COB

My dad used to say this country is great at making veterans, not all that great at taking care of them.

Trey complained two years ago, “give me a raise and an extension.” We did it. The next year, again he said “give me a raise and an extension,” again we did it. Dude never wants to play on his existing deal.

I read two different sources say the following while we were waiting for the chase and Higgins deals: I’m paraphrasing, but it was essentially “of course the bengals are going to pay these guys, they have no one else they can throw this kind of money at, and they need to get up to the cap.” Which begs the question, why save all this cap room for down the road when this family of farmers trying to run this thing won’t keep their good players to even pay up on a second or third deal? The hopeful answer to my rhetorical question is that by then there will be guys worthy of good deals, we’ve just whiffed on a bunch of draft picks lately. I’m glad we kept our skill players together. When you think about qb, our receivers, and our (very underrated) young RB, we might have the best set of skill players in the league. BUT - we’ve done very little personnel-wise to fix our nearly league worst defense, and our o-line still looks a lot like it did last year. It almost feels like the team is putting all the responsibility on the coaches they replaced, and putting a ton of pressure on new guys Golden and Peters. I hope it works, but we should have done more.

Just saw a thing Rapien and another guy put on YouTube. They’re completely pissed about the Dark Triad putting Chase’s and Higgins’ bonus money this year in the form of roster bonus instead of signing bonus. They said it cost us a shitload in cap room this year. And they kept saying, “the money’s the same, it makes no sense, why did they do this?” I suspect if there were 11 million more in cap space they’d feel compelled to sign some more good vets. That’s 11 million more out of the brown coffers this year. This way, they’ve spent up to the cap, end of story.

Russel Bodine, Billy Price, and Eric Ghiaciuc. Names that will live in infamy. I throw those names out there not to trigger PTSD in your heads, not to bring up the CTE in their quarterbacks heads, but to illustrate what may be a major philosophical shift in the handling of the inside offensive linemen by Bengals management. The old way - draft a guy then you just play him almost no matter what. All three of those guys struggled at times, were overmatched at times, and were just asked to do more than they could. Didn’t matter to the bengals. It was kind of like hey, “we’re not worrying about center or left guard or whatever, we got this guy on a 4 year deal and we’re good there.” Meanwhile the poor guy is out there getting the living shit kicked out of him. No help, no reinforcements, no free agent starters brought in. The new way, which I will call the “Rental Tight End” model: bring in an inexpensive vet with a lot of experience who is desperate to extend his career. It has certainly worked with the TE spot. We know Burrow has a lot to do with that. But it now looks like our new IOL, Lucas Patrick, could be this year’s rental tight end, but he’s a guard. I’m all for it. The old way didn’t work. At least with this method we aren’t married to the guy and if he falters we can try again. Scherff looms.

Winston signing with then Giants. So that leaves who for the Steelers to sign? Rogers? Cousins is there but he’ll want real money and probably some years, unlikely for the Steelers. They have screwed it up. Bring Russ back!

I just saw Lucas Patrick unloading trucks at the Family Dollar store on East Main Street in Newark.

Jenkins is a run blocking specialist. We want Scherff, who is allegedly a pass blocking specialist.

Assuming he’s healthy, they need to get Brandon Scherff in here and sign him. No idea what they’re waiting for.

We look at these guys as depth, but they’re super important. Half of them end up with significant playing time in the second half of the season.

One possibility: they felt free to cut him because they have a plan to fill his spot with someone already on the roster. They could have a plan to move guys around, have a tentative starter already decided upon, then just see how low the FA guard market drops. If it drops into “they’ll take half their deal in Fashion Bug discount coupons from Mike’s wife’s dresser” territory, then they bring one in for the sake of competition. PS - don’t tell Scherff, but Fashion Bug went belly up in 2013.

Mike Brown reads the above: “Heh, she damn sure is.”

They better do something. If the plan is move someone to guard from the existing roster, they need to think again. Cappa was bottom 10% in the league and he was still better than anyone else on the roster. Scherff’s up!

Reports out of Paycor Stadium say the Brown family would like to redefine the word “imminent.”

Mike is such a good American it appears he has modeled our free agency strategy on the sonnet inscribed at Ellis Island, The New Colossus: “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me”