If you saw the Bengals’ 27-0 loss here back on Oct. 19, you saw what transpired in the second half of Sunday’s painful 26-10 loss to the Colts that made it the fourth straight year they’ve lost an AFC Wild Card Game.
After pulling to within 13-10 with 15 seconds left in the first half on Mike Nugent’s franchise-long 57-yard field goal, the Bengals offense careened into the fourth quarter with four consecutive three-and-outs. By the time they got their second first down of the second half, there was four minutes left and they were out of it.
Without four-time Pro Bowl wide receiver A.J. Green and starting tight end Jermaine Gresham, the Colts did what they did in the shutout, when they forced eight three-and-outs to start the game.
They jammed the box with eight and nine men and played man-to-man to coverage. Just like back in October, the Bengals couldn’t get any movement in the run game, even though they were more stubborn than two months ago, and the receivers, a corps decimated by injuries all year, again couldn’t get open.
Two plays in the middle of the third quarter summed it up when Luck made a play that play-off teams make. After getting hardly any pressure on him all day despite playing against a re-tooled offensive line, the Bengals made Luck step up when he avoided a Reggie Nelson blitz and left end Carlos Dunlap had him by the ankles.
But Luck somehow muscled a 36-yard touchdown to rookie wide receiver Donte Moncrief running to the pylon past cornerback Darqueze Dennard and safety George Iloka for the killing touchdown that made it 20-10 with 7:48 left in the third quarter.
That was in contrast to the next snap, when the Bengals tried a flea flicker. Running back Jeremy Hill flipped it back to quarterback Andy Dalton and they had wide receiver Brandon Tate open briefly down the middle, but they couldn’t connect as cornerback Greg Toler knocked it away.
The two plays crystalized the stark difference on a day the Bengals lost their sixth straight playoff game under head coach Marvin Lewis. Luck, who led the NFL with 40 touchdown passes, was immense, spreading the ball to a variety of weapons while Dalton’s longest play was a 26-yard pass to transplanted running back Rex Burkhead playing wide receiver.
Luck rung up 366 yards on 31 of 44 passing for 104 passer rating and barely got touched. The defense wilted in the second half and the pass-happy Colts resorted to pounding the ball in deadly irony. The game’s leading rusher turned out to be former Bengals draft pick Boom Herron and not Bengals rookie running back Jeremy Hill, the NFL’s leading rusher since week nine.
The Colts got their final points on a 53-yard field goal by Adam Vinatieri, set up by running back Cedric Peerman’s holding call on a punt early in the fourth quarter.
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