jopie87

I think the makeup of the team is critical. Taking Burrow may have been a no-brainer. But go back to the draft this year, the no-brainer was to take a tackle. They took a risk to go with a star their QB wanted and it paid off. I don't know that that team makes the playoffs if they draft a tackle instead. I just want the team to win. It's incredibly frustrating knowing that the process for this team is to maybe, possibly be good somewhere around 2025. Any period of time where I have to be jealous of Bengals fans isn't going to be a good time.

Fair point as well. I was looking mainly at how those teams performed in the last year of the prior coach. That team in 2001 lost like 15 in a row and the year before Rivera came in, the team was awful too.

Fair point.

Nothing that happened 30 years ago plays any role in this. This regime turned it around in 3 years. I'm not going to mock Zac Taylor because the Bengals sucked when he was in grade school. He turned them around in 3 years.

Yes, absolutely we do. Zac Taylor has been there for three seasons. First season, they were terrible. Second season, they made progress. Year three, AFC Championship game. It doesn't take 7 years to rebuild. It is actually comical for any coach to think that it does. 7 years is a huge period of time when the average NFL career comes in somewhere around 2.5 years. A 7 year rebuild is essentially saying that you need nearly 3 full passes on your roster to get it right.

It doesn't take a decade for a rebuild, we've seen it here before. In less time than it takes to get through high school, we went from the worst team in the league to staring down Tom Brady in the Super Bowl. Fast forward a few years and we went from the number 1 pick to a season with only 2 losses and it should have been 1 loss. Matt Rhule inherited a team far better than John Fox did, far better than Ron Rivera did, and they made immediate strides. Rhule is just a bad coach and a worse evaluator of talent. That is all this is.

Absolutely, it's pretty common across the league and all major sports

I think Dak f'd up and should have gone down like 5 yards earlier. My guess is they wanted to be able to run something other than a prayer to the endzone with like 3 seconds left.

And now we get to watch the Steelers lose by a hundred. Pretty good weekend.

As much as this year has sucked, we got to watch Dallas lose again in the playoffs in a stunningly stupid fashion. So, glass quarter full?

CMC and DJ both. DJ is a nasty runner, CMC has great hands. Rotate them back and forth and the offense instantly improves.

Hi, My Name is Davey Tepper and this is the destroy a franchise challenge.

Hey if Sam was in the draft this year, he's easily a top 5 pick.

Best short yardage QB/power rushing QB of all time in one hand, Sam Darnold in the other. Every time this dude speaks he sounds more and more clueless. It's poo like this (and like 20,000 other things that will prevent me from ever being okay with Rhule being here).

He could be the missing piece for so many teams! Browns, Saints, and Falcons would be foolish to not trade a second for him! ....please, please let there be one other GM and Coach that think "we can fix him!"

That team escaped the torments of Bill O'Brian and came out on the other side with a lot to look forward to. We, on the other hand, are looking to bring B.O.B into the mix. Doesn't feel great.

Dude has been so impressive this year. That team had no business winning any games this year. They found a gem.

Only way they get a Cinderella story is if the NFL carries him to it like they did for Peyton. I don't see it happening, I think the NFL goes all in on getting the Patriots and Bucs, no matter how much fudgery it takes.

Panthers this year, despite the roster issues, would have been a playoff team with Tomlin. Some coaches know how to win, others get hired for 7 years and like 70 million by the Panthers.

Send him to the Saints for a pick or two. If Payton can turn him around he is the best coach of all time.

Could have had Minshew for a fourth. Could have had any number of rookies, including Davis Mills who is on an impossibly bad Texans team and looks better than Sam ever has. Could have played Sam in the preseason more, realized we were f'd and gotten a veteran in way earlier. They did literally everything wrong. And the owner is sitting back and saying 'let's roll it back next year.' There's been like 5 or 6 good years in franchise history, which sucks, but I've never felt like we were the worst run team in the NFL until this year. Not when being coached by the ghost of 49ers past, not when Pickles was putting up 3 points a game, it took being swindled by a used Pinto salesman masquerading as a head coach to hit rock bottom.

Matt Rhule is a bad coach and worse person. Dude must have a God complex that is unheard of. His guys can do no wrong, because they are his guys, and how could he possibly ever be wrong.

Lose baby lose. Seasons over get that high pick.

Of course they would. There would be a running clock by halftime to get it over with quicker. Take the best 100 players in college and they would get absolutely demolished by any team in the NFL.

I don't follow college football enough to know if a tank next year is worth it or not.