COB

An excerpt from Dehner’s article in the Athletic: “That specifically means putting big smiles on the faces of Higgins and Chase this offseason. Don’t let it linger. Don’t let the negotiations become a distraction. Don’t go through another offseason of haggling for every last decimal point, trade requests and trying to win the negotiation at the expense of locker room culture health.”

I don’t know when I’ve enjoyed a Super Bowl quite that much. Eagles defensive line was amazing. And great to see Kenny Pickett get run out of Pittsburgh only to land on the eagles as depth and collect a ring.

Eagles had two rookies starting on defense who had great seasons.

Jake Elliot is 4 for 4, his last one was a 50 yarder. Congratulations Marvin you total fucking idiot.

Mahomes takes one to the chops, but America bullied these refs all week and now they’re afraid to call anything.

Brady continues to tell us how great Mahomes is.

The media has long had this weird theme of Herbert is equal to or better than Burrow. That choke job in the playoffs should have put that to rest.

Anyone have insight on the character questions? This dude is a player, but every time I try to read about him they bring up character issues, but they never elaborate. If Nolen is out due to brain difficulties, I’d think about Kenneth Grant. He can play, he’s huge, and I think he’d be able to play on running downs right away.

The disrespect.

Just calling my mom to wish her happy birthday.

He fired his agent and hired Chase’s agent. That speaks volumes.

They need a modern, experienced, GM. They need a full time cap guy. They need scouts.

Burrow is the league’s highest paid player. Chase deserves to be the highest paid receiver. Tee deserves to be the highest paid number 2 in the league. Hendrickson deserves to be a top 3 paid edge. If Tobin is a bitter douche, this is why. He knows he can’t accomplish all this within bengal parameters, knows he’s going to get torched in the media and by us on Bengalszone. Smoke is rolling off Mike’s abacus right now. Lotta ‘cipherin!

One other takeaway - he didn’t talk about Chase the way he talked about everyone else. They plan on paying Chase. I think they are pessimistic that Trey will agree to anything bengal reasonable, and I agree with them. Hendrickson doesn’t seem happy to play for us.

Reading between the lines on Tobin’s interview with Kelsey Conway: he’s almost growing resentful of players. There is a lot of “we can’t have league high salary guys at every position”, and “this guy wants a lot but other guys want a bite of the apple.” I think the negotiations with some of these hard agents might be wearing on him. He’s also clear that they were thinking Super Bowl last year. He said we kept a lot of guys around from that team, claims they had the league’s third highest payroll, but it didn’t work for some reason. He said we won’t be doing that again. Made a remark about guys who produced last year are going to get the resources that were spent last year on guys who didn’t produce. Biggest takeaway: in discussing new contracts and extensions for guys like Tee, Jamarr, Hendrickson, etc, he reveals himself and the Bengals. It’s always they have to agree to something that makes sense within the context of what we do here, both sides have to agree, etc. He never talks about the market or what guys might get offered or what they’re worth to others. It is strictly will they accept the number and the years that makes sense for us. It is very much as it was posted in here earlier, the offer is what it is, if the player doesn’t take it, we’ll find 3 lesser guys to spend it on. It’s why he talks about all the guys they retained and acts shocked they couldn’t get back to the Super Bowl. Yes you retained guys, but the really good guys, Bates and Reader, wouldn’t agree to a discount, so they walked. Come to think of it didn’t Vonn Bell and Hilton go elsewhere? What’s this fucking mid level manager talking about?

If you’re trying to outlive Mike I hope you’re a Highlander or a Gorgon or something.

34 days? Mike’s got a lot of ‘ciphering to do. You know he’s getting serious when you walk by his office and hear the beads clacking on his abacus.

Cooper Kupp getting shopped around as the Rams look to unload his 30 million cap hit next season. He’s not the player he was when they beat us in the Super Bowl.

Saints are going to get sued over this. It’s possible they’ll try to pull the league in.

We don’t need Myles, we already have Myles at home.

Drafting Burrow, Chase, and Higgins isn’t archaic. It’s the way they manage the cap, employ the smallest scouting dept in the league, make their coaches do the jobs of the aforementioned never hired scout/personnel guys, refuse to hire a non-family member GM, etc. I could go on, but I think we all recognize the self-defeating methods the Bengals have used for the past 35 years.

If Myles actually gets traded it would be great for both him, and for the Browns. Therefore it will never happen. Having Myles obviously is not enough for them to win. They need a qb. But since Truckstop Elon owns the Browns they will continue to be a football version of the Cybertruck - unwanted, stuck in the mud somewhere, and falling apart.

Maybe Hartline will get the OC job. His recruiting alone would justify it.

A little off topic, but damn, now Chip Kelly is leaving the OSU staff. That place is emptying out. Guys will try to pick off our good players now, use all this coaching change as leverage. If you are reading this Jeremiah Smith, stay at OSU. The buckeyes have like 4 or 5 guys in the nfl who are number one receivers on their teams.

First paragraph above - I was referring to Burrow turning the recent years’ Bengals around, the team that, immediately before he arrived, went: 2016 - 6-9 2017 - 7-9 2018 - 6-10 2019 - 2-14 second paragraph above - I don’t think anyone has ever said the FO should be downgraded for drafting or extending Burrow. Not sure who you are arguing with. third paragraph - archaic is what this front office is. Refusal to play cap games, shuffle salary onto signing bonus, backload deals, etc, all modern methods that produce good teams but take a lot of work, flexibility, and willingness to adapt. None of those qualities describe the Brown family FO. Do those methods work? Pretty much every good team employs them. We lost a Super Bowl to a team that went all in using all the cap shenanigans they could. I like Mike Brown, I respect him. I admire him. But his tenure as our defacto GM was a disaster (for the fans, it was successful regarding Brown family goals), and his daughter as our defacto GM employs most of the same strategies and it is not going much better. Watching this roster degrade since the Super Bowl has been depressing.