It’s a huge honor to merely make an NFL practice squad as a quarterback. It’s another thing to actually start. From there it’s a whole other thing to start and preform well, and it’s another thing to be excellent, then be excellent consistently.
Across his professional career, Andy Dalton has ranged somewhere from below average to excellent, never resting on one level of play for too long. When Dalton is good, he’s great, but when he’s bad, oh man can the Bengals struggle. The former Katy Tiger and TCU Horned Frog hasn’t been the worst part of a pretty good Bengals offense, but there have been times when he just hasn’t been able to do enough to win.
That isn’t entirely his fault, either. His offensive line struggled at times throughout the game, and didn’t really give him a lot to work with on the road. Not even the emergence of what Jon Gruden dubbed the “Star Wars Formation” could save the Bengals from a bummer of a performance.
The Bengals started off hot in each half, moving the ball with ease. An inability to punch the ball in for six in the red zone was the bane of an offense that seemed to just snap when it was forced to adjust on the fly.
Once again, it’s not all on Dalton, but there were some seriously questionable throws he made last night. The most difficult job in the world is to be an NFL quarterback, and he’s already been better than 99.9% of the entire human population at one of the most intense positions in the most intense game in the world. That being said, this is the NFL, and pretty good sometimes isn’t good enough.
Dalton has been putting up great numbers this year, and he’s coming off a stellar 2015. It seems like he’s gone a long way in terms of eliminating that inconsistency that’s plagued him, and completely earned his starting spot.
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