Dec. 14--The NFL season was going too well for the Cincinnati Bengals, too smoothly for a franchise that hasn't won a playoff game since the 1990 season. While star players on other teams fell to injury, the Bengals navigated the first three-quarters of the season relatively unscathed, and stayed on track to potentially become the AFC's top-seeded team.
But Sunday, adversity came knocking.
Quarterback Andy Dalton, with a chance to clinch the AFC North by beating Pittsburgh at home, suffered a broken thumb on his throwing hand while tackling a defensive lineman who had picked off his shovel pass. Dalton, in the midst of the best season of his career, left the game, returned with a cast, and will miss next week's game against San Francisco and maybe more.
"Mentally, I'm fine," said Dalton, whose team wound up losing to the Steelers, 33-20, but remains the division leader at 10-3. "It's unfortunate it happened at this point in the season. I'm doing all right. There are a lot of people who are way worse off than I am."
It was a reminder, though, of how quickly the NFL season can turn, and how losing one player can have a huge impact on a team that's otherwise solid at most positions.
The Carolina Panthers held their breath at least twice Sunday when quarterback Cam Newton and star tight end Greg Olsen were rattled by what at first appeared to be injuries. Both players shook off those jarring hits, though, and returned to action as the Panthers throttled Atlanta, 38-0, to clinch a first-round playoff bye and remain the league's only undefeated team at 13-0.
"Don't ease up on the gas," said Newton, a leading candidate for most valuable player. ". . . We want to be considered finishers."
Seattle running back Thomas Rawls is finished, done for the season with a broken ankle. He sustained the injury in the first quarter of a 35-6 win at Baltimore. The undrafted rookie had rushed for more than 100 yards in four of his six starts in place of the injured Marshawn Lynch.
Losing Rawls was a setback for the surging Seahawks, but not a huge one. Russell Wilson threw five touchdown passes, three of them to the scorching Doug Baldwin, who has scored eight times in the last three games.
The Seahawks are three games behind 11-2 Arizona in the NFC West but squarely in the hunt for a wild-card berth. Both Seattle and Minnesota are 8-5, at least two games better than the other wild-card contenders, and the Seahawks have the tiebreaker over the Vikings after beating them eight days ago.
Indianapolis, looking to stay in contention in the muddled AFC South, absorbed a painful one-two punch Sunday. Not only were the Colts blown out by Jacksonville, 51-16, putting an abrupt end to Indianapolis' 16-game winning streak against division opponents, but Colts quarterback Matt Hasselbeck had to leave the game because of a rib injury.
That came a week after the 40-year-old Hasselbeck -- playing in place of the injured Andrew Luck -- was knocked out of a game against Pittsburgh with a neck injury.
Charlie Whitehurst replaced Hasselbeck, and suddenly a shaky Colts season is beginning to rattle apart.
"The last time we lost to them like this was 2006 and we went on to win the Super Bowl," said outside linebacker Robert Mathis, referring to a 44-17 loss to the Jaguars. "You can climb from the bottom of the valley to the mountaintop. It can be done."
