Anybody else catching some Saints flashbacks from this Bengals team?
I think it’s more likely that Burrow asks to be traded for a few reasons.
2. Getting lost in the shuffle as a result of being in the same division as Baltimore and Pittsburgh.
2. Cincinnati has a earned reputation of being the cheapest organization in the League.
Yeah, unless Cincinnati has some super great start to their season where they maybe split their divisional series with Baltimore or lose their divisional series with Pittsburgh, and somehow end their regular-season at 10-7 or 11-6 and go into the postseason with a huge, inordinate amount of momentum and they happen to get lucky or extremely fortunate late in the 4th quarter like they did @ Titans and Chiefs, particularly where they went up against a worn-down, tired and exhausted Chiefs team that had just won a heavyweight, proverbial 15-round OT game vs. Buffalo, an instant classic and IMHO, the best NFL Divisional Rd. game since 2003's 2OT St. Louis vs. Carolina nearly two decades before. That's really one of the few conceivable paths Bengals have to make it back to another Super Bowl and one most of us here at SR.com will admit, it's an extremely difficult path.
I don't see either Baltimore or Pittsburgh off a cliff over the next couple of years, especially since Steelers have a reliable veteran QB in Russell Wilson, who might've found the team to pad his career stats enough a get a few more playoff wins to earn an HOF induction if he remains there a few more years, so Cincy sort of stuck in that 3rd gear shift in the AFC North, a decent-to-good good but one that likely won't be winning 12-13 games every season due to ultra-tough competition. Cleveland, IMHO, may not be that far behind in getting some semblance of its act together, too.
Mike Brown is easily, hands down, one of the worst, cheapest, most incompetent NFL owners over the past 30+ years. The terrible "Bungles" period of ineptitude, poor quality of play from 1991-2005 is evidence not that. The only reason he's even an owner is due to genetics and being the son of a legendary, innovative former NFL HC, owner of two NFL franchises, Paul Brown. For years, he was so cheap, the Bengals were one of the few NFL teams who didn't have an actual NFL training facility and he allowed Pro-Bowlers like Corey Dillon, Andy Dalton, Carson Palmer to demand trades and walk away in disgust. Andy Dalton may be the dime store's version of Tony Romo but he was a huge, prominent factor in Cincinnati making 5 consecutive playoff berths and remaining their starting QB for nearly a decade. He also got voted to a couple of Pro Bowls. He won't be remembered as any all-time great, but if you help lead your team to multiple consecutive post-season appearances and get a few Pro Bowl nods, Dalton have to done at least something right for a while at least.