How Will This Team Shoot Themselves In The Foot This Year?

[3wt]

(07-04-2017, 10:20 AM)bfine32 Wrote: Ok after reading the thread and clicking the results here is my $0.02:

My skills are amazing as I correctly predicted which one would be ahead; although all those listed fall under the "coaching" umbrella.

Of course like each year I think this will be the one we get over the hurdle and I consider the latest playoff loss as the only time we shot ourselves in the foot.

The Indy playoff loss was due to injuries. We got Rex Burkhead and Ryan Hewitt leading the receivers

The Charger loss was on 2 crucial Turnovers. (Gio and Andy fumbles)

The Texans games was just simply being too young in critical positions and one poorly thrown bomb

I know Marvin is an easy scapegoat but the problem is this team does not get treated as a first class organization by the owner. It's ran as a mom and pop organization.

I think there is merit in what you say about the mom and pop organization.   It's too closed a system, a theory that is reinforced by the fact that one of the great minds in football (Paul Brown) made a series of catastrophic decisions (e.g. trading Bill Bergy away and choosing Tiger Johnson over Bill Walsh) because there was no one there to challenge his opinion. 

The same problem was operative when Mike Brown refused to pay Boomer Esiason what he wanted to come back and lead the team after a monster showing in the last several games of the season, and let him walk to go to Monday Night Football (though that fiasco was sort of two sided).

Conversely when Mr. Brown released some of the control of operations to Marvin Lewis and contracts to his daughter and son-in-law the organization seemed to perform more professionally.  And it's not because Mike Brown is an evil or stupid person.   There has been further growth as Duke Tobin has handled his area of personnel development.

What we seem to have is a team that now drafts better than it used to, generally times and crafts its contracts at a very professional level, but still makes poor decisions in how it treats its current and past players, and lets them walk on "principle" (for example because you don't pay aging linemen and guards more than "X" - because you just don't).

My prayer is that between Katie and Duke the professionalism will continue to grow.   And I don't know what needs to happen for the team to embrace it's past players more than lip service and a "50" logo, and start using them as a resource like they want to be used.

Something is missing.  And I agree with you that the problem seems to inhere with the ownership - as much as I revere and respect them.