Bengals continue the carnage
October 17, 2007 | Kid Brag
Tuesday night, Hoover East football stadium. Cool breeze and the smell of chili-cheese nachos, hot dogs and grass rubbed around on a fresh patent leather pigskin football. That is football. Around here the best announcers have a tinge of Southern Baptist fire and brimstone preaching in their voices and tonight was no exception.
The Bengals took the field to stretch their record to 5-1. Still smarting from the loss 2 weeks ago to the Falcons and feeling more competent with their victory over the Saints, they focussed their anxieties on the Panthers… a team they had shutout in their first game 12-0. The Panthers had improved though just like all the other teams in their conference. They boasted a huge front line of 11 year olds headed up by one of Adam-Michael ’s close schoolmates ‘Caleb’. 5′6″ and 208 pounds of offensive and defensive tackle. YES! He IS that large.
Running up the middle was near impossible on offense, and on defense… holding the Panther’s running backs to less than 3 yards a carry when they pushed over the back of the 6th grade behemoth was a feat similar to surviving a Fat Albert attack in a championship Buck Buck game. Yet the Bengals did hang on.
In the second quarter, Roman Virciglio handed off to the fleet-footed Marlon Humphrey for a routine off-tackle jaunt to the left (yes, opposite Caleb’s position) and he cut outside for a 55 yard touchdown run. They held us for the extra point. No more scores until the 4th quarter where we decided passing might be fun for a change. Roman threw an out pattern pass to Tyler Duffey for a 15 yard gain and 2 plays later he found Marlon wide open on a post pattern for another 25 yard touchdown… again no extra point.
We kicked off and recovered the ball immediately. Then, our very first play after winning a kickoff prize, we coughed a fumble right back to them.
Well the Panthers got inspired. Eyeing our Monster defense with so many people on the line and realizing that we could pass on them, they threw a pass of their own over the left corner and scored on a combo 65 yard pass and run.
[I must stop here to interject that Adam-Michael was on the bench during that series since they have to rotate out their players and he was completely furious that he couldn't be in there to intercept that pass:).]
The Panthers were elated. It was now only 12-6. They had a chance until… until…
Yes folks, the onside kick they attempted was futile. Griffin Selby fell on it immediately and with 1 minute left in the game, Marlon Humphrey cut back up field from a left toss to nail the coffin shut. Virciglio ran in the extra point and the Bengals bowed to the crowd with a 19-6 victory.
The Steelers are next and over 10 days away… stay tuned!
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