Franchise's Biggest Blunders

[*ochocincos*]

(07-18-2017, 03:59 PM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: It took Dre his 5th season to be any good. That's not how 17th overall picks are supposed to go. Lol... Glad he's okay now (presumably, who knows how he'll react to getting paid, he performed in his contract year only) but it still wasn't a good pick.

I really can't figure out Gio. I jump between thinking he's just an okay backup, and him being a good RB who simply is misused by this team. I still think he'd probably be a star if he played for Sean Payton or Belichick, but I don't know if that'd be just because of their systems. Either way, I think we can agree he's not as good of a RB as Bell. Admittedly a much nicer person, though.

You're looking at the 5 playoffs in a row wrongly, though, in my opinion at least. It's not a Palmer/Dalton things. Mike Zimmer came in 2008. The Bengals then went to the playoffs in 4 of his 6 seasons here. Even today Guenther is a Zimmer product using players Zimmer gathered, running a system made by Zimmer. Don't forget how bad the Bengals D was from '03-'07 under Lewis.

Yup, my argument wasn't that the Palmer trade was a blunder. Just who they selected with the picks.

Not many people thought Bell would be as good as he has been. I sure didn't. Bell's biggest issue entering the draft was he was really big. The weight loss really helped him become the RB he is today. But I'm not so sure Bell would have been the same RB in Cincy as he became in Pittsburgh because of potentially a different usage, less/different emphasis on strength/conditioning, etc.

The problem with Gio was he was drafted to be a tandem RB to BJGE, not a bellcow starter. In that role, he was drafted properly. But the Bengals really should have been looking for someone to replace BJGE completely, not just a COP guy. I expect Gio to be a nice complementary piece to Joe Mixon.

Regarding the playoffs, I get what you're saying in that perhaps that's not fair to Palmer because the defense played a huge part in the Dalton-led Bengals getting to the playoffs. But I view it as Dalton + Kirkpatrick + Bernard was about as good or even better than Palmer + [2011 2nd round draft pick]. Palmer just doesn't seem hands-down better than Dalton to me.