Sport

To make matters worse, when Chris Weinke was 28 he looked like he was 39.

Can't imagine why none of his teammates like playing with him. I don't believe that even he believes this. I'm not convinced. He just thinks this is what you're supposed to say when you get benched and it reads as phony. You can't pretend to be a cocky ahole QB if you're A. not good and B. if you're not actually a cocky ahole. It's just going to come across as annoying and try-hard.

Too much of the top talent is spread in too few places. Take guys like Bryce Young and Brock Bowers - they're California kids who went to the SEC, which never used to happen. Up until 25ish years ago players tended to stay closer to home. Guys from the south tended to stay in the south, guys from out west stayed out west, guys from the midwest went to OSU, Michigan, or Notre Dame. Now it's quite regular to see guys from all over the country signing with SEC programs and occasionally OSU gets a florida kid to come North. An expanded playoff with more paths to winning might solve the parity issue because the SEC won't be the only way to win a National Title, but it would effectively end college football as we know it. I'm on the fence.

I've seen this sentiment from a lot of Bills fans too and it's good to read. My best guess about why they didn't make a Bills-Bengals neutral site contingency is that the league doesn't actually want to do the neutral site thing with the Bills and Chiefs and doing it in the divisional round is even more likely to happen between those two teams than it is in the AFC championship game.

The score at the time of the Hamlin injury is irrelevant. Their logic to answer the question, "why didn't the Bengals get a neutral site game with the Bills?' is that the Bengals and Bills played the same number of games and the Bills had one more win, which I sort of get from like a record-keeping point of view - you have to treat the cancelled game as if it wasn't on the schedule, I guess. But this ignores the reality about why that game wasn't settled on the field and since they weren't doing things by the book anyway it wouldn't have been any harder to give the Bengals that same restitution that the Bills got in regards to the Chiefs. The Bills lost their shot to tie the Chiefs in the standings and the Bengals lost their shot to tie the Bills, but these two scenarios are being treated differently. It's bullcrap.

49ers Chargers Bills Giants Bengals Cowboys

Head coaches? I can't think of one. That Browns oline coach tho.

Mike Tomlin and the Steelers have some voodoo thing going on. After losing to the Bengals to go 3-7 they needed all of the Browns, Jets, Dolphins, Titans, and Patriots to fall apart while winning every game themselves and it basically came down to a field goal in the last Dolphins game. Things outside of their control seem to go right so often for them. It's truly maddening. Thankfully the Bengals have managed to beat them and semi-often take division titles away from them. The Browns, though, haven't finished ahead of the Steelers in the standings since 1989. That would be my Joker origin story if I was a Browns fan. Not even a Rodgers thing. The Packers are the Steelers of the NFC and I'm sick of their bulls***.

Packers, Steelers, and Patriots miss the playoffs. It's a good year.

Good thing I spent two days grumpy about that coin toss. Mixon's coin toss TD celebration had to happen and it was great. Every team in the league would've done the same thing.

Two weeks ago the ball slipped out of Mac Jones’s left hand (he’s right handed) and then he waived it around trying to grab the ball. The Bengals picked it up and scored. Review said the panicked hand waving was enough to constitute a throwing motion. underhanded, with his non throwing hand. Next play the Patriots scored on one of the luckiest Hail Mary heaves I’ve ever seen. It was a 14 point swing. Dobbs fumble was more of a pass than Mac Jones’s “pass”.

Okay I get what you’re saying now. My mistake. when I went to the Bengals game in Nashville this year I apologized to all the Titans fans around me and one Titans fan said “we’re used to being everybody’s road game destination. Don’t worry about it. At least you’re not Steelers fans.” I imagine Las Vegas would be that times 5. Mark Davis should welcome the visiting fans. Their money is green too. He wasn’t getting that at the old place is Oakland.

