Being in the KC area I deal with Chief fans on the regular. Last year and for three games all I have heard is how the NFL is rigged and how the Bengals cheated and how the Chiefs were the better team. Now that the Chiefs have won all of a sudden the NFL isn't rigged anymore, Chiefs were always better, and Bengals were a crappy team.
Burrow was running for his life at times when the 'superstar' Jones decided to finally get his first few sacks in the playoffs OF HIS CAREER against backups. I heard all week how what Mahomes would do with the Bengals' WR's if he was on the team. No QB can win when he is getting thrown around like a rag doll. Mahomes has had two Hall of Fame talents at pass-catching areas (Kelce/Hill) and he has made quite the most of it, but please do not make him to have superpowers.
While Mahomes' performance was fun to watch and we can only tip the cap, I will not bow to the pressure that suggests Burrow isn't the caliber of the future Hall of Famer Mahomes. The MVP played like it and I look forward to future battles. Aside from the 12th man in pinstripes making us second-guess the NFL's being rigged, I am content with the effort our 'Battlecats' gave us. We need to shore up our offensive line and then we can be as dominant as the Chiefs. Maybe we can earn a few more dollars to buy our own refs next time!
It’s unfortunate but, after being bengalized for the last 50 years, dealing with a loss like this is incredibly easy. There aren’t too many fans out there (Detroit?) who know that, at the end of the day, it just doesn’t matter. Unless you lost a bet and have to shave your eyebrows or pay it off some other heinous way, it just doesn’t matter. My experience is anecdotal but The Men ALWAYS find a way to torpedo themselves. This is as close to a winning culture this teams been near to, in over 30 years, and it still wasn’t enough. I’m grateful to The Men for showing me literally EVERY way to accept loss. It’s helped me in a myriad of other situations throughout my life. I truly feel sorry for parents out there who have to talk their kids down off that ledge but the experience will leave them stronger.
Go shovel your driveways, tie some flies, knit a sweater, fold some laundry. Drink some cheap beer and a cheaper cigar. Those are the things that matter.
And, let's all remember, it was a game to be in the Super Bowl... we are the top four. Who would have thunk it? Who Dey, Men. We are behind you and hopefully, there are many good years to come.
Paul I usually agree with your post because you write the truth and the truth hurts sometimes. Have to disagree with you on this post. Giving Mahomes all the credit along with a injured foot. I saw him pushing off just fine when he needed to. You wrote that the Bengals were the better and healthier team. I agree with the better team but healthier, nope. Mahomes has a HOF TE and a very good OL that gives him twice the time Burrow gets. If you trade the QB's and Burrow plays behind KC's OL well he is like Rudolph and goes down in history. We saw Mahomes in SB play behind a weak OL due to injuries and had 0 TD's. Bengals were missing 3 starters on OL plus our best DB. The rookies for KC did step up but refs were 1 sided towards the end. How about the last punt return, I thought I saw Bengals defender on stomach with 2 KC players standing behind him. Happened on the edge and was the reason for the big gain. I know how Saints fans felt in game vs LA now. Sounds to me like your a Mahomes fan and that's fine you are entitled to your opinion. I'm taking Burrow as my QB and when next season starts they will have a chip on their shoulder and a attitude vs Goodell, certain refs and KC. Who Dey! Had a great season and it's nice when you are counting on making the playoffs next year.
Well said. What a fun season and what a disappointing ending. And I'm happy for you that you get to write about interesting stuff at least through the Xavier basketball season. Have fun!
Truth here, Doc, well said. Even if you "Parson'd" them when you picked them to win. (ask golfing Joe C). jk. The Bengals are very good. KC O Line was better than our D Line & KC D Line was better than our O Line - yet still we had a real chance to win. Maybe next year ...
It was clear that officiating was going to favor KC-if for nothing more than the fact that a 'rivalry' isn't one when the same team wins every time. And some of those calls were awful. It feels like the Bengals need to prove their worth with a few years of proficient consistency before they're allowed to the party of elite franchises. Still, all it took was one complete drive to march down and kick it and they'd have succeeded once again in 'screwing things up'. In the end they didn't have that drive in them. There is a strong foundation however and a new level set. Go Birds.
