Were the pre-Joe Bengals as bad as most think?

[Shake n Blake]

(01-31-2023, 11:45 PM)Nately120 Wrote: I still think this whole tank and rebuild start to the ZT era is hindsight.  Things obviously worked out, but ZT was brought in to get Dalton and Green and John Ross back into the playoffs by replacing Marvin's outdated defensive-minded plan with a an offensive-minded young HC who had just been part of a SB run. Well, Ross was more of a player who "proved" that Marvin simply couldn't or wouldn't do what needed to be done to unlock this team's potential. ZT was supposed to be an instant upgrade with a roster that still had "win now" potential.

Our total suckage in 2019 and Burrow's ghastly injury in 2020 played an essential role in getting us where we are now, but I don't recall us expecting either to happen.  Going into the 2019 we had a poll on how many wins we'd get that year.  I recall picking 8 wins, and I think most folks hovered around "a bit better than Mavin has been doing lately."  I don't recall anyone saying we were tanking or needed to tank or we'd just flat out win 2 game.  Well, someone probably picked that.

I'll admit that it's a bit of hindsight, but I just look at it as evolving your opinion when presented with new evidence. In 2019, I think most of us probably still believed in Dalton (ok, this one is probably 50/50), Green, Atkins, Dunlap, Burfict, etc.

In truth, most of our talent was closer to the end than most of us realized at the time. I'd like to believe the staff and FO were more aware of this than fans were. We tend to be a sentimental bunch.

Assuming they were aware of this, I'd say they were only kept due to contract guarantees. Besides, new regimes usually tend to = a new core of players, yet we mostly trotted out the same guys, many of which did not seem to fit our new schemes.

Then as contracts allowed us to more reasonably move on from the old core, we started to do so. Gradually reshaping the team entirely.

I get if you or others don't want to believe that's what happened, as we will never know for sure, but when I look at the big picture, that's what I see. Look at how bad Lou's defense was back then vs once the roster was fully turned over. It's a complete 180.