The Bengals closed the regular season with a 7-1 finish that featured their best players playing the best when they needed them most, but in Saturday’s AFC Wild Card game at Reliant Stadium they couldn’t summon the synergy that produced their third playoff appearance in four years.
Instead, head coach Marvin Lewis’s playoff record dropped to 0-4 when the Texans took advantage of the worst offensive show in the 34-game era of quarterback Andy Dalton and A. J. Green and posted a 19-13 victory that put them into next week’s AFC Divisional round after beating the Bengals in this game for the second straight year.
The Bengals were supposed to be rising and the Texans were supposed to be diving, but another stale offensive day quickly squashed that. The offense that scored just seven touchdowns in December wasn’t any better in January. They didn’t score a touchdown for the second time in three weeks and didn’t have a third-down conversion without benefit of a penalty. In managing just 127 yards passing, the first-team offense finished the season scoring just one touchdown in the last 10 quarters.
Dalton finished 14-of-30 with a 44.7 passer rating and the ugliness was spread out. About 15 percent of the team’s 48 snaps went for no yards or negative yards and two were screen passes, two were sacks and two were runs.
And Cincinnati’s second-best in the NFL sack unit didn’t register one.
But somehow the defense kept the Bengals in it and, amazingly, gave the offense a chance to win it with 2:57 left in the game and the Bengals looking at a third-and-11 from the Texans 36. Green beat cornerback Johnathan Joseph on a double move down the right side and he was open in the end zone, but it was overthrown. And wide receiver Marvin Jones couldn’t get the first down on a quick slant on fourth down, coming up three yards short.
Dalton didn’t target Green in the entire first half and he didn’t get it to him until 10:15 left in the third quarter. Their 45-yard connection seconds later—Green’s first 40-yard-plus catch since Nov. 25—set up Josh Brown’s 34-yard field goal with 7:48 left in the third quarter that cut it to 16-10. Defensive end Connor Barwin forced it when he came around the edge on third down on left tackle Andrew Whitworth and knocked the ball out of Dalton’s hand.
But on the next series on a route over the middle, Dalton tried to hit Green quickly and Green looked like he didn’t think it was coming. The ball sailed into the arms of Joseph and the Texans had the ball at the Cincinnati 26 with 3:06 left in the third quarter.
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