Zac Taylor may have changed the culture, but the cockiness I saw over the past several weeks likely did not serve the Bengals well. If that’s what you need to pump yourself up, you need to realize it’s going to get people lined up against you as well. And not just this year either.
Things get harder for the Bengals now. You are right that they have generally been very fortunate over the past two years. While that may or may not continue, the looming Burrow and (presumably) Chase contracts—as well as having the assistant coaching staff raided—are going to force them to rely on very effective front office work from here on out.
The game was well-balanced, like this piece. I don’t like to lose but I can live with this one because the Bengals played through the end of the season and playoffs without the oline they paid for. They got meaningful experience for Taylor-Britt and Ossai, who is still very young. And hopefully Burrow gets to have a normal off-season. He will be harder on himself than anyone, and that will make the team better. The Chiefs are a great team. Give them their due.
This article points out the hard reality that makes a loss like this one so hard to accept. We can console ourselves with the notion that the Bengals' future is bright and that this organization is finally on a sustainable upward trajectory that will inevitably lead to annual playoff relevance and a world championship (or two!). Yet, the Bengals' history of slipping back to mediocrity - or worse - after brief bursts of excellence tempers that expectation. We wonder if the Brown family will stick with its relatively recent commitment to winning football, and whether Burrow, Higgins, Chase, et.al. will sacrifice "top dollar" in order to keep this team and its enormous potential in place.
Doc is absolutely correct that that shots at the Super Bowl are ephemeral and the proverbial "window" can shut abruptly before we even know it's closing. After all, those of us who are old enough to remember Super Bowl XVI and Super Bowl XXIII know how promising the Bengals' future seemed back then and how quickly those teams fell back to earth in subsequent seasons - not even to mention, of course, the sustained awfulness interspersed with mediocrity that came after 1990.
In a sense, we Bengals fans don't know what it's like to "knock on the door" in successive seasons and we're afraid to look down, proverbially speaking. Yet, for the first time, I feel like the Bengals have built a roster to last - and I think that this season proves that the organization's culture has truly changed for the better. Whether it has changed enough remains to be seen, of course. For example, the futile attempt to avoid injuries by ignoring the preseason seems all too Bengal-like. As a result, they failed to start the season on time - and the 0-2 beginning seems to have ultimately cost them dearly. What if the Bengals hadn't built themselves such a high mountain to climb by simply beating Pittsburgh at home in Week 1? The future seems to depend on how well the new culture within the organization can embrace lessons like this one.
Officials has a rough night. I imagine discussions the next couple days will include a couple apologies from NFL for glaring mistakes. They're human. It happens. Am I upset? Sure. But sometimes things go haywire for them. This was one of those nights.
Ossai was hustling all out. He played well all night. It still fits into the weird way Bengals always seem to lose big games, but overall he wasn't the problem. The OLine finally bent, folded, and was mutilated, like an old IBM computer card. They were a patch job. They held pretty well in the post season. Tonight the dam broke.
Joe sez they'll be back. Ask Dan Marino how that thought worked out for him. Over the next 2 years, the Bengal brass will slowly disassemble this team. Critical parts will leave. They may have one more run in the next few years if they're lucky. Thanks be for this run. It's been fun for a change. But I think I see a pumpkin being pulled by horses in the distance.
Sorry to disagree, Greg, but I'm going to hope these guys have a plan to BuddyUp. I know money is important, but so is actually enjoying the game and especially the people you work with.
The Chiefs stymied the better team tonight. Didn't like all the calls but remember my Chiefs friends not liking all the calls from last year...Scales of Justice I guess. I'm sure Ossai will get roasted on social media but it was one play...not why we lost, although it contributed greatly. I watched him stand up and do the interviews like the man he is...with BJ Hill by his side which says a lot about this team.
