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Posted on the Bengal's forum... and believe it or not, he's taking a lot of heat:
I treat my sports teams the way I would the child I'll probably never have. When they screw up, I know that other factors are often in play and I'll acknowledge them, but I usually still end up holding them more accountable than anything else, and I rarely buy their excuses.
If your child does something dumb - as all children do - do you care that his/her buddies were also complicit? Do you really care what the excuses or the reasons are? Do you really care about what made them misbehave?
No. Not if you're a good parent.
On Saturday night, the Bengals lost a game that I believe serves as the worst loss in the 47-year history of the franchise (Yes, worse than both Super Bowls), which is going to take an entire offseason, and perhaps beyond, to emotionally recover from.
Whatever you call this mixture of emotions that all Bengals fans are feeling, I certainly empathize. I posted this way-too-long entry on Friday morning, in part because I wanted to express exactly how much I wanted an elusive playoff victory. If you're one of those fans who felt physically ill after the game, I can relate. And if you laid in bed until Sunday morning's early hours contemplating everything that went wrong, I can assure you that you have a partner in insomnia here.
I'm not sure I could have done a radio show on Sunday. I called Sunday's UC/South Florida game in a total fog, and by Sunday evening, I was drained from the entire run of thoughts and emotions of the previous 24 or so hours.
The sting still felt fresh yesterday, the wound is still open today, and the anger is going to last a while.
I completely get it because I share it.
And I still blame the Bengals more than anyone or anything else.
The last couple of days have yielded a lot of emotions, and plenty of dissection of nearly everything that happened on Saturday night, and there's been no shortage of things to revisit, discuss, scrutinize, and debate. As much as I wish we were looking ahead to a game this Saturday in Foxborough, it's good for my businesss - not because the Bengals lost, but because the way they lost gave us no shortage of things to talk about.
But amid all of it, I still come back to the things the Bengals did to themselves, particularly in the final two minutes.
*There was a two-point conversion try that occurred with AJ Green on the sidelines and looked like it was barely even thought out.
*There was Jeremy Hill's fumble.
*There was the defensive strategy of letting Ben Roethlisberger dink and dunk his way downfield after he'd been carted off with a right shoulder injury that clearly left him unable to throw downfield.
*There was the inability of a good defense to get one more stop on a potentially game-ending fourth and three play.
*And then, of course, there were the penalties on Vontaze Burfict and Adam Jones.
The Bengals had numerous opportunities to either enhance their chances of winning or completely salt the game away, and they blew it.
The Stealers won, but the Bengals beat themselves. I felt that way on Saturday, I thought the same on Sunday, and I feel that way here on Tuesday morning.
I point the finger more than ever before at Marvin Lewis, and it's not just because of the loss or his stunning 0-7 playoff mark, it's because of the way they lost in the final minutes and the way his team melted down.
I can't get over two things....
1) That all week leading up to Saturday night's game, we wondered if the Bengals could successfully avoid losing their cool and if when thing started getting heated, the Bengals could remain composed. They were fair questions, based on the way the Bengals came unglued against the Stealers just four weeks earlier.
And you know what I didn't hear one person claim?
That we could be rest assured that Marvin Lewis would keep his team from melting down.
Seriously. do you know anyone who had complete confidence that Marvin would maintain complete control of his players?
2) That Marvin Lewis' playoff history is bookended by emotional collapses. When his team played the Stealers in the postseason ten years ago, something happened in the locker room at halftime. Accounts of what exactly went down differ, but we know that something happened, and while the Carson Palmer injury clearly had an effect that afternoon, the eventual loss has often been cited - and I believe accurately - as an instance in which the Bengals collapsed emotionally.
Every single roster spot has turned over since 2005. The common denominator remains the head coach.
His teams have rarely been known for being able to keep their cool, and while many Marvin teams have been celebrated for having a bit of an edge to them, the most sobering thing about the way some of his players lost their minds on Saturday night is that what happened really isn't all that surprising.
Throw in this: That of Marvin Lewis' seven playoff losses, his team's performance in a game during which they completely choked and embarrassed themselves was their best showing.
This was on the Bengals, and in turn, it was on Marvin Lewis.
Of course, some would rather deflect attention elsewhere.
Look, I want to be clear about this: The officials lost control of that game. The league has a major problem when it comes to how increasingly difficult this game is becoming to officiate and how nearly impossible it's become for the average fan to expect the refs to not get in the way. There were major issues the league needs to address with Saturday's game specifically, including the Ryan Shazier hit on Gio Bernard and Pittsburgh's resulting celebration of it, the Mike Munchak hair-pulling, why Joey Porter was allowed to come onto the field to successfully bait the Bengals into doing something stupid, why Adam Jones was flagged during such a critical, game-deciding moment, and how the NFL could justify using any of the officials from the December 13th game to work the playoff rematch.
I find the Stealers to be a team of hypocrites. I think Mike Tomlin runs a dirty team. And despite winning, Pittsburgh showed its *** just as much as the Bengals did. I think the regard with which the league and media holds the Rooney family helps them escape the scrutiny that would be aimed at any other team that operated the way the Stealers do.
The league itself, despite its popularity being at an all-time high, is developing a credibility issue with the quality of its officiating and the complexity of its rulebook. Maybe an offseason without a phony non-troversy like Deflategate will allow Roger Goodell sufficient time to address some growing problems with the way his game is called.
But I'm a Bengals fan, and so what they did to self-destruct and fail once again in the playoffs matters much, much more to me than anything the league, the officials, and the Stealers did to contribute.
And so I'm not combing though various Vines and YouTube videos of Saturday night's most controversial plays like I'm analyzing the Zapruder film. I'm not searching for the latest conspiracy theory - Hey! Did you hear the the head linesman had a brother who once had a layover at the Pittsburgh airport? - and I'm sorry, I appreciate the passion, but I'm not signing any petitions.
I'm focused on the Bengals, what they can control - which for now isn't themselves, what they do next, and most importantly, what they can do better.
Because if they're ever going to win anything meaningful they'll need to do better than they did on Saturday night.
Read more: http://www.espn1530.com/onair/mo-eg...cuses-for-the-bengals-14267532/#ixzz3x7o1Pyqs
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