What's different for Andy Dalton?

Different. Comfortable.

Such adjectives rarely go together. But sometimes, one can lead to the other. Flip it around, for instance: Comfortable. Different. The tie becomes a little clearer. If you're comfortable, perhaps something will change. Comfort, usually, brings happiness – so the change it creates should be positive.

There isn't a moment, a definitive spot on the timeline when you can say "that's it – that's where I became most comfortable." It's a progression. Outside factors may help quicken, or delay, its arrival, but it's largely organic. One day, you're just ... there.

And change can only come after that.

This concept is just that – a thing you can't diagram, construct and live in. It's impalpable.

Therefore its existence, that comfort, creates more intangibles. It's why we like it, why we want it. It breeds the immeasurable, like confidence, a certain belief of self. And with that, a person can create something that is tangible – and different than what they've done before.

This is what you're seeing with Andy Dalton. This is why the Cincinnati Bengals believe he is different.

**

Since training camp, Dalton has been asked directly, and repeatedly, what he feels has changed. Directly, and repeatedly, he has said it's a comfort level – in Hue Jackson's offense, with his teammates – that has bred new confidence.

"He just has a different aura about him," said backup quarterback AJ McCarron. "I think he has a little more, what do you call it? Swagger. Or confidence or whatever."

This isn't to suggest an NFL starting quarterback with 12 game-winning drives and 40 victories lacked in that before.

The best way A.J. Green could illustrate what the difference meant to him was on the game-winning touchdown pass against Baltimore. Jackson began calling the play, and Dalton finished it. Then, at the line, he changed it. All the while the television cameras captured a huge grin on Dalton's face. Touchdown.

"You know he's in sync," Green said. "He knows what's going on, he knows what the coverage is going to give us and he's going to make the play."

The total result through three weeks has been eight touchdown passes against one interception, a 121.0 quarterback rating, a 66.3 completion percentage.

"He's different," Jackson said. "I think he's another year in the system. I think he's comfortable. I think he's comfortable with me. I think he's comfortable with his teammates. He now knows it's time for him to take the next step in his process. I think that's what he's doing."

Skeptics can eye numbers warily, read such statements with pause.

Is this an anomaly, or change?

The answer is another intangible, one anyone on the outside of the locker room could never know. The 'it' that cannot be seen or touched or bottled.

"I can feel him," quarterbacks coach Ken Zampese said. "His presence."

In the summer, after Jackson and Marvin Lewis stated a desire for Dalton to present a more active voice around the team, Green qualified that by saying his quarterback has always been a team leader, but that such outward expression was simply an amendment to Dalton's style.

It wasn't forced.

Dalton hasn't changed who he is. He admits he's allowed himself to let his emotions loose more often – and has noticed the team has responded to that.

"I'm just trying to be the best, not only quarterback of this team, but leader of this team," he said. "And that's not just for the offense, it's everybody."

If his comfort in the offense came through a natural progression, his leadership has as well.

"I can tell," cornerback Adam Jones said. "Andy knows what we need to do and what we've got to do to get over the hump. But he's playing with a lot more confidence. He's speaking up a lot more. He's telling guys where they should be, what's not right, what's right. I just think he's doing a better job of being a leader.

"He's figured it out. It can take a guy a little while when he's coming in to a locker room with guys that's been around a while."

Even Dalton has seen it.

"It's one of those things where you walk into a football team, you want to be able to feel the quarterback," he said. "The quarterback is the leader of the team, and so it's been a growing process for me to come in to that. But, I understand it, and I feel like I've put myself in that position and I think if you ask guys around the locker room they would agree that they're 'feeling' me more."

**

Time.

It is a luxury in professional football, one rarely gifted. The Bengals, their structure, their way of doing business, handed it to their quarterback.

That investment is now bearing fuller fruit.

"People don't think about the time period," Jones said. "People want to win now. It's all about what you've done for me last, not what you're going to do for me in the future."

Once before Dalton had such time, and once before he blossomed because of it.

