I love being able to having different voices on this blog. It enhances what we are trying to do, to give interesting takes on sports and entertainment. Rebecca Wilcox is the latest person to guest blog on our site.
The Cincinnati Bengals have a soon-to-be-elite aerial attack combo of quarterback Andy Dalton and wide receiver A.J. Green. She thinks the current “pass happy” NFL is the perfect utopia for the duo to make history very soon.
Will Dalton & Green be this generation’s Aikman & Irvin? Rebecca Wilcox breaks it down and shares her opinion.
Sizing Up The Next Deadly Combo
The NFL has transformed into a passing league in the last few years, and teams with good passing offenses can go far. While it’s a passing league, not every team has the ability to complete passes when they need to. Over the years, the NFL has seen a lot of quarterback and wide receiver combos.
Names like Aikman and Irvin, Young and Rice, Manning and Wayne, and Warner and Bruce come to mind when it comes to great passing tandems. While all of these players and a lot of others have been great, it usually takes them a long time to develop chemistry. Passing in the NFL isn’t usually something that you just fall into. It takes a lot of practice and a lot of hard work to make it work successfully. Who could emerge as the next combo passing attack that will terrorize NFL defenses?
Dalton and Green
One of the young quarterback/wide receiver combos that will be good for a long time is Andy Dalton and A.J. Green in Cincinnati. They were both drafted in 2011 and they both came right in and played well from day one. Dalton earned the starting role at quarterback and Green earned a role starting at wide receiver.
It didn’t take them long to get their chemistry going in the right direction, as Dalton hooked up with Green in their very first game together for a 41 yard touchdown. They went on to hook up for seven touchdowns and over 1,000 yards together in their first year.
So far in their second season together, they’ve already matched their touchdown output of last year through seven games. They’ve also put up over 600 yards so far, without even reaching the halfway point of the season. With that kind of progression, there’s no telling where they’ll be after they have a few seasons under their belt.
Why It’s Important
In today’s league, it is extremely rare to have such a talented passing combination together so early in their careers. Usually, if a quarterback is good enough to start as a rookie, a team has to use a very high draft pick on them. This usually keeps them from being able to draft a top flight wide receiver that can also start from day one.
The Bengals were in a position to take A.J. Green toward the top of the first, and they were still able to grab Dalton at the top of the second. This made it possible to get two really good players in the same draft.
Check it Out for Yourself
If you haven’t yet seen them in action, you might want to get some Cincinnati Bengals tickets as soon as possible. While they could easily play together for the next 10 years or more, you never know what could happen in today’s NFL. They could experience an injury, get a new coaching staff, or experience a number of other issues that affect them in one way or another. Check them out while you still can.