Brandon Thompson

[Luvnit2]

(08-22-2017, 12:04 PM)ochocincos Wrote: Exactly. Let's play a hypothetical and say Bodine does get to Top 15 C by the end of his career. If it doesn't happen within the next 2-3 years, the Bengals will likely need upgrades across a multitude of other positions and the team stays in its perpetual cycle of good-not-great. If it's in five years, you'll likely not have Boling, Green, Atkins, Dunlap, maybe Burfict or Dalton. Will it be easier to replace Bodine now or those other players in 3-5 years?

At what point do we stop hoping for the best and start demanding action taken to actually make it happen?

It is always a fan's choice to abandon the team for any reason. But demands from fans will fall on deaf ears until they have no fan base. Right now, they do still have an acceptable fan base. The idea every player needs to be top 15 in their position for us to be successful is far reaching to me. I also don't buy we are in a small window. QB's play to they are 40 today. AJ can easily play 5 more years, but even if he does not, most teams with elite receivers never seem to win it all. The best WR on the NFL in my opinion is A. Brown and while the Steelers are highly competitive yearly, they have not been Super Bowl contenders each year. 

the 2017 draft picks, the 2018 draft picks and so on are our future as this team chooses to build primarily through the draft. Our OL is a major worry of us all right now, that  is the bad news. The good news is these guys are extremely young and just maybe they do develop into a very good unit over time. I look at our defense the past couple of years and guys have not stepped up in a big way to help Atkins, Dunlap and Burfict thus we are not an elite defense. An elite defense can win championships still with an average offense. So, we need to either be very good on both offense and defense or elite on one of them and then average to good with the other to start winning playoff games and be a true Super Bowl contender.