| 23 August 2011
[I hope you’re in a sarcastic mood cause I sure as hell am.]
Forget about the embarrassing preseason loss to one of the worst teams in the NFL, the Detroit Lions.
Forget about another blowout loss on Sunday against the New York Jets.
Forget about Mike Brown taking his extreme cheapness to even new levels this season, pocketing the money that would have been owed to Carson Palmer, Chad Ochocinco, Antwan Odom and Tank Johnson. Not to mention the money that it would have taken to re-sign Johnathan Joseph. The Bengals even admitted that Joseph was their No. 1 offseason priority. Fail.
Forget about the fact that the Bengals might have the worst quarterback tandem in the NFL this season with Andy Dalton and Bruce Gradkowski. OK, second worst – Seattle has quite a disaster on their hands with the ambiguously bad duo of Charlie Whitehurst and Tarvaris Jackson. And to be clear, I still think Dalton will be at least a decent NFL quarterback and maybe better. I love his poise for a rookie and his accuracy has been impressive at times. But even the best quarterbacks struggle their rookie season (Peyton Manning, Troy Aikman, etc.). No matter what, Dalton is going to have serious growing pains this year. The offense is going to be extremely frustrating to fans for most of the season. That’s not even up for debate.
Forget about the fact that the defense has not looked up to par yet (although they did look better against the Jets, but the Jets aren’t a very good offensive football team). And forget about the fact that defensive coordinator Mike Zimmer is so upset about Brown going all cheapass this year that there is no way Zimmer will be back next season. (His contract runs out after this season if he signed a two-year extension as reported after the surprisingly-successful 2009 season.)
Forget about all of that stuff. The bottom line is that the Bengals just traded a sixth-round pick (or maybe seventh, specifics haven’t been released other than “late-round pick”) for safety Taylor Mays. Pay no attention that the San Francisco 49ers made it obvious to everyone in the league that they wanted to dump Mays. This is unquestionably the guy that will lead the Bengals to the promised land. Weaklings in the AFC like the Patriots should just step aside now. Move, bitch, get out the way.
Mays is built more like a linebacker at 6-foot-3, 230 pounds. However, he ran a 4.4 40 leading up to the 2010 draft and the 49ers jumped on him in the second round. There were rumors the Bengals coveted Mays, but he was taken a few picks before they "settled" for defensive end Carlos Dunlap. (Wheew, one actually went our way for a chance.)
Mays' rookie year was a disaster and new 49ers head coach Jim Dickface, er, Harbaugh, has been telling people behind closed doors for over a month that he wanted nothing to do with Mays on his team. If the Bengals or another team hadn’t traded for Mays, he eventually would have been released by San Francisco.
All joking aside, the Bengals do need help at safety since the only legit player they appear to have at the position is Reggie Nelson. Chris Crocker’s time as a good NFL player (OK, as a “not horrible NFL player”) is over. This year’s fifth-round pick, Robert Sands, is an extremely impressive athlete, but the jury is still out on how good (or bad) of a football player he is. The other safety that was expected to be in the mix is Gibril Wilson. I’m not actually convinced this person actually exists, but there are those that swear there really is someone named Gibril Wilson on the Bengals’ roster.
Hey, listen Taylor Mays, this is the bottom line: You are now playing on a team that is further under the salary cap than USC was when you played there. (An Ohio State guy making jokes about another college football program? Really? Yeah, that’s right. Don’t even get me started about the Miami Hurricanes. Or the entire SEC beginning with Auburn.)
Also, Mr. Mays, don’t even think about messing up our chances to win the Andrew Luck sweepstakes. When 0-16 is a legit possibility you have to go balls-to-the-wall and make it happen. Course, even if the Bengals do end up with the worst record in the NFL and are guaranteed to have the No. 1 overall pick in the 2012 draft, Luck will probably decide to return to Stanford for a fifth year rather than play for the trainwreck himself, Mike Brown.
Or maybe Luck would just pull a Carson Palmer and retire.
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