Bengals quarterback AJ McCarron sprained his left wrist on the final play of Cincinnati’s Monday night overtime loss to the Broncos. But, after a week in which Seattle and Pittsburgh lost games that defied common sense, I am not willing to admit I know anything about anyone in the National Football League at this point. The brilliance of the modern National Football League is that the product is so stupidly addictive, so riddled with potentially game-changing injuries, and so replete with confounding parity, that it nearly doesn’t matter who’s playing. “We have a chance on offense and didn’t take care of (the ball) at the end”.

Most of the injured Bengals were present and working in some capacity on Wednesday, including starting quarterback Andy Dalton.

A 39-yard touchdown run by C.J. Anderson with 11:17 left in the fourth quarter gave the Broncos their first lead, 17-14. And yeah, Osweilier may have shown he’s ready to break free from that second-half monkey on his back (his first-half passer rating entering Monday was 109.4, in the second half just 65.6).

When the Broncos picked up the pace on offense in the second half, Daniels noticed the Broncos were clicking on all cylinders – and he capitalized on those opportunities. We’ll see in the coming days.

Regardless of what happens in the AFC West, Cincinnati needs to win on Sunday to position itself for a strong postseason run, McCarron said.

Cincinnati converted 7-of-8 third downs in the first half, a remarkable performance.

-Bengals linebacker Vontaze Burfict’s reputation is well-earned, but now Burfict believes it’s being used against him.

McCarron hurt his wrist on the last play in overtime, when he tried to recover his fumble after a mishandled a shot-gun snap.

Soon after, Cincinnati linebacker Vontaze Burfict drew an unnecessary roughness penalty when he shoved Virgil Green near the sideline. Instead of the predictable plan one generally associates with Gary Kubiak, the Broncos came out with more no-huddle, mitigating the overall lack of schematic creativity and forcing the Bengals into their base defensive sets. “He’s pushing, (Burfict) is pushing back”. I think the drive right before the half was positive for us, but we talked at halftime.

In 2014, Burfict was fined $25,000 for twisting the ankles of Carolina Panthers’ quarterback Cam Newton.

“We felt like we got some stuff going at the end of the half doing that up-tempo stuff”, Daniels said. The refs, obviously they have it out for me. Monday night’s loss at Denver was the second.

But there were signs that starting safety George Iloka (groin) is going to return after missing the last two games. There, he received help from running back REX BURKHEAD who got in the way of one Bronco defender enough to keep him far away from Sanu, and then Burkhead blocked another Denver defender out of the play. But 119 of those passing yards came in the first half. They did well in the first half with 85 yards on the ground. Jeremy Hill finished with 63 rushing yards on 19 carries.

In three preseason appearances for the Bengals this year, Wenning completed only six of his 13 passes for 44 yards, with no touchdowns and one interception.

According to Geoff Hobson of Bengals.com, McCarron took the blame for the dropped snap on the game’s final play. With 10:14 left in the third quarter, the Broncos cut Cincinnati’s lead to 14-10. A TD there would have given Cincinnati a 21-17 lead with seven minutes left and forced Denver to score a touchdown to win.

McManus kicked a 23-yard field goal to put the Broncos on the board just before half-time and they cut the deficit to four points less than five minutes after the interval when Brock Osweiler and Emmanuel Sanders combined for their first touchdown.