"It's one thing to be comfortable; it's another thing to be totally comfortable," said Memphis University head coach Justin Fuente. "It sounds a little bit like Andy his junior and senior year when it really was obvious that he was in total control of what was going on every single day."

Fuente would know.

At Texas Christian University, Fuente was the running backs coach when the quarterback stepped under center as a starter in his redshirt freshman campaign of 2007.

Fuente was then promoted as Horned Frogs' co-offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach in 2009 – Dalton's junior season. Dalton completed 61.6 percent of his passes and threw 23 touchdowns against eight interceptions. In three years, the Horned Frogs had gone from an 8-5 program that played in the Texas Bowl to No. 7 in the country.

But there was more to do. To do that, to remain relevant out of the Mountain West Conference, something had to change, to be different.

"We saw that for sure at TCU," said Jake Kirkpatrick, Dalton's roommate and center in college. "A lot of it had to do with the conference that we played in. You have a lot of success and you always have people saying well, it's not a BCS conference, so he kind of had to step his game up as we all did and you go from hoping to making a BCS game to the next year being able to play for the national championship."

In his second year under Fuente, Dalton completed 66.1 percent of his passes while throwing 28 touchdowns and seven interceptions. The Horned Frogs then capped their season as the No. 2 team in the country following a Rose Bowl victory over Wisconsin.

Even Dalton says parallels can be drawn between his growth at TCU and in Cincinnati.

From July: Is there reason to believe Dalton will improve?

It took that time. With it, a player can find himself, mature in all areas.

"The thing I think about Andy is his way of keeping it all in perspective," Fuente said. "Obviously we live in an over-reaction society. Everything is either a lot worse than it really is or it's a lot better than it really is. I think Andy can keep those things in perspective but still also be honest enough to know that he has work to do to continue to improve. Not turning a blind eye to it, but also to recognize that listen, I do need to do X, Y and Z better to help our team win and he will work on those things and do everything he can to make sure that he helps the team."

In the NFL, it is far harder to do that. Time, or the impatience with it, can work against coaches and players.

"You get compared to guys like Peyton, who's 39, Brady who's 38, Rodgers who's 31," Dalton said. "There's that next group that's got to come up and that's kind of what I'm part of. My goal is to be like one of those guys whenever that time comes."

Perhaps that is underestimated outside of Paul Brown Stadium, that desire.

Dalton doesn't often project it. On paper, on camera, he could be considered vanilla even on a wild day.

Yet...

"He's extremely competitive and wants to be the best no matter what it is, but he's not going to come out and just make it all about him," Kirkpatrick said. "He's extremely humble.

"But he does want to be the best at whatever he's doing and I think a lot of guys don't have that."

**

The Bengals' coaches, Dalton even, caution against sweeping, definitive statements. "It's just three games" is the qualifier inserted into most thoughts on this topic. Yet it's hard to ignore what's happening – and what may yet happen.

"With Andy, you see it," wide receiver Mohamed Sanu said. "You know it's there. You just wait for him to be that beast you know he can be. It's coming. That's what the exciting part is."

Back in the summer, there was a quiet belief in the Bengals' front office as well that their quarterback was about to take a big step in 2015.

"When you've been given a certain style, and you've been given a certain talent level, and what you do with that determines your success," Zampese said. "Because there's all sorts of ranges of talents, skills, styles, personality, that win at this position but what the winners all have in common is they've got all of what they've had. That's where we're going with him."

You can't get there without experiencing the past – however uncomfortable it may have been – and without finding that comfort level in the present. That, in turn, can lead to a different future.

"When I think of Andy, I think of a young man who's had a lot of success in this league who's pushing," Jackson said. "There's a lot of naysayers, per se, or doubters or people that don't believe we, not him, but we, as a team, as an organization, hasn't gotten over the playoff hump. And I understand that. And I think he does too. The only thing that I can tell you that's different in my mind is what we set out to (do) – we're going to calm the noise by how we play.

"And if given the opportunity to get back to where we get a chance to exorcise the demon, then we will do that. But you've got to earn the right to do that again. It's how good you play now to get the chance to make the postseason."