COB

This is an outrage. Harambe represents all that is good in this world. Dude was born into captivity, accepts that like a champ. One day he’s just chilling out in the gorilla habitat, and some dumb shit kid who can’t behave himself falls in. Hey Harambe, thanks for your service all these years. Here’s a bullet in the head.

9 years ago today Harambe was assassinated at the Cincinnati Zoo. The Bengals need to honor Harambe by including him in the Ring of Honor. I would also fully be on board with a team name and logo change. The Cincinnati Harambe. (Yes, singular). Obviously the logo is a huge badass silverback gorilla. I know too much marketing, etc has gone into building the bengals brand to consider a change, and the nfl is loathe to make any changes to their money machine. But if we were in a parallel universe where Mike could look beyond the beads on his abacus and the dollar signs they represent, this move would be a huge public relations coup. We’d basically get constant media coverage for about a year. Uniform change - National story. Stadium changes - National story. Logo contest - National story. Positive feedback from animal rights groups - National story. This seems far fetched but I would support it. These NFL team names are played out and stale. The bears and lions? Who gives a fuck.

Guess what, I have eyes and ears. I can assess the bengals’ FO on my own. I’m not getting trolled or fooled by someone’s reporting. Also in this instance, they’ve just reported the facts. These aren’t opinion hit pieces. The fact is they can’t get their first round draft pick signed and it’s due to their changing of a customary term that has been in the last two first rounders contracts. No one is trolling, the facts are getting reported. The bengals are in an entertainment business. And it’s a business in which perception becomes reality, whether we like it or not. So the FO consistently not caring about the optics of their latest fucked up attempt to “win” every negotiation absolutely hurts the team. You put it very accurately when you said they like to lawyer. It’s not really a verb but it truly describes their behavior. They’re screwing up the team culture and the team dynamics. They did it last year and they’re doing it again.

It is their way, now and probably forever. Completely tone deaf. These negotiations don’t take place in a vacuum. The whole team, and future prospective players, see clearly that the bengals front office cares way more about winning every little contract squabble than anything else. Mike just is compelled to demonstrate that he is the smartest guy in the room.

That about sums it up. Mike also enjoys being an iconoclast.

Bengals FO seems to like these sort of squabbles. They do it over and over.

Yep, agreed. It’s amazing to have a very competitive team every year.

Hendrickson has a good claim to be paid more than his current deal. Unfortunately he has absolutely no leverage to further that claim. He needs both but only has one. He sold his leverage, he got paid for it.

It truly is ridiculous that they waited until after he died to reinstate him. Could have done it when he was about 75, no chance he works for a team, it would have just gotten him into the hall where he belonged.

Holy shit, we play the cardinals, the bears, the jags, the jets, and the patriots. I’ll take it.

Yep. Trey is grotesquely playing into the media narrative. He’ll be back on Macafee soon, blah blah blah. I expect a pretty high level media guy will pretty soon come out with a pro bengals take of, “this guy won’t play on the extension he asked for and received.seems to come back every year with his hand out.” One of these guys will just realize it and see the opportunity to have a new angle on it.

The league trying to help us get over our 0-2 starts.

There is no way he sits out the season. He’ll be like 31 having not played for a year, good luck getting paid then. What he wants isn’t realistic. All this no communication stuff is basically he turned down whatever the raise/extension was and now the bengals have said ok. Sorry, he’ll just have to accept the consequences of his own actions.

His first go around of complaining he said he and his wife want to have a baby but they can’t yet because of this contract situation.

July 27, 2023. A day that will live in infamy. On that date Trey signed an extension and raise he had been requesting. He wanted the extra millions, he got the extra millions. Had he not asked for that extension, he’d be a free agent right now. The bengals had a lot of nerve, giving Trey what he wanted. I’ve really had it with this dude. Playing the victim in the press when he’s completely under contract for one more year under terms he negotiated and agreed to. NFL teams are not charities that hand out millions of dollars just to be nice. There are a ton of examples of teams signing free agents then the player gets hurt or doesn’t play to the level. It’s tough shit and the teams just pay. Trey can play the choirboy all he wants, what I see is a duplicitous, greedy, entitled, little brat.