This season has absolutely sucked for so many reasons.

The Burrow calf injury. Sucking to start the year. Then Joe getting and healthy and the Bengals being good. Then Burrow getting injured and out for the year. Then sucking again. Then being good again with Browning. And then finally sucking again and riding the Jake Browning roller coaster a long the way.

Not to mention three of our best players getting severely injured a long the way.

I'm just tired. This has been an awful, awful season and I'm just ready for it to be over. I can't even say it's been fun.

This was supposed to be a Super Bowl year and it's been one of my least favorite seasons in recent memory.

I'm tired of being tormented. Just put me down.

We had our SB year. I'm still pissed about 2021. I said it before the SB and I said it after --- even with the awful OL, the Bengals were better than the Rams. We needed one SB-winning stop from the defense and couldn't get it. ONE STOP! It takes a LOT of good fortune to get back there. Gotta take advantage when you need ONE STOP! Might be another 32 years. I'll be 93.

We might get back there with Burrow and we might not. This season shows why it won't be easily accomplished. We've got a lot of work to do in order to be at the top of the AFC again. 0 for the division won't get it done.

8-2 in games outside their division, yet, practically eliminated.

(12-24-2023, 11:12 AM)WeezyBengal Wrote: This season has absolutely sucked for so many reasons.

The Burrow calf injury. Sucking to start the year. Then Joe getting and healthy and the Bengals being good. Then Burrow getting injured and out for the year. Then sucking again. Then being good again with Browning. And then finally sucking again and riding the Jake Browning roller coaster a long the way.

Not to mention three of our best players getting severely injured a long the way.

I'm just tired. This has been an awful, awful season and I'm just ready for it to be over. I can't even say it's been fun.

This was supposed to be a Super Bowl year and it's been one of my least favorite seasons in recent memory.

I'm tired of being tormented. Just put me down.

There’s some positives. The ‘23 draft class is solid. Every one of them looks to be a contributor. The OL will be intact in ‘24. I don’t see a glaring weakness in the lineup going forward in ‘24 that FA or the draft is under the gun to get. Not to be confused with position upgrades or fixing future losses like Tee. DT may be the only serious issue we have for ‘24.

It’s been a terrible season. Nothing but disappointment & frustration.

It’s compounded now by the fact that we ripped off 3 wins we ultimately did not need and will give us a lower draft pick, taking us out of the running for a couple of guys we really could have used.

There will be more attrition from a roster that ultimately was not at all Super Bowl caliber. We could be w/o Higgins and Boyd in ‘24. Reader likely played his last snap as a Bengal.

We still do have Burrow & Chase and a few other guys like CTB and Pratt, so we’ll be competitive, but the roster is at a bit of a crossroads.

I think about that Super Bowl so often and how freaking close we were to winning it. And how so many people were “it sucks but we’ll be even better next year and we’ll be back! This is a new Bengals franchise!”

How fans of this team didn’t realize how wrong that was still makes me laugh. They had that one. Absolutely had it. And it may be another 20-30 years before we get another shot. We’ve been 3 times in the history of this franchise and lost heartbreaking games in 2 of them. I was not alive for the first.

If you told me we’d be 8-9 when the season started, I’d have been sick. But, here we are, missing the playoffs facing a very, very uncertain future.

Burrow burns off a lot of warts. But this franchise has so bleeping many…

Merry Christmas!

The loss to the Steelers just destroyed my Xmas spirit
Borderline depressing

(12-24-2023, 11:30 AM)Science Friction Wrote: We had our SB year. I'm still pissed about 2021. I said it before the SB and I said it after --- even with the awful OL, the Bengals were better than the Rams. We needed one SB-winning stop from the defense and couldn't get it. ONE STOP!  It takes a LOT of good fortune to get back there. Gotta take advantage when you need ONE STOP! Might be another 32 years. I'll be 93.

We might get back there with Burrow and we might not. This season shows why it won't be easily accomplished. We've got a lot of work to do in order to be at the top of the AFC again. 0 for the division won't get it done.

2021 was indeed a killer. Rams targeted Eli Apple and Mike Hilton in coverage on their last drive which they should have and it paid off for them. Killer "phantom" penalty on Wilson near the end zone as well.  Bengals oh so close and needed a stop but couldn't get it done. 

2022 IMO was the true SB year for the Bengals though. Man, they were really good and on a tear through the league the entire second half of last season.
What took it down was the critical O-line injuries at the end of last season and first week of the playoffs. 
Losing Collins, Cappa, Williams just before the playoff run was a killer blow. Before that, the O-line had begun to gel and they were really good in the second half of the season. 
Even with that, Cincy still came oh-so-close to winning another AFC championship game in Arrowhead.

