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Written by John Breech
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{mosimage} Week 7 Around 3:40 p.m. Sunday afternoon, Bob Bratkowski made the gutsiest call by a Bengals coach since Sam Wyche started letting women in the locker room. If for some reason you were on a trans-atlantic flight and were unable to see the game or the highlight, the call was simple. Fourth and one, Bengals trailing 14-10 in the late fourth quarter, at the Panther’s thirty-five yard line, a field goal is not an option. Instead, Carson Palmer lofted a ball into the swirling winds of Cincinnati and hoped his favorite target Chad Johnson would come down with it. As the ball hung in the air, you could hear the silence in the crowd, if thoughts were audible, 60,000 fans were thinking “what in the name of Al Michaels is going on here, give it to Rudi…” However, those thoughts would be brief as Carson’s perfectly thrown strike would fall into the hands of a diving Johnson and send Bengal nation into a euphoria we haven’t seen since McDonald’s was selling orange Ickey (milk) shakes. (Last year’s playoff game doesn’t count, we were only pumped for one play before Carson was Kimo’d and Steeler’s fans gave us their terrible tissues to cry in). Then bam, before you can say Houshmandzadeh, the Bengals found themselves on the smiling end of a 17-14 final.
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