With the season on the line, the Bengals defense went out and made a money grab Sunday at FirstEnergy Stadium when they hijacked Browns quarterback Johnny Manziel’s first NFL start in the third greatest stand in franchise history during the 30-0 victory that put them a win away from their fourth straight postseason with two games left.
While posting their first shutout in six years, the Bengals put Manziel through a NFL 101 clinic all rookie quarterbacks must undergo and held the Browns to a paltry 107 yards. They sacked him three times, hit him six times, gave him 2.6 yards on five carries, and picked him twice while all the while giving the Manziel money sign.
“That’s his trademark,” said right end Wallace Gilberry, one of the tone setters who rubbed his fingers together after a jarring seven-yard loss on a read option Manziel had time to do neither on Cleveland’s fifth snap of the game.
“That’s the thing everyone is going to do against him from here on out. That’s his thing. I just wanted to do it before he did. This week it was all about Manziel and as a team we focused on us.”
If you’re scratching your head over the inconsistencies of Andy Dalton, who just can’t figure out these Browns, how about the Bengals defense? A week after they gave up the most yards in a home game in 19 years, they allowed their third fewest yards in history.
You have to start dusting off the shelves for this one. Only two opponents have had fewer yards and one of them did it nearly 38 years to the day on Dec. 12, 1976 at Shea Stadium in Joe Willie Namath’s last start as a Jet when they gave just 72 yards, still second fewest ever. Earlier that season, the Bengals’ fifth-ranked defense allowed 35 yards to the Packers, still the fewest.
Now a defense tied for 28th and the only one in Bengals’ history that has allowed three 500-yard games in one season comes up with an effort that allowed the Browns to get across midfield once while averaging less than three yards per play and knocking then all but out of the playoffs.
“Any time you make a team one-dimensional, you’re going to be able to make calls that make where the ball is going to go predictable,” said cornerback Adam Jones, who had one of the two interceptions. “The thing today was the front did a great job pressuring.”
What seemed to be forgotten in the Manziel Maze is that this is a proud defense that has been the back bone of three straight post-season runs and most of them are still here and prideful and last week’s effort along with the implosion against the Browns last month on a Thursday night at Paul Brown Stadium hung heavy and the Johnny Football stuff started to wear a little thin.
““You know our defense, you know our locker room. We don’t like to get embarrassed like that,” said nose tackle Domata Peko. “We made a point this week in practice to attack down hill. They ran it 52 times. That’s a punch in the face. We came out and got redemption….That Thursday night game has been on our back.”
Let’s see, the Browns ran 37 plays in just over 21 minutes for their 21st starting quarterback since they came back into the NFL 15 years ago. Figure about 25 of the snaps produced the money sign and one of them, a pass into the midsection of leaping middle linebacker Rey Maualuga, drew a 15-yard flag for taunting when Maualuga did it in Manziel’s face.
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