2023 just isn't the year. Too many young/development guys in the secondary due to losing Bates/Bell/Apple. CTB going down, Burrow only healthy/available for 5 games this year. Just isn't in the cards.

I gotta believe the secondary will be better next year and moving forward. Gotta believe in that.  Even Jonathan Joseph/Leon Hall weren't super studs in their first year IMO. 

We'll see though. 

(12-24-2023, 11:30 AM)Science Friction Wrote: We had our SB year. I'm still pissed about 2021. I said it before the SB and I said it after --- even with the awful OL, the Bengals were better than the Rams. We needed one SB-winning stop from the defense and couldn't get it. ONE STOP!  It takes a LOT of good fortune to get back there. Gotta take advantage when you need ONE STOP! Might be another 32 years. I'll be 93.

We might get back there with Burrow and we might not. This season shows why it won't be easily accomplished. We've got a lot of work to do in order to be at the top of the AFC again. 0 for the division won't get it done.

We also needed ONE DRIVE. 
Not a very good point on the superbowl.

(12-24-2023, 11:48 AM)NUGDUKWE Wrote: We also needed ONE DRIVE. 
Not a very good point on the superbowl.

Very True 

(12-24-2023, 11:30 AM)Science Friction Wrote: We had our SB year. I'm still pissed about 2021. I said it before the SB and I said it after --- even with the awful OL, the Bengals were better than the Rams. We needed one SB-winning stop from the defense and couldn't get it. ONE STOP! It takes a LOT of good fortune to get back there. Gotta take advantage when you need ONE STOP! Might be another 32 years. I'll be 93.

We might get back there with Burrow and we might not. This season shows why it won't be easily accomplished. We've got a lot of work to do in order to be at the top of the AFC again. 0 for the division won't get it done.

We weren’t better than the Rams. Certainly on par with them hence a close loss.

(12-24-2023, 11:46 AM)Bengal Billy Wrote: 2021 was indeed a killer. Rams targeted Eli Apple and Mike Hilton in coverage on their last drive which they should have and it paid off for them. Killer "phantom" penalty on Wilson near the end zone as well.  Bengals oh so close and needed a stop but couldn't get it done. 

2022 IMO was the true SB year for the Bengals though. Man, they were really good and on a tear through the league the entire second half of last season.
What took it down was the critical O-line injuries at the end of last season and first week of the playoffs. 
Losing Collins, Cappa, Williams just before the playoff run was a killer blow. Before that, the O-line had begun to gel and they were really good in the second half of the season. 
Even with that, Cincy still came oh-so-close to winning another AFC championship game in Arrowhead.

2023 just isn't the year. Too many young/development guys in the secondary due to losing Bates/Bell/Apple. CTB going down, Burrow only healthy/available for 5 games this year. Just isn't in the cards.

I gotta believe the secondary will be better next year and moving forward. Gotta believe in that.  Even Jonathan Joseph/Leon Hall weren't super studs in their first year IMO. 

We'll see though. 

Good post, Billy. I agree.

(12-24-2023, 11:48 AM)NUGDUKWE Wrote: We also needed ONE DRIVE. 
Not a very good point on the superbowl.

True, no doubt. But ONE STOP and she's ours!!!  Defense failed in that one very specific task. ONE STOP!

(12-24-2023, 11:30 AM)Science Friction Wrote: We had our SB year. I'm still pissed about 2021. I said it before the SB and I said it after --- even with the awful OL, the Bengals were better than the Rams. We needed one SB-winning stop from the defense and couldn't get it. ONE STOP!  It takes a LOT of good fortune to get back there. Gotta take advantage when you need ONE STOP! Might be another 32 years. I'll be 93.

We might get back there with Burrow and we might not. This season shows why it won't be easily accomplished. We've got a lot of work to do in order to be at the top of the AFC again. 0 for the division won't get it done.

Ill be 90 in 32 yrs, yes we missed the window by a pubic hair in that SB. Rams D and pass rush was too much and it came down to AD making that play that fittingly ended it .
After watching that beat down yesterday its astounding to me that Zack has yet to figure out how to build a effective team to compete in AFCN. Trenches are the key and he cant evaluate talent for those positions to save his life, so he relies on FAs. He needs to poach some scouts off Browns, Ravens and Steelers to show them how you evaluate talent to compete in AFC N.  

(12-24-2023, 11:46 AM)Bengal Billy Wrote: 2021 was indeed a killer. Rams targeted Eli Apple and Mike Hilton in coverage on their last drive which they should have and it paid off for them. Killer "phantom" penalty on Wilson near the end zone as well.  Bengals oh so close and needed a stop but couldn't get it done. 

