Robinson Preserve (Me)
Welcome to FreeForAll Tuesday, in which we discuss Tee’s future, heaven’s gate and Jimmy Buffett, hanging out in eternity, lording over our spirits. Please consider a subscription of $8/month or $80/year. Enjoy.
Because nothing the NFL does does not escape notice, even in deepest February, today is a Very Big Day. Starting at 4 this afternoon, the Bengals have two weeks to decide if they’ll franchise-tag Tee Higgins. Around here, this question has the gravitational pull of sun, moon, tides and all of civilization.
I’m tempted to blow it all off and opt instead to make fun of the league’s venerable self-importance and concurrent genius at keeping itself front-page news seven months before another down gets played.
But I concede, the Tee Thing is kind of important.
Not just from a competitive perspective. It’s all but existential when considering whom the Bengals want to be. To me, the knee-jerk answer is simple:
Let Higgins walk. Save the $20 mil they’d have to pay him for a one-year tag. Spend it on other positions of equal or greater need. Pick one, there’s no shortage: Safety, defensive and offensive tackle, running back, tight end.
Patrick Mahomes just won his third ring with a group of so-so wideouts and an all-world tight end. We like to think Joe Burrow is as good as Mahomes. Burrow has Ja’Marr Chase, who is better by miles than any wide receiver KC had.
That prompts a chicken-and-egg question: Is Higgins great? Or is Higgins working with Burrow great? Should the QB’s ability to elevate his mates be a consideration here? How much of a consideration?
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Or, conversely, has Burrow’s excellence been a product of the Bengals riches at wide receiver? Chase, Higgins and Boyd could make Mitch Trubisky look like Terry Bradshaw. (Well, probably not. We exaggerate to make a point.)
The defense was bad. The numbers say as much: Last in the league in yards allowed per play, last in passing yards per attempt, 31st in rushing yards per attempt. The Bengals allowed 22 more points than their nearest AFC North competitor.
The pass rush was average at best. The Men had 26 takeaways, 13th-best in the league. Do you skimp on improving that disaster to pay Higgins, even for just a year? Do you assume, Reds-like, that the players you had in ‘23 will be better in ‘24?
Evidently, the draft is rich in promising wide receivers. And Burrow is Burrow.
Thank you, Tee, for what you’ve done.
Howevuh. . .
All the above flies against the TML Theory of Success, which goes like this:
If you have a chance to win something, take it.
Make the Men a When Team, not an If Outfit. Throwing is what you do best, throwing got you to the Super Bowl, you’re already losing Boyd. Tag Tee. Roll the proverbial dice, see tomorrow in the abstract.
Rock while you can rock, roll while you can roll. Cross every available appendage that Saint Joe doesn’t come apart again and become the Humpty Dumpty of NFL QBs.
The answer to the essential question is unknowable. Will the Bengals be better with Tee Higgins if they don’t improve elsewhere? I say no.
What say you?
Now, then. . .
TRIP REPORT. . . The herons didn’t come this time.
They’re hit-or-or-miss mysterious. I see them in the mangroves, still and shadowy like extras in a dream. My mother loved them, so now whenever I see the herons at Robinson Preserve, I believe I’m saying hello to her.
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Do you have a Place?
You know what I mean. A spot where time is an abstraction and what you think about and what you feel is of a certain and special magnitude. You feel lucky to be right there, right then, fully alive in the world.
I have a few Places. Lookout Mountain in Montreat, sunset on Longboat Key, Lambeth Road in Bethesda, MD, where I grew up. . . and Robinson Preserve. These are places I expect to be forever — and I most definitely believe there is a forever — if only in some ethereal mystery-form. Like the egrets.
Robinson Preserve occupies a stretch of land between Bradenton and the Gulf of Mexico. Its path is well traveled, by walkers and bikers. It’s not some hidden gem. Florida doesn’t have many of those now.
After a half-mile or so, the path spurs to a wooden walkway through the mangroves and ends at a pier intruding on the Intercoastal Waterway. It’s a view I rely on in my mind’s eye, during the frozen seriousness of January and on days and nights made melancholy by nothing more than the relentless passage of time. Which only accelerates as we age.
From the end of the pier, I see mullet jumping like track stars and the occasional snake slither past. I was told a pair of baby owls had been spotted last week; I didn’t see them. I did see a turtle and four geese and spent an hour with a good book. Mainly, I gazed up the waterway as it spilled slowly from the Gulf of Mexico, the city of St. Petersburg in the distance.
That water, that breeze, that indomitable sun. I imagine that’s what heaven looks like.
Give me a Place or two you consider sacred.
BECAUSE TV IS MY LIFE. . . I’m re-watching all 5 seasons of Friday Night Lights. It’s better than it was the first time, and it was very good then. I don’t recall any show ever doing a better, deeper, more honest look at the achy vulnerabilities of high school kids than this one.
It’s sympathetic, not exploitive. It’s believable. It doesn’t try to trick you or pander. FNL is nominally a show about high school football in rural Texas. If that’s all it was, it might still be good, if stereotypical and cliched. It isn’t.
Most of the kids in the show come from single- or no-parent families. The star QB is not Joe Cool. He lives in a ramshackle bungalow and takes care of his grandmother. His father is military, serving in Iraq. His mother is nowhere, perhaps deceased.
The star running back shares a small house with his older brother. His dad ditched them years earlier and is mostly a stranger. His mom is nowhere. The blue-chip wideout lives with his mother and sisters. Father, nowhere.
And so on. You’d root for these kids if they were on the Math Team. Football is almost incidental. That’s why FNL is so good. TML says ckitout, ad-free and streaming on Netflix. I mean, its’s February. What else you got goin’?
TUNE O’ THE DAY. . . In keeping with the theme of the Trip Report.
Norris Lake, TN is one of the most beautiful spots in America.
I liked Edelman, but he was hardly great. Clutch, yes, but not in the same league as other WR1s. Definitely not HOF.
Amendola? He was serviceable when not injured. Chris Hogan was the WR2 the year they came back against the Falcons. Brandon LaFell was WR2 the year they beat Seattle. I take Tyler Boyd over those 3 and almost any later era NE WR except Edelman. My point is that the Bengals can win a SB without overpaying for WR2. And WR3.
One of the differences between Brady and Manning is that Brady played for less to win titles. Manning took more, but also wanted all kinds of weapons around him. The money for those weapons could not be spent to bolster the D.
I have no answer about injuries but it was odd watching Dre Greenlaw tear an Achilles running onto the field. I have heard stories about guys younger than you and me tearing an ACL stepping off a curb or making a small jump so who knows. Step lightly. 😊