Unless M. Brown changes his mind set. We're doomed

[walzav29]

While waiting for another season to go down the drain, I checked the Bengals rankings on defense in 81, and 88. 16th and 17th ranked defense. Offense = Tickets and Defense = Championships. Every team since 81 has been built for offense. I'm starting to think this is a way of thinking, that won't be changed. This season is over. Unless winning the division is the goal. Then we're in the running.

[BengalszoneBilly]

Offense = Tickets and Defense = Championships.

Offense & Defense = the Patriots, who most likely will be selling tickets for another Super Bowl appearance.

[volcom69]

I thought one year in the late 90s early 2000's we were ranked really high like in the top ten when Spikes and Simmons were playin at there best not sure if the other linebacker was Ross or Foley at the time, but i really do think i cant remember though i thought at one time it was even higher then 16th

[kingwilly]

yes, lebeau had the squad in the top 15 a few times...in the 90's and in like 01 or 02.

[walzav29]

That's where I get confused. Lebeau get's touted as a defensive genius, just like Marvin. They just can't get the boy's in stripes to do anything. Bad feeling for Sunday.

[Bengals1]

The Bengals have never been a consitent winner, not under Paul Brown, not under Homer Rice, not under Forrest Grfeg or even under Wyche. We may have a bit more success under Wyche, making the Super Bowl one year and then the playoffs the next but unless I'm forgetting something that's all we acheieved under him, 2 playoff visits.

Paul Brown had 1 and Greg 2. We've never been a model of consistency. I too, have a bad feeling that Marvin's played out his luck with this team. It has nothing to do with liking Marvin Lewis or hating SoP or injuries or bad drafts etc.... the usual things we Bengal fans argue over.

It's just a sinking, gut feeling that the Bengals will always be....well, the Bengals.

[HoosierCat]

The Bengals have never been a consitent winner, not under Paul Brown, not under Homer Rice, not under Forrest Grfeg or even under Wyche. We may have a bit more success under Wyche, making the Super Bowl one year and then the playoffs the next but unless I'm forgetting something that's all we acheieved under him, 2 playoff visits.

Paul Brown had 1 and Greg 2. We've never been a model of consistency. I too, have a bad feeling that Marvin's played out his luck with this team. It has nothing to do with liking Marvin Lewis or hating SoP or injuries or bad drafts etc.... the usual things we Bengal fans argue over.

It's just a sinking, gut feeling that the Bengals will always be....well, the Bengals.

I know that feeling all too well.

[HairOnFire]

I'm hearing alot of kvetching and gnashing of teeth, but no explanations.

As for being doomed unless Mike Brown changes his mindset, I'm reminded of the popular fan refrain claiming one of soP's biggest faults is his yearly failure to spend to the very limits of the salary cap, with his habit of withholding 2-3 million in reserve being cited as a blatant example of his cheapness and lack of commitment towards winning. This always prompts Mike Brown to respond by explaining that the money is held in reserve in the event it is needed to sign an abnormal number of replacements for injured players.....an outcome considered so unlikely that it prompts many Bengal fans to call his strategy stupid and shortsighted.

Maybe the better question asks whose mindset really needs changing?

[Bengals1]

I'm hearing alot of kvetching and gnashing of teeth, but no explanations.

I will freely admit I have no earthly explanation for my feelings. I can not demonstrate them with empirical evidence nor substantiate them beyond reasonable doubt as in a court of law.

I don't know why this team acts the way it does. I've been following them since the mid-70s so about all I can tell you is that I've arrived at my feelings that this team is cursed through numerous years of countless frustration and heartache.

Why are the Cubs going on 100 years without a world series? Why did the Red Sox have to endure what they endured for so many decades? Do these things always have to have a logically explanation?

The Bengals are what they are. I didn't make them this way nor can I offer you anything like a logical explanation for why they are this way. I just know what I know.

However, you'll note that I'm still here, still talking about them, still rooting for them, still having my wife made up in their weird looking uniforms and used as a sig pic. I'm in my 40's now and I still root for them with the same unbalanced passion I did when I was a teen.

