This is Still Carrying Over from 2015

[*Nately120*]

(09-10-2017, 07:29 PM)THE PISTONS Wrote: Yep. The money we saved by not signing a C and LB who could cover TE's 2-3 years ago was used to build THIS TEAM. Ponder that.

Sometimes I think fans root for Mike Brown's wallet more than the actual team on the field.

Meh, people root for the Bengals and some of us have been rooting for them for our entire lives and associate that fandom and the brand name with our family members, alive and departed...it's some powerful stuff.  We don't like to think something we like so much could truly be fundamentally flawed so we go all sour grapes on the players who didn't get it done here because that takes the heat off the organization and those we are stuck with.  That's much easier on the psyche.

I noticed this the most after 2010.  Palmer had some encouraging games without Chad and TO so we declared those two the reason we lost.  Palmer was going to be revitalized and seemed so happy to be playing with young, selfless WRs who wanted to be here and with a new HC once Marvin fell on his sword.  Fast forward and Palmer wants out and Marvin is sticking around and suddenly Palmer goes from one of the reasons 2011 onward will be better to being the chief reason we stunk it up for years.

People are still ragging on Gresham and convincing themselves that it would be impossible to have Eifert and Gresham on the same team for some reason.  We thought Hill was going to usher in a golden age of Bengals football; a prediction that blew up in our faces hard and he's been one of the prime enemies of success ever since.  Reminds me of musicians who put their hearts and souls into an artistic statement of an album which flops and then spend the rest of their careers talking about what an obvious pile of crap the album always was.

Sour grapes and cognitive dissonance, abound.  Not to mention the fact that we've convinced ourselves that the is NFL is downright fixed to prevent us from winning.  Does Mike Brown want to win?  Clearly he doesn't care, but it's easier to pretend that he DOES want to win and it just isn't working "his way" and so on.  Alas, I could go on, but this is the nature of the beast.  

Optimistic take:  We aren't going to win them all and the Ravens aren't going to lose them all.  Additionally, we lost a game we were supposed to win so to even things up we just need to win a game we are supposed to lose.  Packers on the road is a stretch.  Baltimore in their stadium?  The Steelers once?  The Texans?  At Broncos?  We'll be back on our usual ho-hum "Pittsburgh Pirates of the NFL" schedule soon enough.