The Cincinnati Bengals are the only winless team remaining in the NFL. They’re so bad, why don’t we talk about them?
And then there was one, one ultra sad team in the NFL.
With the dead-fish Miami Dolphins shooting out of the early November sky to beat the New York Jets last Sunday, only the stray-cat Cincinnati Bengals have yet to win a game in 2019.
When the greatest feral Arlingtonian black cat of all time is more entertaining on Monday Night Football than your football team, then you have a serious problem. Not even Kevin Harlan on a microphone can make you interesting. The Bengals were on bye last week after getting 11 personnel-ed to death by Sean McVay, Jared Goff and the Los Angeles Rams in Week 8.
Benching quarterback Andy Dalton on his 32nd birthday was awkward. Finding out new head coach Zac Taylor can’t win football games on now two continents? Incredibly awkward. He’s running out of continents! The Bengals were the first team to clinch a non-winning record this season and did so in the minimum number of weeks. Eight games, zero wins.
In the NFL big cat power rankings, the Bengals finish in fourth, which is also last, behind the Carolina Panthers, the Jacksonville Jaguars and the Detroit Lions. When you bring absolutely nothing to Caturday except being the second-best American football team in your Southern Ohio metropolis (Go Bearcats!), people tend to forget about their favorite Ohioan tigers.
Do the Bengals still exist? Does anybody care? Have they been contracted like the Miami Fusion or the Tampa Bay Mutiny? When an MLS expansion team playing in Nippert Stadium wins six more games than you, you’re not playing great football. The Cincinnati Reds finishing in not last place in the NL Central for the first time since 2014 was more entertaining that this. It’s that bad.
So what are the sad Bengals to supposed to do now? Enjoy The Ryan Finley Show? He’ll find out fast that he’s not in Raleigh anymore and that he’s now the fourth-best former Wolfpack starting quarterback in the league behind Russell Wilson, Philip Rivers and Jacoby Brissett. Finding out he’s not Mike Glennon can be the saddest of positives the rest of the way. Playmakers on three!
If rooting for the Bengals is impossible, you can enjoy calling the kettle black by seeing whatever the hell is going on with that Mistake on the Lake. At least both of your starting quarterbacks don’t shave their facial hair in three separate stages during a road loss or your egocentric childlike wide receiver gifts goat shoes to a G.O.A.T. Better yet, at least you don’t live in Cleveland.
So besides watching Finley finally getting a chance to play and watching octogenarian owner Mike Brown not eat a cent of Taylor’s contract, what is your best viewing option moving forward? How about cheering on a former Buckeye who is now a Bayou Bengal in the LSU Tigers’ Joe Burrow? He plays quarterback, he grew up in Ohio and he’s got the Eye of the Tiger. Plus, Coach O is awesome!
Burrow is pretty much the quarterback version of Honey Badger. He doesn’t care what you think, he’s ridiculously good at football, will make it to New York for a stuffy trophy ceremony and when it’s all said and done, like Big and Rich, he’s coming to your city.
Burrow is a franchise cornerstone at quarterback and probably won’t abandon you like you did with your subway system, Cincinnati.
The truth is so many of the best quarterbacks are named Joe. Joe Montana. Joe Namath. Joe Theismann before L.T. broke his leg. Joe Flacco because he was temporarily elite once. Do I need to go on? Truthfully, Burrow will bury the Red Rifle in the Queen City. Heck, he might even boom Boomer. Though he’ll need an epic ‘stache to pass Ken Anderson, Burrow has time to grow one.
Ultimately, the Bengals haven’t been contracted. Whether that’s good is up for debate. It’s also probably super confusing to not have a semi-awake Marvin Lewis on the sidelines. Well, you’re not dead. So wake up, Cincy!
Joe Burrow, he’s coming.