Uh oh Joe Mixon

[*Nately120*]

(02-14-2023, 09:34 PM)bfine32 Wrote: Pretty sure you're supporting my point. 

As you asserted folks were optimistic heading into 2019 and when we didn't (hell even benching Andy on his BIRTHDAY!!) folks were done with him. 

Luckily the organization gave him a little longer. 

We didn't need to be done with ZT after 2019 because we were done with Dalton and Green and Ross and we were doing a total rebuild in 2020.  2019 was a busted reload, 2020 started the rebuild.  Lucky and all that we kept ZT, sure, but 2019 doesn't get a pass in my eyes.  We didn't go into the season expecting to tank for Tua blow for Burrow.

So 2019 was a bust and I think there was a decent amount of logic to wondering if a guy who takes over what was expected to be a 6-9 win team and starts the year 0-10 and ends the year with 2 wins may not have what it takes to be an NFL coach.  We kept him, 2020 was a bust thanks to Burrow's injury, and then in 2021 we finally had an actual year of football to watch.

I was there...it was a rough stretch of 32 games from 2019 to 2020 and it wasn't easy to tell if we kept ZT because he was the next Chuck Noll or if we were just being lazy.  We had also watched 3 middling seasons of boring losing Marvin football where Marvin himself even wondered why we were staying the course with him.  So yeah, after 5 years of losing, 3 years of which was "why is this HC still here" football with Marvin I can see why people weren't exactly all in on ZT.