They’re not the Bungles
Cincinnati’s in love with its 4-0 felines
The last time that the Cincinnati Bengals found themselves in first place, Home Alone was the top- rated movie, Cheers was the must- see TV show and the elder Bush, George H., was in the White House.
That was 1990, when Boomer Esiason, Ickey Woods and head coach Sam Wyche went all the way to the Super Bowl, losing 20-16 to the San Francisco 49ers. Between then and now, the football fans in Cinci have put up with some truly awful teams, more often than not earning the disparaging “ Bungles” label. But they’ve shown signs of life under coach Marvin Lewis, who took over a team that finished 2- 14 three years ago and led it to 8- 8 records the past two seasons. Here they now sit, one of only four teams that entered the fray unbeaten yesterday. All four — the others being Washington, Tampa Bay and Indianapolis — prevailed. The Buccaneers are 4- 0 for the first time since 1997 and looking more like the team that won everything three years ago than the one that hit the rails thereafter. The last time Washington started the season 3- 0 it went all the way to the Super Bowl, at the end of the 1991 season, defeating the Buffalo Bills, 37- 24 — coach Joe Gibbs’ third title. He quit football for several years but in his second season of his second coming in D. C. seems to be rediscovering his old magic. The Colts have never been to the final, but now that their perennial persecutors, the Patriots, are 2- 2, the stars, and the wins, seem finally to be aligning in their favour.
In their four wins, the Colts have allowed opponents a total of only 24 points, including 10 yesterday in a 31- 10 whipping of Tennessee. Peyton Manning, who had thrown for only two touchdowns previously, finally broke out with four TD passes, matching the four thrown by little brother Eli for the 3- 1 Giants, who are averaging a league- high 34 points a game. No, the Mannings are not scheduled to face each other, short of both making it to Detroit in February and wouldn’t that be a fairy-tale ending?
Washington escaped with an overtime victory yesterday over Seattle, after Seahawks kicker Josh Brown hit an upright with what would have been a lastplay in regulation time winning field goal. Tampa Bay appeared to have lost a last- minute decision to Detroit, until a Lions touchdown was wiped out by a video review. You have to be good to be lucky, right? But of the four bands of unbeatens, the Bengals are the ones with the scratch-em-behind- the- ears underdog charm. Cincinnati, bored silly by years of mediocrity from the baseball Reds, has gone ga- ga over their tigers. Lewis is the most popular figure in the city, where folks have rediscovered the chant from the heady days of 15 years past: “ Who dey? Who dey? Who dey think gonna beat dem Bengals? Nooooooobody!”
Lewis found a fan especially good at shouting out this ungrammatical mouthful of Appalachianspeak, one James Brown of Middletown, Ohio, and has him do it in the Bengals dressing room after each victory. People greet each other on the street with: “ Who dey?”
Four weeks and four wins is merely a quarter of the way through the regular season, but such is the fervour in Ohio that an editorial in the Cincinnati Enquirer suggests that the Bengals success is about much more than football. It suggested the football team has created a “ synergy” that can help the city overcome a raft of economic and political woes. “ We must seize the moment. And now is the perfect time . . . one major success can build on others.” Who dey, indeed.