Apparently everyone on the planet thinks that the Bengals hit one out of the park on nearly every pick of the 2012 draft. When I saw what Joe Reedy wrote about it - I was excited. I do like how the Bengals seem to have a plan, and that everyone is on board with said plan. When I read how Mike Brown is "acquiescing more" to the opinion of others, I fell off my chair. I also like how Marvin is talking about competition in camp, and "play for pay." They also did not draft a linebacker from USC - nice.
A couple of caveats that temper my enthusiasm...
The Bengals still have a huge amount of cap space that at this point in free agency, will probably go only towards ensuring a nice fat profit for the family Brown. The Law Firm was well, perfectly acceptable. But spend money in the future to win, please.
While Marvin appears to have a good recent handle on influencing personnel, this does not change how he coaches in crucial game situations. (TERRIBLY!)
We're not moralistic, finger waggers, but the Bengals still have that propensity to chase the same character discounts that partially helped derail the Palmer Era. And they just signed Burfict, whose behavior reminds me of "Odell Henry."
Drafts can look good on paper, but has anything really changed yet? A couple of new scouts remains the only tangible difference I know of. The rest is anecdotal stories about Mikey deferring to others in the draft war room. I still want that practice bubble, which is a no-brainer to everyone except You Know Who.
But it's hard to see what, if anything, looms beyond Suggs-like injuries to torpedo the 2012 season. They're some expiring coaching contracts land mines after the season that could blow things to holy hell, but well, for now all calm on the western front.
Who Dey?
Comrade Ickey
PS - SwB here, please welcome Comrade Ickey into the WDR family. He's going to help keep the blog more active than the past few months.
Perhaps if Gruden managed the game and the clock that would help.
Ultimately what we want is GM Marvin and some other good game day head coach.
Posted by: #DNOPBS | May 04, 2012 at 07:58 PM
There's a reason to be optimistic: Dalton. He's a winner, and that's the only position that can overcome generally shaky management to get this team out of the grasp of horrific recent history. But if dey go 5-1 to start the season, don't be surprised. Marvin may not know how to do the toothpaste dance, but he is pretty good when momentum is on his side.
Posted by: John Gardner | May 05, 2012 at 12:29 AM
Welcome Ickey,
Yes, it seems optimism is abound and for pretty good reasons. As one who is typically a curmudgeon about the way the team is run, I must sa that I am unable to find a whole lot to bitch about right now. I believe it was ackowledged here back in 2008/09 that change, should we be lucky enough to affect it (that may be debatable, but I would like to think that the work of this site and it's founders has had some impact on the applicsation of pressure to the fam) would likely come slowly. I think that if we all had to clarity then to see change coming, we would have been happy to know that by 2012, Mike had unequivocally relinquished a significant amount of control in player personnel decisions (as evidenced by a drafting of Dalton instead of the kid from arkansas that mike wanted, and also the drafting of Zeitler in rd 1, which I know had to be against MIke's desires. He probably wanted Jenkins there), and the reigns in general. Certainly we have all learned to be cautious with optimism as long time bengals, but I think a little is warranted right now.
Posted by: CurseofBoJackson | May 05, 2012 at 01:48 PM
Welcome to the officiality, Ickey.
As a favor for a long-time co-revolutionary, do you guys have any control over the ads that come up on this site? Or more to the point, where they're coming from. The server ads.sixapart.com recently started advertising here and the site takes five times as long to load any given page since. I may be the only one experiencing the issue, but if I'm not that's a killer for traffic - I know for me personally I've got less desire to swing by here when I know it means sitting around waiting for comments to load. Just a thought.
Viva!
Posted by: Mockenrue | May 06, 2012 at 02:03 AM
It takes longer to load the page for me, too. I thought it was my computer, but it obviously isn't. It is frustrating.
Posted by: Sambo | May 06, 2012 at 12:45 PM
Same here, and I have AdBlock Plus running in Chrome.
Posted by: Wyatt | May 06, 2012 at 02:18 PM
Eh, don't bitch about the cap space. Regardless of why we've been saving it, a year or two down the road when we have to be getting around to extending players like Atkins, Gresham, Dunlap, Dalton, and Green, we'll have the money and the space to do it. I'm glad that they've actually been saving it so we'll have the capability of doing that.
And unlike Odell and Henry, we didn't waste a pick on Burfict, so if he screws up, he's gone, and there's no skin off our nose for it.
It's good that you can find so little to nitpick about though! If even the most pessimistic of us can find so little to complain about, then it's obviously a good sign.
Posted by: Doc Scratch | May 06, 2012 at 11:09 PM
I still think, although he seems to be a good guy and teacher that Marvin is only an 8-8 coach. The Bengals are going to need another guy to get to the next level.
Posted by: 5chw4r7z | May 07, 2012 at 10:47 AM
"I still want that practice bubble, which is a no-brainer to everyone except You Know Who."
HAHAHA (x ∞)
Y'know, even if the draft picks don't yield the kind of returns we'd all like, well y'know, nobody's Burfict.
Oh, wait a minute...so that's why Mikey did that...
Draft busts be damned; having a cold Yuengling. Life is still good!
Posted by: Hofbraunow | May 08, 2012 at 10:28 PM
PS I too have noticed that the page here seems to load very slowly...I get the ads on the sides and the WDR banner header at the top,
and then a blank space where the blog/comments usually are...if it has anything to do with the rent on the place I understand...but I've noticed Yahoo seems like it's all screwed to hell too...maybe a server issue somewhere in WAN-land?
Posted by: Hofbraunow | May 08, 2012 at 10:34 PM
Yea, for well over a month now your page loads slower than AOL on a land line in 1995. Love the site, but that is a detractor when one is attempting to log on an off fairly quickly mid day etc...
E
Posted by: CurseofBoJackson | May 15, 2012 at 01:52 PM
Es ist mir eine große Freude, Ihre Website zu besuchen und Ihren ausgezeichneten Beitrag hier zu genießen. Ich liebe es.
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The concept is typically extended to include the attitude of hope for future conditions unfolding as optimal as well. The more broad concept of optimism is the understanding that all of nature, past, present and future, operates by laws of optimization along the lines of Hamilton's principle of optimization in the realm of physics.
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The spambots are annexing WDR. It has come to this.
Posted by: Mockenrue | May 31, 2012 at 07:29 AM
This site officially sucks. Peace out WDR...
Posted by: Bengals Fan Down South | June 09, 2012 at 07:33 PM
Maybe it's just a dull offseason,
and there's no point in paying full price for a website, is that what's going on?
Cause yeah, it's gotten pretty dogged out, the page loads way slowly. I can't stand spambots. Not even Kraut spambots.
Although, "Kraut-bot" does sound pretty cool. Kraut-bots.
Posted by: Hofbraunow | June 23, 2012 at 03:28 AM
There's plenty of sites for speculation about how Burfict is the new Ray Lewis...
just not that much to talk about without the preseason!
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