Which opens Pandora's box of bulls** for many other things. It's easier to explain unfavorable outcomes for rules that were already written. It's impossible to do what they did instead without inviting bias. Not entirely correct. They would've still needed to beat Baltimore to clinch the two seed, which is valuable for the second round home game. They controlled their own destiny and lost it through no fault of their own. They probably would've played starters, but you manage the game entirely differently under this scenario than the one they face now. That's incorrect. If the Bengals had lost to the Bills the Bengals would've been 11-5 and the Ravens would be 10-6 going into tomorrow so any Bengals win over the Ravens would've made them 12-5, the Ravens 10-7, which automatically clinches the division for the Bengals without needing tiebreakers. It's unfair to the Bengals because we don't get the Ravens' coin toss scenario applied to us with regards to a potential playoff matchup with the Bills or Chiefs when our relationship to those teams is the exact same as the Ravens relationship is to the Bengals. Does that make sense? Their schedule has been so easy! Nobody is talking about this. I have a sneaky feeling the Chiefs are going to lose their divisional round game.

It would've cost nothing extra to apply the coin toss scenario consistently throughout. That's my biggest problem. It's almost like they thought simply giving the Bengals the division championship title would appease them. I don't give a honk about the division championship if it doesn't mean a home playoff game. If the Bengals had beaten the Bills and they finished with the same record the Bengals would've had the two seed. That there's no consideration for that because they're using the logic of "the Bills have more wins in the same number of games" and ignoring that they had a game scheduled. That's how it comes across on paper, but in reality we all know there was supposed to be a football game between those two (and I feel like the Bengals were going to win. That doesn't matter and we'll never know, but I feel like throwing that in). The way they've decided this essentially hands the Bills the W and the Bengals the L for the Monday Night non game. And it came out this morning that the Bengals abstained from the vote to be good sports while the Ravens voted yes for the proposal. You fools! Punished a second time this week for doing the right thing.

I don't know what the Bills and Chiefs gripes are, but my gripe with the Bengals is the actual rules state this game with the Ravens on Sunday shouldn't matter for the division and the league's concocted this home field coin toss scenario should the Ravens win, which means the Bengals actually have to go all out in the game, something they could've avoided by beating Buffalo on Monday. Through no fault of their own they were robbed of the chance to clinch home field in the wildcard, robbed of controlling their destiny for the two seed, AND Baltimore was given this extra credit. That'd be fine if we got the same treatment extending up the standings in regards to a potential meeting with the Chiefs and Bills. If that's how it played out we would have the exact same relationship in that scenario as the Bengals-Ravens do now, but if we all win and then go to Buffalo and KC in the second round they said "LOL tough sh** No coin toss. Go to Buffalo. We hate you." That inconsistent logic manages to the Bengals going up and going down. It's the inconsistency that pisses me off the most.

I'm not worried about the mental state of either team, especially now that Hamlin's pulled through and has spoken to his teammates and a few of the Bengals visited him in the hospital. I could see palpable relief in interviews when it was announced that Hamlin was going to be alright. I think the Bills are going to be motivated to "win for Damar" and will blow out the Pats (also because I don't think very highly of this Patriots team) and I think the Bengals are now pissed off by the royal shaft the NFL stuck them with and this group seems to play well when they have an extra chip on their shoulders.

If you can't declare a winner or loser because the game wasn't far enough along you also can't declare it a tie. I don't think it's too much to ask to just use the rules they already had on the books for No Contest decisions. I do think it's funny that after two years of people saying "I hate how the records look with the 17 game schedule" we're going to get two, old fashioned, aesthetically pleasing 16 game season records like we all know and love. Related: Is Roger Goodell still with us? A player in his league nearly dies and he hasn't appeared on camera at all to make a statement at all. I don't expect a lot of that guy because I know who signs his checks, but come on. Pretend like you're running the country's biggest sports league.

Yes. That's what the NFL rules say. Yes, but at least that's tough noogies because of an already defined set of rules and not tough noogies because Goodell and a bunch of guys made up a bunch of :censored: 11 minutes before the playoffs, voting for rules changes with specific team interests spelled out, and setting a bad precedent. One is unbiased, the other introduces various levels of inequity. I could live with the former. Now the next time this happens we get to do this whole "please be nice to my team" thing. Just leave the rules as is so it's not a case-by-case basis thing. It's :censored:ing dumb!

