Good Monday Morning!

This is what I'm thinking about today: what do the Jets, Colts, Vikings and Saints have that the Bengals don’t? Why were those teams still playing Sunday, and your Cincinnati Bengals have scattered for the winter? The easy answer is this: they all play great defense, they all have impact players on both sides of the football and they all can throw the ball, even the Jets.

The tougher question is why. Why can the Jets do all of that and the Bengals can’t? A lot of it is talent. A lot of it is scheme. A lot of it is simply putting dollars into personnel that will have impact in the areas of the game that are now the most important.

There was a time when you could win in the NFL simply by running the ball, controlling the clock and then playing solid defense. It was a blue print to getting deep into the playoffs. The New York Giants did it under Bill Parcells. They did a few years ago under Tom Coughlin. And we know all about what the Steelers have done. But the game has changed.

This is what Bill Cowher said on the CBS NFL pre-game show back in October. And this is a direct quote:

‘The game has changed, the rules have changed," he said. "I think right now, I hate to say this, but the running game is a complement. It's not the foundation that it once was. “ Cowher went onto say, “You look at the last three AFC teams that were in the Super Bowl, that's Pittsburgh, New England and Indianapolis. They're all passing teams. The running game is a complement.”

Think about how many times you’ve seen a team get into the red zone simply because it throws the ball downfield. Sometimes, the receiver makes a spectacular catch. Sometimes, he turns that into a touchdown. But more often than not, the receiver doesn’t have to do anything.

In the NFL, pass interference is a spot foul. It’s not college, where the distance of the call is just 15 yards. If an NFL defensive back is called for pass interference on his own five yard line, that’s where the offense gets the ball. In college, 15 yards from the line of scrimmage, max.

Now think about the number of times the Bengals threw deep this season. In a lot of ways, what was wrong with their offense, could have been fixed, or hidden, by simply throwing deep. The difference between these four teams left standing and the Bengals? It was the Bengals inability to throw the ball with any consistency. But why?

I did a little digging, a little research. Three of the four teams left in the Super Bowl chase were in the top eight in passing offense: Indianapolis ranked second, New Orleans fourth, Minnesota eighth. The Jets were 31st, second to last.

Throwing deep, testing the secondary, keeping the safeties from cheating up into run support is something else the Final 4 NFL teams can do well, and the Bengals didn’t’.

Here’s the stat: plays of 20-or more yards this season, passing plays. The Colts had 62 of those. The Saints had 58, the Vikings 55. The Jets had 37 plays of 20-yards of more. Your Cincinnati Bengals, only 36. 36 pass plays of 20-or more yards in 477-passing attempts.

Passing leads to points. I’ve said this since October, the Bengals offense could not score enough points this season to make any reasonable thinking fan believe they could play with the big boys come playoff time. Eleven of the 12 playoff teams ranked in the top 17 for points scored this season. When you extract defense and special teams scoring, the Bengals total of 281 offensive points in 2009, left them at 22nd in the entire league. That comes out to 17 and a half points from the offense per game.

New Orleans and Minnesota, incidentally were one-two.. The Saints offense averaged better than 28 and a half points per game.

But why?

Of the 10-playoff quarterbacks, nine had better passing stats than Carson Palmer. Only the Jets Mark Sanchez was worse. Does this mean that Palmer isn’t the quarterback a lot of us think he is? Or did these teams have better talent around their quarterbacks?

Let’s start with the offense line. The Bengals line allowed 56-hits on Palmer and 29-sacks for a quarterback misery total of 85. The Colts allowed just 13-sacks, 44-hits for a misery total of 57. The Saints allowed just 20 sacks, misery total of 72. The Jets line, considered the best in the business, allowed 30-sacks and 53-hits on Sanchez. The Vikings total was a whopping 117. Favre was sacked 34 times.

But the Colts threw the ball over a hundred times more than the Bengals did this season. Manning, Favre and Brees were all top ten in attempts. Palmer was 19th, making the sacks and hits on him more glaring.

You know what the four teams left standing have that the Bengals don’t? A legitimate tight end. The Vikings Visante Sciancoe had twice as many catches as JP Foschi did this season. The Colts Dallas Clark caught 100-passes. Foschi caught 27. Sciancoe had eleven touhdown catches. The Bengals receiving corp, tight ends and wide receivers and running backs, together caught just 21.

Cowher is right. This is a passing league where you must score points to win. It was great watching Cedric Benson run all over the field this season. It was terrific to see the Bengals defense shutdown some big time play makers. But the name of the game now is throwing the ball and scoring points. And unless the Bengals figure that out between now and next season, my guess is we’ll get to this final four weekend without them…again.

As always, I'm talking sports this Sunday on the 50,000 watt flame thrower, 700 WLW, this Sunday morning. Belterra Casino Sunday Morning Sports Talk airs from 9am-11:30am EDT. Among my guests: Bill Koch, the UC Bearcats 'beat' writer from the Cincinnati Enquirer, Mark Curnutte, the Bengals 'beat' writer and Larry Weisman, the national football writer from USA Today. If you have XM Radio, it's on channel 173.

No Carson Palmer against the Jets this Sunday? Yikes!

Bummer, because according to my hometown paper, the Newark Star Ledger, you can beat the Jets with passing.

Just posted, the latest Bengals Report Podcast. It's on the front page of my web site: www.kenbroo.com as well as here. Bengals Report executive editor, Mark Hardin and I preview this Sunday's Bengals vs Jets game. You'll hear comments from Marvin Lewis and Carson Palmer...

Good Morning! Here you go, a couple of NFL Week #6 predictions for you, as I relax in the backyard of the palatial (but ever decreasing in value thanks to the economy) estate in suburban Cincinnati.


Also, you can now download the latest Bengals Report Podcast from the front page of my web site: www.kenbroo.com. Mark Hardin and I are previewing the Bengals vs Jets game this Sunday in the Meadowlands. You'll hear comments from Marvin Lewis and Carson Palmer. But, if you're in a hurry, you can also download it here. And you can subscribe to all of my podcasts through Itunes.

More to come on this Friday...

Before we all get giddy about the Bengals win Sunday over the Jets, let's remember this: these were two bad football teams and one of them was bound to win. Sunday, the Bengals figured it out in the second half of the game, and the Jets crashed.

Yes, the Bengals running attack returned. It was great to see a good player and equally good person, Kenny Watson, rip apart the Jets defense. Watson's longest run was only 12 yards, which means he simply wore the Jets defense down. In reality, it was the Bengals big offensive linemen who took the under-sized Jets defensive linemen to the shed, mash blocking holes for Watson to run through.

But make no mistake about it, the Bengals still have serious deficiencies. They gave up over 30-points again Sunday, a number they've averaged the entire season. The Jets put up over 350 yards of offense. This from a New York team that's struggled to do anything offensively coming into this game. And, the Bengals gave up a hundred yard receiving day to Lavernius Coles.

The road to the playoffs get a little less bumpy with this win. The Bengals still have to finish out 8-2 in their final 10 games to get to ten wins. And this season, 10 wins may be the minimum amount needed to either win the AFC North or qualify as a wild card. The schedule does get easier, with teams like Arizona, St. Louis and Miami on the horizon. But two games remain with the Steelers, one with the Ravens and there's a home game with the tough Tennessee Titans to come.

But the road to ten wins is a bit easier at 2-4 than it would've been at 1-5. And that's good. But not good enough to get all giddy about it. Beat the Steelers, and then we'll talk.

Check out my web site: www.kenbroo.com. I'll have the latest "Broo View Podcast" posted over night and you can either download it or listen on your computer early Tuesday.