2009 Bengals Predictions

The season is right around the corner and I am getting very excited about this team. The Defense appears to be improving over a #13 ranked defense last season and with a healthy (well mostly healthy) Carson Palmer the offense should improve tremendously over the Ryan Fitzpatrick era of last season. With that I wanted to post the Bengals schedule along with my predictions for the year.

Sun, Sep 13 Denver 1:00 (W)
Sun, Sep 20 at Green Bay 1:00 (L)
Sun, Sep 27 Pittsburgh 4:15 (L)
Sun, Oct 4 at Cleveland 1:00 (W)
Sun, Oct 11 at Baltimore 1:00 (W)
Sun, Oct 18 Houston 1:00 (L)
Sun, Oct 25 Chicago 1:00 (L)
8 -- bye -- -- --
Sun, Nov 8 Baltimore 1:00 (W)
Sun, Nov 15 at Pittsburgh 1:00 (L)
Sun, Nov 22 at Oakland 4:15 (W)
Sun, Nov 29 Cleveland 1:00 (W)
Sun, Dec 6 Detroit 1:00 (W)
Sun, Dec 13 at Minnesota 1:00 (L)
Sun, Dec 20 at San Diego 4:05 (L)
Sun, Dec 27 Kansas City 1:00 (W)
Sun, Jan 3 at NY Jets 1:00 (L)

So based on my predictions I see the Bengals going 8-8 which is Marvin Lewis' average season. But in all honesty there are some winnable games that I marked as an L. If you look at the locks, the games that we should win hands down I look at Kansas City, Cleveland (2), Oakland, and Denver. In my opinion a loss to one of these teams would be an upset. So that is five games that we absolutely "should" win. Now look at the games that we should have a shot and should be swing games NY Jets, Baltimore (2) which would bring us up to 8 wins if we can win those. So I think there are really 8 winnable games on this schedule. Now we just have to find a way to beat Minnesota, Pittsburgh, Green Bay, Houston or Chicago. If we can win all of the games that we should (5) and grab those swing games (3) then find a way to win two of those tough matchups we could be a 10 win team which I think would get us into the playoffs in our division. It could happen!