*Week 4 Observations

* With 1:04 left on the clock and the Bengals facing a 4th and 11, Marvin Lewis was going to punt the football and play for the tie. But Carson Palmer talked him out of it and ended up making the play scrambling for a first down and setting up a 31-yard field goal for the win. That was Shayne Graham's first successful overtime field goal in his career, and the first Bengals overtime win since 2001.

* I am not sure why Marvin would play for the tie, I understand the field position issue, you don't want to give Cleveland the ball with a chance to pick up 30 yards and hit a Field Goal to beat you. But why play for the tie? I am glad he made the decision to go for it. A tie does nothing for us.

* The game was surprisingly chippy. The Brown's players looked like they really believed they could win this game and were really fighting to win it.

* I really thought the defense played well, Josh Cribbs was shredding our special teams and gave the Brown decent field position a number of time throughout the game. Twice the special teams gave the Browns the ball in the red zone. Once on a Caldwell fumble, and once on a Cribbs return, and both times the defense held them to a field goal.

* Leon Hall covered Braylon Edwards (0 yards) Jonathan Joseph covered Mohamad Massaquoi (143 yards)

* I was hoping that Bratkowski had overhauled the playbook like he said in the off season, but in a 3rd and 5 on the goal line situation he brought out the shovel pass to Brian Leonard. Some things never change.

* I have been watching football for a long time and I cannot remember ever seeing the same player block two field goals. Very rarely do you ever see a blocked field goal let alone two in one game by the same player. Now, its not like this is a fluke after Sunday Rogers has 14 blocked field goals in his career. But both can be attributed to this combo of St. Louis, Huber and Graham. I am not sure that the issues are? St. Louis has looked just out of control with his snaps. This cannot continue, if the Bengals really want to be a contender they cannot afford to keep making these mistakes. That game should have never gone to OT.

* Chad Ochocino continues to come up huge for the offense when called on. There have been a few miscommunications on offense. Everyone wants to always blame Chad for those but the way that Palmer has looked I am not always sure that is deserving. The receivers really have played well when they get a ball to them that is catchable. Henry needed to fight for that ball that was floated up to him, but Henry was wide open and Palmer should have led him up the field with the pass.

* I think we can only be cautiously optimistic about this team, we are 3-1 and a fluke away from 4-0 (By the way, the Bronco's are undefeated and maybe not as bad as we thought they may be this year.) However, we have not looked dominating and must eliminate some mistakes on Special teams, and ramp up the offense if we want to contend for the p-word.