Patriots Blog: Gold Stars And Penalty Flags From Pats-Bengals
BOSTON (CBS) -- Well I should have flip-flopped my predictions. I thought the Pats were going to lose to the Falcons and beat the Bengals. Here are my thoughts for the Bengals game.
Gold Stars
Danny Amendola gets a gold star. The young man had a very painful groin injury and he came back and played in a rainstorm. He's an injury-prone player, that's for sure, but 80 has heart. He wanted to get back out there and he did. Also, he did it a lot faster than many of us thought he would.
The Pats defense as a whole gets a gold star. They held the Bengals to 13 points. Cincy has a ton of talent on offense and the Pats defense basically kept them quiet for most of the afternoon. Chris Jones stepped up to help out at D-tackle and got to the QB a couple of times. This is the best the Patriots defense has been in a long time. If you think about it, the most points the Pats defense has let up this season is 14.
Penalty Flags
Tom Brady gets a penalty flag. Brady is usually good in bad weather and Sunday he was off, with errant throws and holding on to the ball too long. The Bengals defense played a huge part in all of this but Tom couldn't shake his issues. He's the prime-time player on this team and he didn't play like it.
The Pats offensive line gets a penalty flag. All week long we heard about how good the Cincy front four was, and they were, but the Pats O-line just got manhandled. Geno Atkins had a sack on the second play and Cincinnati finished with four sacks. Brady was under pressure all game. This was not the offensive line's best game.
Mother Nature gets a penalty flag. The rain at the end of the game was simply ridiculous. I have never seen rain like that in a game. The Pats were not going to come back in that.
Follow Levan Reid on Twitter @LevanReid.
