Written by Pablo Figueroa at Sporting Charts
Every NFL season, it seems as if one squad earns the distinction as the league’s “best bad team”; this team is the one that is not really a serious contender, but that does enough to beat up on lesser squads. In the end, this status doesn’t amount to much, as this kind of team can take advantage of a soft schedule and make the playoffs, but ultimately doesn’t hold a chance when facing quality rosters.
If this kind of dubious distinction would be applied to a specific player, it seems as if Andy Dalton would be a perfect fit. In many ways, his career has been a success. Through four and a half seasons, he has started 72 straight games and gone 48-23-1, which translates to an amazing .676 winning percentage. Only 10 of his losses have been by double digits, so he tends to lead his team to having a chance to win, and with a perfect 8-0 start to the 2015 season, he is all but guaranteed to lead the Cincinnati Bengals to a fifth straight playoff berth.
However, the knock on Dalton has been his inability to lead the Bengals in big spots. Alongside Coach Marvin Lewis, the Bengals have gone 0-4 in the playoffs in the past four seasons, which has been terrible for a franchise that still awaits its first playoff win since 1990. Dalton’s futility has also been evident in the regular season when the Bengals have been scheduled to play in prime-time.
With the schedule makers pegging them for three straight prime-time games between Weeks 9 and 11 of the present season, doubts starting floating around Dalton and the Bengals again. As many have questioned Cincinnati’s status as a big-time contender for Super Bowl 50, the Bengals cleared their first prime-time hurdle by crushing the Browns on Thursday Night Football, easily covering the spread even as they went in as 11-point favorites.
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