Who here just doesn't care anymore?

[3wt]

I was exhausted at mid season.   And I get disgusted by some of the mistakes that the players, the coaching staff and the front office make.

I'll never give up though.   There are some things that are just manifestly true:

• The personnel - given the window of our best players - was poorly handled.  
• It's easy to say that New England and Pittsburgh know when to release your better players.  But we did not have the infrastructure to survive the loss of our 2 best offensive linemen - and it was poorly planned.  They knew the year before their free agency what they were looking at, and knew that at best they did not know what they had in their top picks from the 2015 draft.  But there were significant questions.  And they did not make the necessary adjustments to make sure their contingencies were provided for.
• The offensive coordinator coming out of 2016 was just too limited.
• The offensive line schemes were just not working
• Most importantly, there is a long history of inflexible thinking that runs through the Brown family - not just Mike, but Paul.  And it has resulted in poor decisions that significantly affected the ability of the team to be successful.    I think of not signing Bill Walsh, and the refusal to pay guards and safeties.
  

At the same time there is an awful lot we just don't know about what lies under the surface - the true nature of the problems here.  And during the Marvin Lewis tenure we have come back from the dead and fielded a couple of really good teams.

So I do have hope.   I won't give up.  I'm frustrated and guarded.  And won't lie and say that I do not wish we had fired Marvin and hired Zimmer.  He's one of the few coaches that I would have had confidence in to take this team deep into the playoffs.

I will wait to see who we get as a defensive coordinator, who we get as an offensive line coach and who we draft before I start to grouse again.

But I just don't have it in me to quit on my team.

"Sad to say", says my wife...  If I put half the time into my house and yard that I put into this team I would probably have a showcase on my hands.

But who needs a showcase right??   And thankfully my wife does not need one either and will settle for me achieving 75% of the honey-do...

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

I'm already at work on a Kool Aid Liqueur.  I'm going to age it (and a little Courvoisier) in a lime flavored coconut until next August.   Then I'll drink heavy, breath deep and jump into the next season.

WHO DEY THINK THEM BENGALS GONNA BE WINNERS???    ME DEY!!!