Breathe deeply, remember the lost decade and bask in what will be! Who Dey!
The Chiefs could very well have won this game in overtime. And that would have been palatable, especially since they outplayed the Bengals for a good part of the game. But when the officials decided to throw the flag for mere incidental contact between two players running as hard as they possibly could, and Mahomes was going down whether he got hit or not, it leaves a very bad taste in everyone's mouth. The officials can't make a call that in effect, decides the AFC championship.
Hopefully the players and coaches are able to channel this misfortune and become stronger from it.
The MORE egregious call was the holding that they DIDNT call when both Hendrickson and BJ Hill were severely held during Mahomes run. Of course the no call block in the back on the punt return wasn’t called either. That drive should have started on the 10.
It was the right call. Not egregious, yes, but the right call. Refs had no choice. Had Ossai not extended his arm into Mahomes' back and pushed, he mighta got away with it.
The Bengals’ season ended because of the way they started their season. Had Zach chosen to play the starting offensive line through the preseason, there was a good chance a few would have jelled enough to win the first two games against Pittsburgh and Dallas…both 3 point losses that should have been double digit wins. Win those and tonight’s game, along with crucial home field advantage, is played in Cincinnati.
I was actually happy to hear Kelce call out our mayor who, while not being an idiot, certainly acted like an idiot. There is no reason for a politician unaffiliated with the game to say something so incredibly stupid. Seriously, this is Aftab Pureval and everyone knows two things about how he normally spends his day: 1) Glory seeking through association 2) Setting up his next political run for higher office before he finishes his current term. The King of Cringe deserves the shit being piled on his head because he embarrassed the city.
Think about this; the man who ran for mayor on a diversity and inclusion platform called out a biracial QB by saying the Bengals white QB was his father. His FATHER. Patrick Mahomes’ dad is black.
His Politico article quoted him as saying his sole purpose as Mayor is to help black people. That’s it. Not the City, presumably not citizens who are not black, just black people. Then throwing in a figure of speech questioning fatherhood is super ironic considering Father’s Day in the hood is mass state of confusion.
I mean the comments were incredibly cringe inducing. That said I don’t think anyone reading comments made fairly could come away believing questioning paternal legitimacy. I mean, he was a pro pitcher. Pretty well know by now given the half decade of national fawning - mostly deserved - Mahomes has received. As for the “mass state of confusion” comment, hard not to read that as pretty cringe inducing no?
Ben, no way around it, saying a white guy might be a black dude’s daddy is racist AF. That may have not been his intention but the other way to see that comment is our white QB OWNS Mahomes. Again, racist AF.
I’m not playing the race card, here. It was an idiot move by Aftab. David Mann would have NEVER said something so insensitive. This is what we get when the electorate is bamboozled by a bullshitter.
His commentary was plain stupid and he would have caught more hell if he was white and not woke. As for Father’s Day, I spent years in the Big Brothers program, and it’s a fact. And if Aftab was serious about helping blacks, he would encourage them to be more like him. Married, then kids, and take your responsibility damn serious.
Yeah. Again don’t think anyone is suggesting the comments weren’t stupid. Whenever the “woke” label thrown around it tends to make discussion less substantive to me, but ultimately we all have our way of viewing the world. Would say that I’ve encountered plenty of unmarried parents who take their responsibilities seriously and plenty of white parents - married and not - that aren’t remotely serious in their responsibilities. Volunteer work in community and at Children’s as well as years spent traveling country for work.
Bottom line, think we can agree the less we hear from our or any other mayor/politician in terms of trash talk the better. Better to stay in your lane and let the professionals do what they do.
Being in the KC area I deal with Chief fans on the regular. Last year and for three games all I have heard is how the NFL is rigged and how the Bengals cheated and how the Chiefs were the better team. Now that the Chiefs have won all of a sudden the NFL isn't rigged anymore, Chiefs were always better, and Bengals were a crappy team.
