Week 9: Cincinnati at Buffalo

Somewhere in the country – not only in one city defined by its pork products and another defined by its soul-crushingly bad weather – this game will be on television. It sounds like an attempt to scare you, we know. Like those local news stories about killer spores that live in toast or clean laundry or whatever. We assure you that we are not trying to scare you: this is true. Somewhere in this country, people will have to watch this football game. And here’s the doubly horrible truth: if we were in one of those CBS markets, we’d watch the stupid thing, too. Because, goofballs that we are, these two awful teams are actually two of the NFL teams we find most interesting.

We’ve already compared the Bengals to an episode of Cops this season, so we won’t do it again. Actually, strike that, let’s: the two are very similar, although the theme songs are different (The Bengals, as you probably know, have replaced Inner Circle’s “Bad Boys” with “What Jail Is Like,” by Cincy’s hometown rock heroes The Afghan Whigs). But both mix a few moments of legitimate interest – with the Bengals, it usually involves Carson Palmer; with Cops it’s…arguable – with heaping helpings of unintentional comedy and outright haplessness. There’s no getting around the bummer-ness of the proceedings on either part, but for the Bengals, most of the sad moments take place on defense.

Cincinnati’s defense is, as we’ve said every week, terrible. We then add that that is in part the case because of injuries, before reiterating that said defense is seriously terrible. And so we do it again here. The defense is so terrible that it’s giving up 30.1 points per game, second-worst only to the winless, ultra-awful Dolphins. So terrible that the Jets – colloquially known around New York as “The Freaking Jets” – put up 31 points in Week 7. Cincy has been weak against the run (28th in the NFL) and equally bad against the pass (also 28th). That’s, yes, seriously terrible. Luckily for them, they just might have met their match in the Bills offense.

While the Bills have been playing very well of late, winning three of their last four, they’ve been doing it while getting barely anything from their offense. Rookie Trent Edwards took over at quarterback for the injured J.P. Losman in Week 3 and authored that winning streak, then got hurt in Week 7. Losman, much mocked in this space for his general doofery, actually played well in leading Buffalo to a Week 8 win. But while his arm is inarguably superior to Edwards’s, we’d trust this Cali-brah keg-tapper to run an offense as readily as we’d trust his nearest analogue – Brody Jenner, pseudo-star of MTV’s pseudo-reality hit The Hills – to open a Hollywood film. By which we mean expect lots of RB Marshawn Lynch here. Losman will get his shots downfield, and probably complete a few against this awful Bengals defense, but if he throws the ball 30-plus times, it’s because Buffalo fell behind early.

And it’s not implausible that such a thing could happen. Even with backup Kenny Watson – concussed in Week 8 but apparently fine for Week 9 – standing in for still-injured RB Rudi Johnson, Cincy is a pretty potent unit, due in large part to its great quarterback and pair of ace receivers. That said, the Bengals haven’t been nearly as good as they could or should have been this year, in part because they’ve been playing from behind so much. Carson Palmer has been neither as accurate nor (not coincidentally) as unhurried as he was last year. Chad Johnson, who really just wants to direct, has scored less and pouted more, and the team has been held below 21 points three times already. They should be able to score here, though.

The Bills defense is almost unrealistically injury-depleted and very young. But while the Bills have yielded an ugly 381.3 yards per game – only the Bengals and Browns are worse – they’ve actually been pretty tough of late. They don’t get sacks and seldom get interceptions, but they’ve been gutsy and effective against some weak offenses, and garnered six takeaways against Dallas in their heartbreaking Week 5 loss. They’ll give up some points here – their secondary is too weak, and the Bengals passing game too strong – but they’ve impressed even while looking frankly unimpressive.

So: two weak teams, getting all weak-sauce on each other on some poor bugger’s TV set, somewhere, and maybe even on ours if we had Sunday Ticket. But while, Losman could throw three interceptions against a bunch of tackling sleds, these goofy Bengals are one of the few teams we could pick him against. Ladies and gentlemen, meet the worst .500 team in the NFL.

Bills by 4