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5 Questions with Cincy Jungle in advance of the Steelers at Bengals game in Week 2

BTSC meets up with Josh Kirkendall, the editor of SB Nation's Bengals site, Cincy Jungle.

By Neal Coolong
Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sport

One of the joys of the Steelers playing the Bengals is it usually results in a Steelers win. The other is doing a 5 Questions feature with Josh Kirkendall, the editor of Cincy Jungle - one of the finest sites on all of SB Nation. Josh is hysterically funny and has been a source of information and entertainment for me in my time as editor of this site. His answers here are, as always, fantastic. - nc

Are you guys treating James Harrison well? How angry do you feel he'll be for this game? Steelers DE Brett Keisel said he doubts he'll talk to any Steelers players before the game.

He hasn't really said anything, and you guys know his personality far more than we do. The local media have pressed Harrison for some sort of response to promote the storyline, but he irritably declined having any loyalty towards anyone, except for the team that's signing his pay checks. So publicly, Harrison hasn't made a deal out of it.

Current U.N. regulations do not allow land mines to be planted at Paul Brown Stadium, so I'm out of ideas on how to defend A.J. Green. Do you see him having 20 targets in this game, like he did in Week 16 last year?

Yes. He will f#ck your sh1t up.

Will Andrew Whitworth be healthy enough to play in this game?

At some point in the past year, Marvin Lewis started using meteorological terms when projecting injuries. I don't know if this is the early stages of some neurological disease or if he's devilishly giggling after his press conferences, rubbing the palm of hands together and saying "they'll never discover my secret language formula."

Lewis said that Whitworth's chances of playing are "rainy". With this information, we developed a formula after many days of research, hours of interviews, a one-week stay at Eureka with Henry Deacon, and a couple of college keggers, we've translated Lewis' references as Sunny = Probable, Cloudy = Questionable, Rainy = Doubtful/Out.

Do you feel Andy Dalton is capable of raising the level of his game this year?

I believe he'll improve into a very good quarterback and he has the history to prove progressive growth. If the question transitions into a discussion about his ceiling, then that's debatable. Will we call Dalton an elite quarterback in future? I doubt it -- not that "elite quarterback" isn't a completely saturated label attached to a quarter of the league's starting quarterbacks or anything. There are aspects of his game that will continue to progress, from pocket presence, mental toughness, and the deep ball. But that will come with experience.

What was the key reason the Bengals lost to Chicago?

Any number of reasons, from time management (used multiple timeouts in the second half due to personnel issues, such as having too many or two few men on the field), play calling (incomplete pass on second down with less than a minute in the first half from their own nine-yard line that led to a field goal), but it boils down to three turnovers (two picks, one lost fumble). It doesn't matter how obnoxiously trivial preseason projections are. If you can't do the simple things like hold onto the football, you won't win in this league.

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