury. Sometimes its the times when a player lets his guard down that he gets injured. In the NFL, if you’re on the field you have to play 100% because the guy across from you will be and he’ll either embarrass you or injure you. These things leads me to believe that the Bengals’ 1st stringers were playing to win against the Jets, but maybe their play-calling didn’t coincide with that. Nonetheless, the Bengals had to execute the plays that were called and that didn’t happen. 

Carson Palmer was 1-11 in the game for a total of zero yards. Even if the play-calling was watered down and he only played a half, he still should have completed some passes. There’s no excuse for him to complete 9.1% of his passes in any game. You can’t tell me the guy didn’t care about playing well because it was a meaningless game. That’s nonsense. He’s a competitor and is disappointed with his performance. The Jets defense deserves credit.

Bengals head coach Marvin Lewis was disappointed as well. ”It was not the outcome we wanted,” Lewis told the Associated Press after the game. ”The Jets outplayed us in all three phases. We get a chance to regroup and get going again next Saturday afternoon.”

The Jets and Bengals’ rematch won’t be the best matchup of the divisional playoff round, but it will be great a battle nonetheless. Expect a close, low scoring game. The confident Jets have the ability to win it and move on in the playoffs, but it’s going to be tougher this time around.