I haven't enjoyed much about this Bengals season. It's hard to muster up much excitement about a team that entered the season's final month with almost zero hopes of making the playoffs, and it sucks watching them play out the string here in December.

But I did have a good time watching them extend the misery in Cleveland.

Maybe Hue Jackson can lift the Browns out of their Browns-ness. Maybe their abundance of draft picks this coming spring will pay huge dividends.  Maybe Cleveland will, you know, actually win a game this season.

Okay, okay.  Maybe not the last one.

Holy crap are they bad.  You didn't need me to tell you that, and you really didn't need to see today's semi-annual Battle of Ohio to confirm what the standings have already told us, but Hue's team is one of the most inept outfits I've seen in more than 30 years of being a football fan.  They literally do nothing well, and while they have players like Joe Thomas, Terrelle Pryor, Joe Haden, and Corey Coleman who are worth at least paying attention to, that team as a whole is among the most dreadful in the history of the sport.

And it was fun to watch the Bengals feast on their dreadfulness today.

For their part, the Bengals played pretty well. The game was effectively over after two offensive drives yielded two Cincinnati touchdowns, both of which came as easy as you'd expect when the opponent is on the verge of going for 0 for 16.  Andy Dalton was pretty sharp, at least when he decided the throw the ball. He took four early sacks, often holding on to the ball for waaaay too long, but for the most part, Andy played well.  Tyler Eifert did Tyler Eifert things when the Bengals entered the red zone, and Jeremy Hill punished the Browns with his second good game against them this season. 

Jeremy has 279 rushing yards against Cleveland this season, and 398 against everyone else.  

Tyler Boyd continued to make strides toward the back end of his rookie season, using his eight touches to gain 89 yards, and despite the weather, and their kicker - who I've now dubbed the Cleveland Browns of kickers - the Bengals on offense were pretty solid today. 

They weren't bad on defense either.  Aided by a patchwork Cleveland offensive line, extreme shakiness by Robert Griffin III, and a limited supply of legitimate weapons, the Bengals went largely un-threatened by the Browns offense.  Isaiah Crowell ripped off a couple of nice runs, and um, well Cleveland spent the rest of the day getting wrecked by Geno Atkins and his teammates.  The Browns never crossed midfield in the first half, and by the time they started to get going, I'd started to give the other NFL games more of my attention than I usually do when the Bengals are playing.

There really isn't much to take away from a Bengals standpoint.  We didn't learn much of anything about this team, and while the win will keep them from being mathematically eliminated from AFC North title contention this weekend, it seems silly to put the victory in any greater context, other than to reinforce how utterly shitty the opponent is.

Because even during a Bengals season as unpleasant as this one, it's still fun to make fun of the Cleveland Browns.