It’s quite rare when memes focus on the awfulness of an entire event and not just one team, but despite Andy Dalton and the Cincinnati Bengals looking terrible against the Houston Texans, the whole Thursday Night Football experience deserved to be criticized.
Just like last season and before that, the NFL can’t seem to put together an entertaining matchup in their short week matchup. Who knows – they’ve already cut down on commercials, maybe they’ll actually listen to players and fans, and decide to stop with this? You can hide a bad game during a full Sunday roster. But when it’s on its own, it looks even worse.
It’s not the NFL’s fault that there aren’t a lot of very good quarterbacks out there right now. Deshaun Watson might be a solid starter one day, but that day is not today. Still, he led the Texans to a win, which is something you can’t say about Tom Savage. Or Andy Dalton, who seemed to peak two years ago, and then came the injury that ruined the end of his 2015 season. Since then he and the Bengals haven’t been the same.
J.J. Watt did get any sacks, but two weeks after adding to his Houston-love by raising millions of dollars to help those who were hit hardest by hurricane Harvey, he made his usual impact, including one massive hit on the Bengals center. Who knows, this may be another season where the Texans make the playoffs without anything impressive behind center. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking on the Dalton-Marvin Lewis era in Cincinnati.