At the close of the third quarter yesterday, with the Bengals trailing the Steelers 20-9 things looked like they were finished. They had been unable to move the ball effectively all day and their lone touchdown came from a Roethlisberger interception returned by cornerback Jonathan Joseph for a touchdown.
Even in the stadium you could feel the fans reconciling themselves to another painful loss to their division rival as it has been for the most part over the course of this decade. The Steelers had won 6 consecutive games against the Bengals and had won 8 straight times in Cincinnati at Paul Brown Stadium.
Carson Palmer led the Bengals on a game-winning fourth quarter drive against the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday.
In fact I was watching the game with a friend and we both remarked how Bengals quarterback, Carson Palmer, had not looked like the player he was during his breakout 2005 season where he led the Bengals to the playoffs for the first time in 15 years. Consequently it was against the Steelers in the playoffs that Palmer suffered his knee injury.
In 2006, Palmer passed for 4,000 yards and had a QB rating of 93.3, threw for over 4,000 yards with 28 touchdowns, but the team missed the playoffs again. 2007 he once again put up similar numbers, but the Bengals once again failed to make the playoffs. It was something not in the numbers however which was missing.
Palmer did not exude the confidence he had previously. The Bengals offense was not scoring as many touchdowns and the team seemed to lack a spark and confidence in critical situations.
This season, the Bengals are one miracle play form being 3-0 and tied with Baltimore at the top of the division, but it was not until the fourth quarter yesterday that the real Carson Palmer arrived back on the field.
The Bengals offense, led by Palmer, stepped out onto the field down 20-15 with 5:14 left in the fourth quarter, 71 yards away from the Steelers endzone. In need of a touchdown and facing one of the NFL’s top defenses I figured this game would end with the Steelers on top.
That was until I saw Palmer drop back on the second play of the drive and hit Laverneus Coles on a pass that hit him perfectly in stride with a Steeler defensive back right on him, that allowed him to turn up the field for a 17-yard gain. It was more than the pass, it was the power in the throw, the situation and the opposition that he was facing that made Palmer’s pass impressive.
The rest of the drive was simply a resurrection of the Palmer that was once considered the great young quarterback of his generation. Every time he dropped back, the offensive line was able to give him enough protection to plant his feet and throw the ball and Palmer fit the ball into tight windows, putting the ball in positions where only his receivers could catch the ball. The coverage on the plays was outstanding, but Palmer was on fire.
He had so much zip on his passes, that most were actually impossible to see while watching the game on TV. Palmer looked more like the player he was during that 2005 season, making throws only a handful of quarterbacks in the league can make and making them in critical situations for his team.
On Sunday we saw the real Carson Palmer and the rise of a Bengals team that with Palmer at his best can compete for a playoff berth.