2022 IMO was the true SB year for the Bengals though. Man, they were really good and on a tear through the league the entire second half of last season.
What took it down was the critical O-line injuries at the end of last season and first week of the playoffs. 
Losing Collins, Cappa, Williams just before the playoff run was a killer blow. Before that, the O-line had begun to gel and they were really good in the second half of the season. 
Even with that, Cincy still came oh-so-close to winning another AFC championship game in Arrowhead.

2023 just isn't the year. Too many young/development guys in the secondary due to losing Bates/Bell/Apple. CTB going down, Burrow only healthy/available for 5 games this year. Just isn't in the cards.

I gotta believe the secondary will be better next year and moving forward. Gotta believe in that.  Even Jonathan Joseph/Leon Hall weren't super studs in their first year IMO. 

We'll see though. 

Burrows surgery is freaking me out quite a bit. There's no guarantee that surgery holds up and that injury ever fully recovers or he doesn't reinjure it. 

Odds are he'll be fine, but the injury seems pretty damn sketchy from what I've read. 

(12-24-2023, 12:29 PM)WeezyBengal Wrote: Burrows surgery is freaking me out quite a bit. There's no guarantee that surgery holds up and that injury ever fully recovers or he doesn't reinjure it. 

Odds are he'll be fine, but the injury seems pretty damn sketchy from what I've read. 

Yes, concerning I agree.

(12-24-2023, 11:34 AM)Soonerpeace Wrote: There’s some positives. The ‘23 draft class is solid. Every one of them looks to be a contributor. The OL will be intact in ‘24. I don’t see a glaring weakness in the lineup going forward in ‘24 that FA or the draft is under the gun to get. Not to be confused with position upgrades or fixing future losses like Tee. DT may be the only serious issue we have for ‘24.

I am not so sure of this draft class. If you take the Bengal glasses off for what is worth, this class right now is above average. I do not see any perennial all pros in this class. Let’s talk about how good this class is after a couple years. Right now they are nothing and a group of guys who cannot win a game in their division and were embarrassed last night.


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It’s been a season of us getting blown out. The titans game pretty much put me off the Bengals for the rest of the season.

2 games left. 8-9 and they deserve to be much worse than that.

(12-24-2023, 11:12 AM)WeezyBengal Wrote: This season has absolutely sucked for so many reasons.

The Burrow calf injury. Sucking to start the year. Then Joe getting and healthy and the Bengals being good. Then Burrow getting injured and out for the year. Then sucking again. Then being good again with Browning. And then finally sucking again and riding the Jake Browning roller coaster a long the way.

Not to mention three of our best players getting severely injured a long the way.

I'm just tired. This has been an awful, awful season and I'm just ready for it to be over. I can't even say it's been fun.

This was supposed to be a Super Bowl year and it's been one of my least favorite seasons in recent memory.

I'm tired of being tormented. Just put me down.

I don't think anyone would classify me as a negative nancy or a guy who always claims the sky is falling. WTS, so far, this is nothing different than Bengals fans have been seeing for decades. The team gets a QB/HC that gets them to the playoffs, even to a SB every few decades, but can't finish the job.

So far what has happened with Burrow is absolutely no different than what happened with any other Bengals QB. He came in with a lot of hype, like Palmer and so far he's missed 6+ games in 2 of his 4 seasons, never had a healthy TC and made it to and lost a SB. His career is falling right in line with how the typical 'good qb' story goes for the Bengals. Lots of promise, falls just short, unfulfilled potential, what could have been. 

Could it change this time? Sure, the future hasn't happened yet. Will it? I don't know. It's following the exact same path as many who came before him. 

And just to make your day even better...remember my thread about how if a HC/QB combo doesn't win a SB within their first 5 years together, they don't win one together...ever? It's never ever happened in the history of the NFL. Ever.

Well, next year is #5 for Burrow and Zac, and also past the mid-point for a typical Bengals QB career.

(12-24-2023, 11:12 AM)WeezyBengal Wrote: This season has absolutely sucked for so many reasons.

The Burrow calf injury. Sucking to start the year. Then Joe getting and healthy and the Bengals being good. Then Burrow getting injured and out for the year. Then sucking again. Then being good again with Browning. And then finally sucking again and riding the Jake Browning roller coaster a long the way.

Not to mention three of our best players getting severely injured a long the way.

I'm just tired. This has been an awful, awful season and I'm just ready for it to be over. I can't even say it's been fun.

This was supposed to be a Super Bowl year and it's been one of my least favorite seasons in recent memory.

I'm tired of being tormented. Just put me down.

Totally self-inflicted. If you don't enjoy the team and can't support them when they are struggling, it's really as simple as turning it off.

(12-24-2023, 12:50 PM)Gdale_Bengal Wrote: It’s been a season of us getting blown out. The titans game pretty much put me off the Bengals for the rest of the season.

2 games left. 8-9 and they deserve to be much worse than that.

No they don't, those were hard fought victories. They deserved those wins.