If you’re an Andy Dalton basher, you probably won’t want to read this because Sunday is why Dalton and A.J. Green have an era named after them.
With the 27-10 cold-blooded hacking of the Saints’ high-tech offense, the Dr. Jekyll Bengals are making sure no one runs away and Hydes in the AFC North race.
As a matter of fact, Dalton, left for pundits’ road kill when we last saw him with a 2.0 passer rating against Cleveland 10 days ago, led the Bengals back into first place in the AFC North with a career-best passer rating of 143.9 in which Green noted he dropped three “dimes,’ to him in the killing fourth quarter drive. The new math is three dimes equal 80 yards.
For those who have been waiting for Green to grab a game by the throat and will the Bengals to a win with sheer talent, Dalton did what all good straight men do and quietly set him up.
“He’s Andy. Same thing I’ve said all along,” said left tackle Andrew Whitworth. “He’ll bounce back and he’ll play well. We didn’t help him (not) to play well last week. We all had a part in it. We have to play better and this week we all did and he played better. We honestly believe in him. That’s the truth. He’s our quarterback and he’s our leader and there’s no one in this locker room that questions that. We have to do things to help him do his job. We have to be able run the ball well. We have to be physical with teams and give him an opportunity to do what he does best.”
What he does best is confound the experts. Ten days after playing the worst game of his NFL career, he arguably played the best game when his team needed it the most. At the start of a three-game road trip, his cool froze the Saints’ red-hot home field advantage that had claimed 11 straight before the loss to San Francisco last week. He had his first three-touchdown game of the season, his third 70-plus completion percentage game of the year (72), and his first no-interception game dating back to Oct. 19 in Indianapolis.
It bested his 136.2 rating he used to shred the Vikings at Paul Brown Stadium last December, 42-14.
“You lose and everyone wants to run you out,” Dalton said. “You win everyone is going to like you. I’m not too worried about it. It was a big win for us. So it’s good to bounce back and get a big one on the road.”
We knew Dalton was in the fire, but we didn’t know Green was in the frying pan. He put himself in there last week when offensive coordinator Hue Jackson and wide receivers coach James Urban challenged him to be better than the last two games after a rather pedestrian six catches for 67 yards. They were his first two games back since his big toe injury wiped out the three previous games.
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