Zac was going to be here next year regardless if we won or lost, sadly. The thing about this win as a few others have pointed out, is that we outplayed them. We were the more physical team. We forced their mistakes, we rattled them from the get go and they never really recovered because the D kept making plays and we were able to run on them which was huge.

They didnt have Dupree, Bush, Conner, blah blah. Good for them. We didnt have Burrow, Mixon, Boyd, Williams, Waynes, Wilson, Reader, not to mention Tuopo, Wren, Dunlap, Atkins, etc. We have been depleted all season at DL. No excuses for the Steelers. We beat the piss out of them flat out on Monday Night Football and it was beautiful. Ryan Finley ran an epic TD off a fake that he executed perfectly. As cheesy as ZT is, that was a heck of a call. Loved it.

(12-23-2020, 12:29 AM)bfine32 Wrote: I've been a member of these forums since 2004 and I think this is the first time I've seen fans mad that we beat the Steelers. Not to mention in front of a national audience in prime time. We outplayed them. we out physicaled them, we wanted it more than they did. And still some fans are mad.

I know a lot on here like to poke fun of Denny from the mothership, but this is really what needs to be laughed at.

Like I said a day or two ago, some people on here would be extremely pissed if Taylor starts winning, because they are so entrenched in him being gone and they couldn't stand to be wrong.

(12-22-2020, 03:50 PM)fredtoast Wrote: This win was a gift from the Steelers.

BS. They has everything to win for, the Division title and a shot at moving on the Chiefs. They had their HOF starting QB. We had Ryan Finley.  They didn't gift us anything, our D came out and hit them in the mouth and kept hitting them until the final bell. If anything, they took the game to lightly and looked past us. The looks on Rapist Ben and JJS faces was priceless.

(12-22-2020, 01:46 PM)Nicomo Cosca Wrote: Why is the Bell hit on Juju not your sig of the week?? For shame!

Saw that Leaping Leonard had put the meme on his sig and besides, besides it was all over the interwebs. I liked this pic of Gio because he carried the offense. He is practically the Bengals' "GORE". The man just keeps on churning.

(12-23-2020, 12:26 AM)Benton Wrote: If burrow hadn't gotten injured, we probably would've went 7-9 THIS year. 

If most everybody is healthy, well have a winning season next year, with or without or in spite of ZT.

we had won 2 games before his injury where do the last 5 wins come from?

(12-23-2020, 11:27 AM)XenoMorph Wrote: we had won 2 games before his injury where do the last 5 wins come from?

This^  We mostly all looked at the schedule before the season started and thought 7-9 games was reasonable with the addition of Burrow and the team around him.  Then even Burrow couldn't pull off more than a couple in the first 9/10 games.  But as soon as he went down, there were so many people convinced that he would have dropped win after win the rest of the way.  No improvement to the OL, no improvement to the D, just an assumption that Burrow is a miracle worker.  

Guy is a ton of fun to watch and kept the Bengals in position where they COULD have won, but to assume that the team would have knocked out another 4 or 5 wins because Burrow was playing is based on nothing more than the hype that surrounded the offseason. 

(12-23-2020, 12:35 PM)MileHighGrowler Wrote: This^  We mostly all looked at the schedule before the season started and thought 7-9 games was reasonable with the addition of Burrow and the team around him.  Then even Burrow couldn't pull off more than a couple in the first 9/10 games.  But as soon as he went down, there were so many people convinced that he would have dropped win after win the rest of the way.  No improvement to the OL, no improvement to the D, just an assumption that Burrow is a miracle worker.  

Guy is a ton of fun to watch and kept the Bengals in position where they COULD have won, but to assume that the team would have knocked out another 4 or 5 wins because Burrow was playing is based on nothing more than the hype that surrounded the offseason. 

I was hopeful with the additions on Defense and Williams and FA pick up on Oline and improvement by Jordan and addition of some of draft picks we might get to high end 9-7 low end 7-9 with Burrow but that did not work out .. we lost some close games early and we really did not complete well against Browns, Ravens and Steelers first time around.. I actually have seen improvement on the Oline and Defense a game or two before Burrow went down .. i think we might be able to pull out 1 of the last 2 games if we can get Allen back and both defense and oline continue to play better.