Marvin Lewis: 'We need help'

For the duration of this season spiral, the Bengals could consistently hang their hat on the bad AFC North keeping them within reach of the playoffs.

Following Sunday’s 19-14 defeat at Baltimore, the reality of even that carrot was pulled further away. It forced Marvin Lewis to accept the change in his team’s dim situation.

“As I told our guys, ‘Now we need help,’” Lewis said after the game. “We’ve been able to control it ourselves. now, we need some help. But it’s not done.”

Trailing the Ravens and Steelers by two-and-a-half games with five to play toes the line of done. The Bengals will host Philadelphia at Paul Brown Stadium on Sunday looking for any form of momentum to give hope that they could run the table to close the season.

In Lewis’ eyes, that’s their only shot.

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“We obviously have to do our end now, and that’s to win the last five ball games, if we have any chance to go to the playoffs,” Lewis said. “And that’s still in sight, but we need help now — no question.”

With the wild card out of the question with the strength of the AFC West, even winning out would mean either the Steelers or Ravens — who both play each other — would only need to win three of their last five games to clinch.

Bottom line: The outlook is bleak. And the weight of one win since Sept. 29 is wearing on the players, including cornerback Dre Kirkpatrick.

“To me, exactly, 100 percent it do,” he said. “I’m a winner. I’ve never been in this position. At the end of the day when you are a competitor and keep competing, especially when your back is against the wall you are always fighting. I don’t want to talk about if not this year see you next year, we still have a great opportunity in front of us.”

The vast majority of this 53-man roster has never seen a seven-loss season. The last time they lost seven games was in 2011, the first year of Andy Dalton and A.J. Green.

Finding the motivation down the stretch given the dwindling odds will be a key part of the final games.

“Self-motivation,” Adam Jones said. “Getting better every day. And hopefully you can end it the way you want it to end. Everybody just keep working, keep your head down and be true to your teammates. I don’t think no guys in here will let up or give in, should I say. I know we’ve got a lot of hard working guys. All we can do is play hard and stay together and see how it turn out.”

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The Bengals' defense has recovered from its ugly first half of the season and allowed two touchdowns the last two weeks. Yet, as has been the case much of the year, all aspects of the team haven’t come together as the offense played the role of spoiler in the last three games, only scoring three points in the fourth quarter.

It doesn’t leave much reason to believe the turnaround is coming, but the Bengals are at least trying to see any positive sliver remaining.

“We can’t worry about everyone else or pointing fingers, we just have to keep working hard,” Tyler Eifert said. “Go back to work on Monday, look at the game, make corrections and try to win the next game. obviously we don’t control our own destiny but there is still a possibility.”

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To be forced to think about only winning three games in the first 11 is mind-blowing to the group that won 52 games in the regular season the previous five seasons.

“It’s hard to believe, man,” Domata Peko said. “I think we spoiled our Bengals fans around here. We’ve been winning for the past five years so having only won three games this year, we’re not expecting that.”

And they certainly weren’t expecting to hear about needing help before the calendar flips to December.

“You don’t want to hear that,” Peko said. “We are where we are and we’re the ones who got ourselves in this hole. We have to dig ourselves out of it. We were hoping to get one back here and it just didn’t fall our way.”