Patriots Get Upended in Bengals’ Rainforest

Good evening, everyone. Well to simply put it, today sucked. The New England Patriots were not ready to play on the road against the Cincinnati Bengals. While both defenses played exceptionally well, Cincy had the edge in essentially every category, and that’s why they came out on top.

The first half was really boring to watch. I had a tough time even getting the game on because I live in New Jersey and the game wasn’t on TV. Luckily firstrowsports.eu was there for me but it’s not like I missed anything important. My apologies if you consider a bunch of 3 and outs by both teams in the first quarter important. Towards the end of the quarter, Andy Dalton threw a pick to Brandon Spikes in the redzone (first time he’s done that this season). But Tom Brady and the Patriots couldn’t take advantage. The Bengals then responded in the 2^nd quarter with a lot of passing plays, many of which that went to guess who? Yup, AJ Green. But thankfully, the New England’s defense held them to a 39 yard field goal from Mike Nugent. The Pats had a good drive going and we thought Kenbrell Thompkins had a sure first down deep in Bengals territory. However, after review it was determined that Thompkins never had control of the ball in the first place. The Bengals got the ball back but the Patriots used their timeouts at a great time, so they got the ball back and were able to tie the game at 3, with Stephen Gostkowski nailing a 42 yard field goal.

Cincy had a really long drive which bored me to death. I lost track of how many plays it took, but Dalton got sacked and that forced Nugent to come on and try a 50 yard field goal, which he got. With the terrible offensive line, you would think that maybe the Patriots needed to get points from their defense. At that point I didn’t care, all I wanted was to see the New England get points. Cincinnati created another long drive in the 4^th quarter. This one hurt a lot because the Pats’ defense took a blow when Tommy Kelly injured his knee. He came back for one play but on 4^th down, Kelly was taken off the field. As a result, former Patriot running back BenJarvus Green-Ellis rushed in for the touchdown. Law Firm’s touchdown followed by the extra point gave the Bengals a 13-3 lead. But New England responded well. Brady found Aaron Dobson, who ran the ball deep in Bengals territory. He fumbled during the run but he was able to get the ball back. The next play saw Brady finding Danny Amendola at the 1 yard line. Since Amendola scrambled in the endzone after making the catch, I thought it was a touchdown, but he was just down. I was disappointed though because the Pats couldn’t get a touchdown. But Gostkowski’s 20 yard field goal made it 13-6 with under 6:30 to play. On a big Bengals possession, Devin McCourty forced Giovani Bernard to fumble the ball and Jerod Mayo recovered it for the Patriots. Unfortunately, Brady got sacked again and thus, New England had to punt. Luckily, using 2 timeouts and having the 2 minute warning helped the Pats get the ball back. But that’s when the rain started to fall. The rainfall was increasing by the minute and the Patriots couldn’t get anything going. Even though a 15 yard penalty got them into Bengals territory, Brady threw an interception to Adam “Pacman” Jones. With no timeouts left, the Bengals took a knee and that would be it. Bengals 13, Patriots 6.

New England is now 4-1, which sucks because I really thought they had this game. I don’t want to make excuses but come on, that rain really fell during the worst possible time. This game ended Brady’s consecutive TD pass streak at 52. Ironically, Brady started the streak in 2010 against the Bengals. The Pats come back home but they’ll be taking on a very dangerous New Orleans Saints team. Hoping for the best and hopefully Rob Gronkowski comes back soon (he did not play today). Let’s go Patriots!