Marvin Lewis: “When you can hold a team to one third down conversion, chances are you’re going to win the football game.”
November 10, 2009 – 5:30 am by Bunk
Take notice NFL: the Cincinnati Bengals are for real. No longer the Bungles, Cincinnati is winning behind consistently opportunistic defense, timely plays in the passing game, and a healthy dose of smash mouth football behind the workhorse efforts of Cedric Benson. The Bengals beat the Baltimore Ravens 17-7 on Sunday – their second defeat of the divisional rival in as many tries this season. They did so behind a suffocating defense that confused Joe Flacco all afternoon and 34 rushes for Benson. The former castaway of the Bears notched his second 100+ yard game against the Ravens this season with his 117 yard performance. Nobody used to run for 100 yards on that Ravens defense, and certainly not twice in a year. Benson did though and it’s no fluke. The Bengals are physical at the point of attack, and to make matters worse for the league, really haven’t hit their stride on the offensive side of the ball. Next up? A showdown for first place in the AFC North with the defending champion Pittsburgh Steelers.
Pittsburgh dusted the Denver Broncos on Monday night, making next Sunday’s matchup extremely interesting, as both teams are heading in to the game with a full head of steam. Head coach Marvin Lewis joined WLW in Cincinnati on Monday to talk about his team’s impressive win against the Ravens, the much improved play of his offensive line and his secondary, and what he thinks the Bengals need to do specifically to take down the Steelers when they square off next Sunday at Heinz Field.
On the vastly improved play of the Bengals offensive line:
“Well, they keep doing a better job and a fine job every week, and as I want to say, we’re getting better every week. And the consistency with how they’re playing, and really kind of learning to play together and really playing as one unit, and doing a great job of finishing and playing very, very physical. And I think that’s key.”
On his defense and how so many players are making contributions:
“Well that’s big. And I think the biggest part of what you said on that stat sheet was the fact that they were 1 for whatever they were on 3rd down, and that’s the key element. When you can hold a team to one third down conversion, chances are you’re going to win the football game.”
On the particularly strong play of his cornerbacks, which is allowing his defense to give opposing offenses more difficult packages to adjust to:
“Well it does. It gives us an opportunity to do some things. But I think the key thing is they keep playing the game both physically and most important mentally. And they’re doing a good job fundamentally, and that’s a position where you get challenged each and every week and we’ll have another challenge this week.”
On who will replace Chris Henry as the #4 receiver after he went down with injury:
“Yeah I have a pretty good idea right now, so as we go in to making our planning and so forth as we go the first couple of days of the week. So, but yeah, we have some flexibility there with some guys who have some talent that haven’t had an opportunity to play much and somebody’s going to get an opportunity this week.”
On what he sees in the Steelers as they prepare to face them for the second time this year:
“Well, number one we know we have to keep – we have to avoid the explosive plays that they make offensively – many of the them unorthodox and out of the pocket and so forth. We can’t allow the running game to get going. And on the other side of the ball, we’ve got to man up, and as we talk about every time we play these guys, we got to man up, we got to get up on a guy, and we got to block our guy – whether it be the running game, the passing game. And we got to make the vertical plays down the field and make some chunk plays, and we got to hit some of the holes they have in their defense. And special teams wise, we got to win the battle. We got to take advantage of that and we got to get after them on special teams and create some field position plays.”
Listen here to Marvin Lewis with Lance McCallister on WLW in Cincinnati
Tags: are the Bengals for real?, Bengals improved defense, Carson Palmer, Cedric Benson, Chad Ocho Cinco, Cincinnati Bengals, Marvin Lewis, Steelers vs. Bengals for first place in AFC North