I feel that gives me the right to feel the way I do about them. They're cursed, by forces beyond that of human ken. It defies explanation I agree.

It is what it is....

[bengalboomer7]

Cursed I'd like to think most of even the most heartbroken of fans is smarter than that. It'll even out, eventually. Half the fun of sports is not knowing when that eventually will be

[Bengals1]

It'll even out, eventually. Half the fun of sports is not knowing when that eventually will be

In our lifetime!?!

[bengalboomer7]

Well, as a sports fan, you deal with disappointment a lot more than triumph. 32 NFL teams and only one gets to be champion and 31 fan bases cry till next year

[ShulaSteakhouse]

Mike Brown has to change his philosophic salary cap allotment strategy first and foremost, hire a proven or competent personnel manager who can operate in today's NFL market, and simply take more leaps of faith with his financial forays into free agency, which so far have been insanely conservative, minimal, and puts his coaches and teams at a disadvantage, to just about every other franchise. He needs someone who can decide when to re-sign people and when to let them go (wisely), who also puts a premium on the medical staff and scouting.

You don't have to use FA every year, but you better use it well when you do need it, and not shy away from big money talent every once in a while.

1 winning season in what will most likely be 17 years now I believe, what is there about the simple significance of that plain fact, that seems to elude Bengals fans who enable Mike Brown? That is the most ridiculously pathetic record, in the most balanced, professional cash cow league, ever.

I just don't think you will ever win consistently, when you stick to a long term, rigid financial philosophy, that only pays or re-signs OT's, DE's, RB's, WR's and Qb's.

They literally do this with the occasional exception of adding a CB when the opportunity presents itself (Ambrose, James, Deltha, Spencer, Toast Jones).

Every year the defense is terrible with no outstanding DT's, LB's, or safeties, unless they find a nut in the draft - but that is very rare. Injuries and CB's who are busts (Hawkins, Ratliff, others) worsen the scenario, as then you don't have talent anywhere.

Who is the last DT, S, LB, G, C or TE who went to a Pro Bowl here? It never happens unless they draft one for the length of the first contract, and he happens to go during that initial tenure.

Why do they draft a RB, WR or CB almost every single year in the 2nd round? You HAVE to spread your first day picks around better than that, and create a high level talent pool in a wider variety of positions to build and keep together great teams, and in turn find those same offensive skill players later in the draft more often to round out depth. Who is the last Center they've drafted on day one? Or a guard other than Steinbach and Goff in the last 12 years? TE?

This is a major problem, always has been, and it has everything to do with an owner stuck in the 60's and 70's still. Marvin has helped, but, he's not getting enough change out of Brown still, and seems to be having problems controlling the personalities he's inherited and drafted.

[ShulaSteakhouse]

Well, as a sports fan, you deal with disappointment a lot more than triumph. 32 NFL teams and only one gets to be champion and 31 fan bases cry till next year

how many of them have cried for 16 out of the last 17 years? How about just a winning season and a playoff win or two?

That's a very, very, long time.

I'm quite sick of being the joke of the league, which they are quickly becoming again after embarrassing shows like last Monday night, and the Cleveland game.

We don't have to talk about this any longer, it's not really a debatable issue.

[dave]

how many of them have cried for 16 out of the last 17 years? How about just a winning season and a playoff win or two?

Well said (and in the post above that one, too). If this run of futility happened in any other business, the management would be replaced. Instead, the same people with the same philosophies continue to run the Bengals' ship. Marvin is the lone exception and at this point, it's impossible to tell if he's part of the solution or part of the problem. Regardless, he's not an amazing enough of a coach to overcome the organizational shortcomings.

The Bengals suffer from a shortage of personnel (other teams have more scouts, a GM, etc.) *and* of new ideas. There was a great, long article in (I think) the Washington Post last year about how the Ravens' new owner approached Newsome and Billick and remaking the organization. Billick took part in the meetings even though there was no guarantee that he would have his job at the end of the year. But he appreciated it from an academic perspective. In the end, they overhauled the organization's ways of communicating and managing.

Can you imagine the Bengals doing something like that? Me neither.