NFL’s Most Disappointing Meet Sunday

Entering this NFL season, we all knew without doubt, question and fail that certain teams would not have what we would refer to as good seasons.

We all knew that the Raiders, the NFL’s worst team last year at 2-14, would probably not light it up this year. We didn’t think the Dolphins would be winless, but this is only a win or two beneath expectations. There are people who expected better from the 49ers, but sitting in the cellar of the NFC West is no shocker. And the entire world saw the Falcons’ season go down the drain like wedding rings with Michael Vick’s indictments.

Enter the Cincinnati Bengals and the St. Louis Rams. These two losers meet in Ohio on Sunday afternoon, and with all due respect to the underachieving Saints, Bears and Eagles, these teams may be the most disappointing of this 2007 season.

Last season, John Madden proclaimed on national television that there are three ‘elite’ quarterbacks in the league: Peyton Manning, Tom Brady and Carson Palmer. Manning and Brady’s squads are presently a combined 22-2, and Palmer, who has quarterbacked the Bengals in every game this season, has them at 4-8???

How does a team with Palmer, with Chad Johnson and T.J. Houshmandzadeh at receiver and Rudi Johnson at running back operate so poorly? One might pinpoint the problems in operation clearly on the performance of the defense.

Teams that advocate building franchises in the draft on defense first will use the 2007 Bengals as exhibit A, showing proof that you can have all the firepower and still fizzle without defense. Or will they? At a porous 29th in the league in points allowed and yards allowed per game, you would think that these stats are the reasons for the 4-8 mark. But the Cleveland Browns are dead last in both stats, yet they sport a 7-5 mark.

The Rams were not so long ago called the ‘Greatest Show On Turf’. Rename that the NFL’s ‘Greatest Show Turfed’. People are normally used to St. Louis having explosive offense and imploding defense, with the likes of Marc Bulger, Isaac Bruce, Torry Holt and Stephen Jackson on the explosive side. But this year, for both points scored and points allowed, the Rams presently sit ranked 27th, with injuries and poor play being the reason for the offensive slump.

Unfortunately, when a team disappoints to the level of these squads that meet on Sunday, the head coaches are the ones that usually take the fall at the end of the season. The Bengals’ Marvin Lewis, one considered the savior of Cincinnati, is in serious jeopardy of losing his post, especially considering that he was hired as a defensive specialist after his 2000 Baltimore Ravens won the Super Bowl with one of the best defenses ever.

The man that leads the Rams is second-year cat Scott Linehan, and to his credit, the St. Louis organization messed up by hiring an offensive guru anyway, as the offense has never been the problem there. Perhaps Lewis will be the next coach of the Rams, and Linehan… well, the 49ers might be hiring soon, right?