Burrow was running for his life at times when the 'superstar' Jones decided to finally get his first few sacks in the playoffs OF HIS CAREER against backups. I heard all week how what Mahomes would do with the Bengals' WR's if he was on the team. No QB can win when he is getting thrown around like a rag doll. Mahomes has had two Hall of Fame talents at pass-catching areas (Kelce/Hill) and he has made quite the most of it, but please do not make him to have superpowers.
While Mahomes' performance was fun to watch and we can only tip the cap, I will not bow to the pressure that suggests Burrow isn't the caliber of the future Hall of Famer Mahomes. The MVP played like it and I look forward to future battles. Aside from the 12th man in pinstripes making us second-guess the NFL's being rigged, I am content with the effort our 'Battlecats' gave us. We need to shore up our offensive line and then we can be as dominant as the Chiefs. Maybe we can earn a few more dollars to buy our own refs next time!
It’s unfortunate but, after being bengalized for the last 50 years, dealing with a loss like this is incredibly easy. There aren’t too many fans out there (Detroit?) who know that, at the end of the day, it just doesn’t matter. Unless you lost a bet and have to shave your eyebrows or pay it off some other heinous way, it just doesn’t matter. My experience is anecdotal but The Men ALWAYS find a way to torpedo themselves. This is as close to a winning culture this teams been near to, in over 30 years, and it still wasn’t enough. I’m grateful to The Men for showing me literally EVERY way to accept loss. It’s helped me in a myriad of other situations throughout my life. I truly feel sorry for parents out there who have to talk their kids down off that ledge but the experience will leave them stronger.
Go shovel your driveways, tie some flies, knit a sweater, fold some laundry. Drink some cheap beer and a cheaper cigar. Those are the things that matter.
I don’t see an apology from the NFL anytime soon.
And, let's all remember, it was a game to be in the Super Bowl... we are the top four. Who would have thunk it? Who Dey, Men. We are behind you and hopefully, there are many good years to come.
Paul I usually agree with your post because you write the truth and the truth hurts sometimes. Have to disagree with you on this post. Giving Mahomes all the credit along with a injured foot. I saw him pushing off just fine when he needed to. You wrote that the Bengals were the better and healthier team. I agree with the better team but healthier, nope. Mahomes has a HOF TE and a very good OL that gives him twice the time Burrow gets. If you trade the QB's and Burrow plays behind KC's OL well he is like Rudolph and goes down in history. We saw Mahomes in SB play behind a weak OL due to injuries and had 0 TD's. Bengals were missing 3 starters on OL plus our best DB. The rookies for KC did step up but refs were 1 sided towards the end. How about the last punt return, I thought I saw Bengals defender on stomach with 2 KC players standing behind him. Happened on the edge and was the reason for the big gain. I know how Saints fans felt in game vs LA now. Sounds to me like your a Mahomes fan and that's fine you are entitled to your opinion. I'm taking Burrow as my QB and when next season starts they will have a chip on their shoulder and a attitude vs Goodell, certain refs and KC. Who Dey! Had a great season and it's nice when you are counting on making the playoffs next year.
Well said. What a fun season and what a disappointing ending. And I'm happy for you that you get to write about interesting stuff at least through the Xavier basketball season. Have fun!
Truth here, Doc, well said. Even if you "Parson'd" them when you picked them to win. (ask golfing Joe C). jk. The Bengals are very good. KC O Line was better than our D Line & KC D Line was better than our O Line - yet still we had a real chance to win. Maybe next year ...
It was clear that officiating was going to favor KC-if for nothing more than the fact that a 'rivalry' isn't one when the same team wins every time. And some of those calls were awful. It feels like the Bengals need to prove their worth with a few years of proficient consistency before they're allowed to the party of elite franchises. Still, all it took was one complete drive to march down and kick it and they'd have succeeded once again in 'screwing things up'. In the end they didn't have that drive in them. There is a strong foundation however and a new level set. Go Birds.
Zac Taylor may have changed the culture, but the cockiness I saw over the past several weeks likely did not serve the Bengals well. If that’s what you need to pump yourself up, you need to realize it’s going to get people lined up against you as well. And not just this year either.
