Why couldn’t we keep the momentum going after the 2006 season?

[*ochocincos*]

(07-21-2023, 07:07 PM)Housh Wrote: We’re coming off 2 solid years and knock on wood a 3rd solid head after this coming season.

We see how we’ve built our team over the last 3 years and it seems like we’ve perfected the science of juggling talent and money.

Many ppl say that the 2005-2006 season was the best team we had under Marvin and i thought it would be fun to discuss why that team lost momentum next year and finished 8-8 and didn’t finish over .500 again until the 2009 season.

I looked at the 2006 transactions and we didn’t sign even one good free agent that off-season. We resigned a few of our starters but that was it.

Looking back it’s amazing how little we actually tried to win, under Marvin. It almost makes you feel bad for Marvin.

Indeed.

The FO (and possibly some coaches) likely felt they had a good enough team to win since they still had Palmer, Rudi, Chad, Housh, and Henry on offense.
Whitworth, Steinbach, Williams, and Willie anchored that 2006 OL. Ghiaciuc had a year under his belt and was touted as a good prospect when he was drafted, so I don't blame PA having the expectation he should have been ready at that point to come into an already-great OL.
Defense had some pretty good players too with Smith and Geathers at DE, Adams (and next year Peko) and Thornton inside, solid LBs, and some damn good DBs in JoJo, Hall, Williams, Jackson, and Kaesviharn.

I would maybe alter the phrasing though to the bolded above - The Bengals were coming off a 11-5 season and legitimately were a Super Bowl contender if Palmer hadn't gotten hurt. The roster they had should have resulted in more wins than they did over the next few years. I don't blame them for not doing more in FA...you could argue they had a team those years that should have been winning the division almost every year, probably even gone as far as it was expected with that talent they should have won at least one playoff game.