Cincinnati Bengals: An In-Depth Review By 2nd And Wrong... Again

CINCINNATI BENGALS

By: Benjamin Martin

I would like to clear the air right away to start this article and say that I have wet dreams about Carson Palmer. Don’t judge me.

Alright, now on to the Allenville Penitentiary Mean Machine. I mean Bengals. See what I did there?

Seriously though, I have no idea why I like this team. First and foremost I am going to point out why they suck. Mike Brown. That’s right, the safety for the Chiefs, formerly of the Bears. The guy is just a curse, and until he’s dead, the Bengals cannot win.

Jay kay! It’s Mike Brown’s fault though. But the owner, not the safety. The owner is for all intents and purposes a gigantic wanker. Like fuck me sideways. The Bengals don’t just lose because he’s a dick to everyone and karma comes back to kick his ass every week. The Bengals lose because they prefer to not sign their better players. I know you can’t blame the owner for that entirely, because there’s like a general manager and numerous other executives on the board, but when your best players are constantly heading for the exit sign, it behooves the owner to step up to the plate and maybe be like “Yo, slow your roll.”

I’ll try not to get too deep into this because it’s neither the time nor the place to be discussing these matters, but it’s Mike Brown’s fault and I want to show you that. I will freely admit that misfortune has been waiting around every corner for the Bengals, but that would just be a considerable inconvenience with Mike Brown not in the picture.

Take the 2005 Bengals, AFC North champs and darling of the NFL. They went 11-5, their first above .500 season in years. And they were a good team too. Everything you’d want. Dynamic passing game, solid running game. Their defense was their weak spot, but if the Colts can make it work the Bengals can in a year or two as well.

Then disaster begins to strike. Carson Palmer blows his knee out in the opening round of the playoffs. Like annihilated that thing. You can bounce back from that though, as he proved, but that wasn’t all. David Pollack, the first round pick of the Bengals from the 2005 draft hit somebody so hard his spine exploded. Okay not entirely. But he broke his neck on a tackle. Tragedy. He didn’t have a stellar rookie campaign with 28 tackles in 14 games, but the guy wasn’t a 1^st round pick for nothing.

The entire 2005 draft class gave the Bengals problems. Odell Thurman, as we all know, apparently just loves prison. So he did everything in his power to get him there. He was taken in the second. Chris Henry was seemingly in competition with Odell to see who could make it to prison the fastest. Plus he loves committing crimes in his own jersey. Which is totally ballsy. I’d probably let him off for just that reason. He was the third pick, and is back with the team now, but still. The fourth gave Eric Ghiaciuc, who the Bengals let go in free agency. Why? I don’t know. I always thought he was pretty good, but I’m only writing small-time internet blogs, so fuck me.

The majority of the Bengals’ arrests sit with Odell and Chris, so there’s no point expanding much further. We know they’re criminals. That’s basically where the misfortune ends though. An entire draft class gone. That isn’t how you build a winning team. Ask the Toronto Maple Leafs. You need draft picks or else you’re going to be doomed to hover in the middle-to-lower tier for eternity. Fact.

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