That’s what I’m saying. If the Bengals lose to the Ravens the ravens get a coin toss, but if the Bengals and Chiefs wind up in the same relationship in the divisional round the Bengals don’t get a coin toss. The only thing I can figure is they’re giving Baltimore the coin toss as an extra credit because they would have beaten the Bengals twice. It’s still all dumb and everything would’ve been cleanly solved by just using the damn rules about no contest decisions as they were written for this exact scenario. Some teams would’ve been slighted, but at least they would’ve felt slighted by prewritten rules and not rules made up in the nfl office this week. This sets a new bad precedent and displays varying levels of favoritism. You can't play favorites with pre-written rules.

It'll be moot if they just beat the Ravens on Sunday, but per the actual rules as they were already written they shouldn't have had to and they've been changed on the team at the last minute, which we can all agree is bulls***. With the coin toss scenario and the likelihood that the Ravens will be the 6 seed they're essentially asking the Bengals to win their wildcard game twice if they want to advance to the division round, which they will have to play on the road through no fault of their own. The actual proposal makes no :censored:ing sense, zero logical consistency. It would've taken nothing extra to give the Bengals the same deal they gave the Ravens and Bills and if I didn't know better I'd say it's punishment for doing the right thing on Monday night.

Zac Taylor's response to McDermott got the ball rolling on ending the game* and he should get credit for stopping the game, but I also feel like every coach in the league now would look at McDermott and make the same call. 20 years ago, though, I think both coaches would've tried to power through and then said the right things after the game. I still remember watching the Mike Utley and Reggie Brown games as a kid and not even thinking it was weird that they kept playing. They definitely would've kept playing if the Hamlin situation happened 30 years ago. Thankfully those sentiments are changing for the better. After the COVID year and Hamlin situation it's not hard to dream up bad hypotheticals for why a game might not be completed - a mass shooting at a game to suggest an absolute nightmare scenario. Because of that I've actually been very surprised how unprepared the NFL is in the event of a game not being completed. They have rules in their books about what to do, but they seem very eager to just ignore them in favor of this farkakte plan. *and the NFL's public lauding of Taylor followed with the playoff proposal being more unfavorable to the Bengals than any other team feels like they're sending the message, "Nice work, Taylor. You did the right thing. Nobody ever do that again."

Before they went to the extremely Arena League uniforms that looked like the Titans and Miami Hurricanes had a baby they wore these fun guitar neck striped pants, which young me loved. Best pictures I could find.

Last week the Bengals had a shot at the 1 seed and now there's a chance they could win their division and still play the wildcard game in Baltimore, which essentially means Division champions in title (and next season's schedule) only. Gee thanks. They gave the Bills and Ravens a coin toss scenario, but we don't get a coin scenario should we play the Bills in the divisional round? Feels like we got the worst end of everything here despite doing the right thing on Monday night. I don't know why that doesn't seem to count for anything here.

I don't like that idea because a few teams played differently last week because they thought the game didn't matter for them. Also it would probably put stupid Steelers in the playoffs. It would be incredibly NFL to experience an episode caused by their dangerous sport and respond by playing more of their dangerous sport.

Preface: This is like fourth hand telephone and none of these people worked on Hamlin and I'm not a medical professional so it's all speculation and don't repeat this as true gospel. SIL is a physical therapist at a hospital here in Cincinnati and works with a doctor who also works at UC. Doctor, who, again, did not treat Hamlin, told my SIL that Hamlin may have suffered from acute respiratory distress syndrome which can happen after cardiac arrest/CPR and that's why they were having difficulty getting him off the ventilator. Because of ARDS they had to flip him on his stomach to help his lungs heal, which means they had to sedate him further, which is why it took 40 something hours to wake him up. She also said that she heard the CT scans of his brain looked really good. and again disclaimer that's just what she told me, she hasn't been treating him, and I don't pretend to know what I'm talking about.