It's time to put an end to Model Model

[Shake n Blake]

(02-10-2019, 03:15 PM)BengalChris Wrote: https://www.bengals.com/news/model-model-7033688

Back in 2012 Mike Brown or Marvin Lewis or someone else came up with this Model Model thing and after a full 7 years of getting very little out of free agency and comp picks, and combine those two failures with a series of poor draft decisions and this team sank to 3 losing seasons in the last 3.

I pulled up this article again today and went through it and it reminded me of just how fearful Mike Brown has always been of free agency. At one point it talks about 3 expensive free agents the Bengals signed and uses this as the reason to not sign big free agents.

But, in reviewing it all again, none of those 3 expensive free agent had a career prior to coming to the Bengals that warranted those contracts, plus the Bengals didn't do their homework on these guys. One of the them mentioned was Antonio Bryant, who was signed despite being injured and never played a down for the Bengals. Another, Coles, was a #2 WR and a decent one in NY but hardly a player worth an expensive contract. And then there was Antwan Odom who had 12.5 sacks in 4 seasons with the Titan and a guy who only started an entire season once prior to being signed by the Bengals. Hardly production worthy of an expensive contract, even though Odom did have one good stretch for the Bengals before exiting with a season ending injury, the team considered it a failed signing.

NFL free agents are guys who have been playing in the league and there's tons of film on each of them (a lot more film than exists on colleges players) and if there isn't any film on them they didn't get playing time. So it is rather mystifying as to how much of a crap shoot these guys are. Really they shouldn't be much of a crap shoot at all as the team should be able to see exactly how that player performs and what their attitude is.

The articles likes to bring up Pittsburgh and New England as examples. However, those teams have a good track record of developing players who step up and fill the roles left by departing verterans. The Mike Brown front office has little history of success in that department. Look at how long it took the team to develop a WR to replace Marvin Jones and it still hasn't found a replacement for right tackle or right guard, and they had to make a trade to get someone fill the left tackle spot. That's an awful lot of failed development right there at those 4 positions.

Then we come to the comp picks. These picks are supposedly to replacement departing veterans who left in free agency, except the round and pick never seem to be fair compensation for the talent that walked out the door. We got a 5th round pick for Whit. Laughable.

It's time to put Model Model to rest once and for all.

Amen. I always found it funny that Mike used his own dumb choices for why he avoided free agency. It's kinda like bashing your toe because you don't pick your feet up enough, then deciding to swear off walking. Tbh, I think that was just an excuse fed to the public. What people forget is that most of those stupid FA choices were still cheaper than the alternative...

- Lavernues Coles was cheaper than the contract Housh wanted
- So was Antonio Bryant
- Odom was significantly cheaper than the contract Justin Smith got from San Fran
- Nate Clements and Jason Allen, etc were way cheaper than Johnathan Joseph

So basically he cheaped out on a few of his own players, spun it like he spent big in free agency and got bit, then used that as an excuse to never spend big in free agency again.