What goes up must come down...eventually.  The Jets dominated the Bengals on all fronts in Week 17 playing with the utmost passion, desire, and urgency.  On the other side, the Bengals team was able to muster only one first down in the first half due to penalty and its defense got totally gashed by the Jets running game.  At this point, the Jets could not look any better to the betting world and the Bengals could not look any worse.

In looking at the result of this game ultimately you have to ask who wanted it more.  That answer is obviously the Jets.  The Bengals simply did not need this game.  Yes, they were playing for the 3rd seed in the playoffs but they already had a home game next week locked up.  In my opinion, Marvin Lewis was taking a let’s see what happens approach.  The following excerpt was taken from an article written by Geoff Hobson:

    “Even as the players headed to the bus to take them to The Meadowlands for Sunday night’s game, they weren’t sure how Bengals head coach Marvin Lewis was going to play the regular-season finale against the Jets.

    “What’s going on?” asked one starter and when the answer was a shrug, he shrugged back.

    Head coach Marvin Lewis tipped his hand with the inactive list when he sat starting running back Cedric Benson and started rookie Bernard Scott. Also out are three defensive starters, tackle Domata Peko, left end Robert Geathers and safety Chris Crocker, and one offensive starter, tight end J.P. Foschi.”

First off, if your playing to win this game you don’t sit two of your strongest defensive lineman and starting running back in addition to two other starters.  Second, when a starter from your team has no idea what the game plan is or how serious they were taking the game I would classify that as a bad sign.  I think that Lewis was going to see where the game was going before he made any big decisions.  If the game is tight or they were winning, he would play to win.  If not, he would scale back the game plan and not disclose too much information.

Do not forget who this Jets team is.  This is the same team who in a must win game in Week 15 at home against the Falcons laid an egg.  This is the same defensive unit who has given up 4 last possession game winning drives by the other team throughout the season.  This is the same team who has a rookie quarterback with 12 touchdown passes, 20 interceptions, and 63.2 QB rating who has to go into a hostile playoff game on the road.  This is an inconsistent team who’s almost there but not quite yet.

As far as the Bengals, I’ve see a lot of people already writing them off saying they haven’t looked good down the stretch.  It’s true, they haven’t in losing 3 of the last 4 games. The first game was on the road at Minnesota which was a great bounce back spot for the Vikings.  The second game was also on the road where they went toe to toe with San Diego, arguably one of the top 2 teams in the NFL, falling 27-24 in the last seconds.  They won their next game 17-10 over the Chiefs, a gritty team who has been playing extremely hard and just pounded the Denver Broncos on the road.  And their final game was the clunker at the Meadowlands.  If you look at the losses, all three happened on the road against playoff teams.  This Bengal team is still 6-2 at home with victories over Pittsburgh and Baltimore.  Heck, this team could be 7-1 at home if not for the fluke loss in Week 1 against the Denver Broncos.  This is the same team that also won on the road at Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and Green Bay.  This is the team that has gotten little to no respect all season.  This is the same team that has a top rushing defense in the league yielding 98.3 a game.

But what about the 257 rushing yards the Jets gained against the Bengals defense you ask?  The Bengals were without two of their stronger defensive lineman and a starting safety and were pushed around by the Jets offensive line.  I don’t anticipate that happening as much next week.  Also, the Bengals were done in by missed tackles which can be corrected with a much better effort that I believe will be brought next week, in a game that counts much more than a regular season game.  A lot of the Jets damage was done in the Wildcat with Brad Smith.  He gained 92 yards on 4 carries.  The Jets showed their hand a little bit and the Bengals now have time to prepare for it.  If you take those 4 carries away, the Jets gained a measly 3.1 yards a carry.  Thomas Jones himself only averaged 2.9 yards a carry.

The Jets cannot play any better than they did in Week 17.  On national tv on Sunday night, they embarrassed a good Cincinnati Bengals team.  This week the Bengals will be ready for the Jets and will deliver their own best shot.  We now get a 6-2 (borderline 7-1) home team at less than the 3 points home field yields.

The Play: Cincinnati -2.5 or better.