Quarterbacks in their first playoff start

[*rfaulk34*]

(01-17-2022, 11:35 PM)34inXXIII Wrote: I'm not trying to speak for anyone else, but I would like to address this general sentiment. I apologize for hijacking the thread, but this kind of thing is kind of important to me. Just to be clear, I'm not trying to attack you or your perspective, Vinyl. Just sharing my own perspective.

I have routinely poked fun at and mocked some of the Bengals failures & futility over the last 30 years, not because I'm disaffected by it. Certainly not because I don't care about this team. My eyes still aren't 100% comfortable after tearing up following Saturday's victory and watching numerous celebration videos over the last 2 days.

No, I find that kind of thing funny because I have to. It's been a coping mechanism. A means of retaining my sanity. There was a time that I took the team's losses far too seriously. I once made a cut out figure of Erik Wilhelm - yes, I am that old - and hung him in effigy. Looking back on that, I was a goddamn lunatic. Now I can appreciate a great human being like Andy Dalton while having a little fun with his frequent disappointments on the field - and, yes, that doesn't make them any less disappointing.

Maybe I can compare it to Joker in "Dark Knight" describing his reaction to his wife leaving him after scarring his face to look like hers. "Now I see the funny side. Now I’m always smiling!" Maybe I'm not always smiling, but I've learned how to live with the scars. I understand that this is still just a game and I make the choice year after year after year to support this team with no guarantee that they will even win a single game. That's on me. I can choose to handle it or I can choose to not handle it. By handling it the best way I know how, I am now in a position to quite possibly learn how to live with success going forward after learning how to live with failure.

"See, I'm not a monster. I'm just ahead of the curve."

Not a hijack at all. Excellent contribution.