Things get harder for the Bengals now. You are right that they have generally been very fortunate over the past two years. While that may or may not continue, the looming Burrow and (presumably) Chase contracts—as well as having the assistant coaching staff raided—are going to force them to rely on very effective front office work from here on out.
The game was well-balanced, like this piece. I don’t like to lose but I can live with this one because the Bengals played through the end of the season and playoffs without the oline they paid for. They got meaningful experience for Taylor-Britt and Ossai, who is still very young. And hopefully Burrow gets to have a normal off-season. He will be harder on himself than anyone, and that will make the team better. The Chiefs are a great team. Give them their due.
This article points out the hard reality that makes a loss like this one so hard to accept. We can console ourselves with the notion that the Bengals' future is bright and that this organization is finally on a sustainable upward trajectory that will inevitably lead to annual playoff relevance and a world championship (or two!). Yet, the Bengals' history of slipping back to mediocrity - or worse - after brief bursts of excellence tempers that expectation. We wonder if the Brown family will stick with its relatively recent commitment to winning football, and whether Burrow, Higgins, Chase, et.al. will sacrifice "top dollar" in order to keep this team and its enormous potential in place.
Doc is absolutely correct that that shots at the Super Bowl are ephemeral and the proverbial "window" can shut abruptly before we even know it's closing. After all, those of us who are old enough to remember Super Bowl XVI and Super Bowl XXIII know how promising the Bengals' future seemed back then and how quickly those teams fell back to earth in subsequent seasons - not even to mention, of course, the sustained awfulness interspersed with mediocrity that came after 1990.
In a sense, we Bengals fans don't know what it's like to "knock on the door" in successive seasons and we're afraid to look down, proverbially speaking. Yet, for the first time, I feel like the Bengals have built a roster to last - and I think that this season proves that the organization's culture has truly changed for the better. Whether it has changed enough remains to be seen, of course. For example, the futile attempt to avoid injuries by ignoring the preseason seems all too Bengal-like. As a result, they failed to start the season on time - and the 0-2 beginning seems to have ultimately cost them dearly. What if the Bengals hadn't built themselves such a high mountain to climb by simply beating Pittsburgh at home in Week 1? The future seems to depend on how well the new culture within the organization can embrace lessons like this one.
Officials has a rough night. I imagine discussions the next couple days will include a couple apologies from NFL for glaring mistakes. They're human. It happens. Am I upset? Sure. But sometimes things go haywire for them. This was one of those nights.
Ossai was hustling all out. He played well all night. It still fits into the weird way Bengals always seem to lose big games, but overall he wasn't the problem. The OLine finally bent, folded, and was mutilated, like an old IBM computer card. They were a patch job. They held pretty well in the post season. Tonight the dam broke.
Joe sez they'll be back. Ask Dan Marino how that thought worked out for him. Over the next 2 years, the Bengal brass will slowly disassemble this team. Critical parts will leave. They may have one more run in the next few years if they're lucky. Thanks be for this run. It's been fun for a change. But I think I see a pumpkin being pulled by horses in the distance.
Sorry to disagree, Greg, but I'm going to hope these guys have a plan to BuddyUp. I know money is important, but so is actually enjoying the game and especially the people you work with.
I had a wonderful season watching the games with Son #3, who's almost as old as I was (10) when the Bengals lost to the 49ers in 1989.
He ran to his bedroom after they lost and covered his head, embarrassed that he was crying. I followed him in, and gently pulled back the covers.
"It's not fair!"
"Life's not fair."
"I know, but itndoesnt have to suck like this!"
"Hey. We had fun this year, didn't we?"
"Yeah."
"And they should be good again next year, right?"
"Yeah."
"I loved having you with me all season, buddy."
"...I loved it too, Daddy "
"Next year?"
"Next year!"
I'm not happy they lost. But I'm not unhappy.
Well done, dad.
Spot on take Doc...
The Chiefs stymied the better team tonight. Didn't like all the calls but remember my Chiefs friends not liking all the calls from last year...Scales of Justice I guess. I'm sure Ossai will get roasted on social media but it was one play...not why we lost, although it contributed greatly. I watched him stand up and do the interviews like the man he is...with BJ Hill by his side which says a lot about this team.
Breathe deeply, remember the lost decade and bask in what will be! Who Dey!
The Chiefs could very well have won this game in overtime. And that would have been palatable, especially since they outplayed the Bengals for a good part of the game. But when the officials decided to throw the flag for mere incidental contact between two players running as hard as they possibly could, and Mahomes was going down whether he got hit or not, it leaves a very bad taste in everyone's mouth. The officials can't make a call that in effect, decides the AFC championship.
Hopefully the players and coaches are able to channel this misfortune and become stronger from it.
The MORE egregious call was the holding that they DIDNT call when both Hendrickson and BJ Hill were severely held during Mahomes run. Of course the no call block in the back on the punt return wasn’t called either. That drive should have started on the 10.
It was the right call. Not egregious, yes, but the right call. Refs had no choice. Had Ossai not extended his arm into Mahomes' back and pushed, he mighta got away with it.
The Bengals’ season ended because of the way they started their season. Had Zach chosen to play the starting offensive line through the preseason, there was a good chance a few would have jelled enough to win the first two games against Pittsburgh and Dallas…both 3 point losses that should have been double digit wins. Win those and tonight’s game, along with crucial home field advantage, is played in Cincinnati.
I was actually happy to hear Kelce call out our mayor who, while not being an idiot, certainly acted like an idiot. There is no reason for a politician unaffiliated with the game to say something so incredibly stupid. Seriously, this is Aftab Pureval and everyone knows two things about how he normally spends his day: 1) Glory seeking through association 2) Setting up his next political run for higher office before he finishes his current term. The King of Cringe deserves the shit being piled on his head because he embarrassed the city.
Think about this; the man who ran for mayor on a diversity and inclusion platform called out a biracial QB by saying the Bengals white QB was his father. His FATHER. Patrick Mahomes’ dad is black.
His Politico article quoted him as saying his sole purpose as Mayor is to help black people. That’s it. Not the City, presumably not citizens who are not black, just black people. Then throwing in a figure of speech questioning fatherhood is super ironic considering Father’s Day in the hood is mass state of confusion.
I mean the comments were incredibly cringe inducing. That said I don’t think anyone reading comments made fairly could come away believing questioning paternal legitimacy. I mean, he was a pro pitcher. Pretty well know by now given the half decade of national fawning - mostly deserved - Mahomes has received. As for the “mass state of confusion” comment, hard not to read that as pretty cringe inducing no?
Ben, no way around it, saying a white guy might be a black dude’s daddy is racist AF. That may have not been his intention but the other way to see that comment is our white QB OWNS Mahomes. Again, racist AF.
I’m not playing the race card, here. It was an idiot move by Aftab. David Mann would have NEVER said something so insensitive. This is what we get when the electorate is bamboozled by a bullshitter.
His commentary was plain stupid and he would have caught more hell if he was white and not woke. As for Father’s Day, I spent years in the Big Brothers program, and it’s a fact. And if Aftab was serious about helping blacks, he would encourage them to be more like him. Married, then kids, and take your responsibility damn serious.
Yeah. Again don’t think anyone is suggesting the comments weren’t stupid. Whenever the “woke” label thrown around it tends to make discussion less substantive to me, but ultimately we all have our way of viewing the world. Would say that I’ve encountered plenty of unmarried parents who take their responsibilities seriously and plenty of white parents - married and not - that aren’t remotely serious in their responsibilities. Volunteer work in community and at Children’s as well as years spent traveling country for work.
Bottom line, think we can agree the less we hear from our or any other mayor/politician in terms of trash talk the better. Better to stay in your lane and let the professionals do what they do.
I’m highly annoyed by race hustlers like the Mayor. It’s part and parcel of the Democrat playbook.
Great writing and I agree with every word!