The Cincinnati Bengals have not been mathematically eliminated, so they still have a shot at the postseason. There is a slim chance that they could actually pull off the last Wild Card spot.
The Bengals are playing the tough 10-3 Minnesota Vikings at 1:00 pm Eastern Standard Time in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The last time these two teams faced off, Week 16 of the 2013-14 season, Matt Cassel led the Vikes, but the Bengals, at home at Paul Brown Stadium in Cincinnati, Ohio, took them to the slaughterhouse with an astonishing 42-14 victory. The purple and gold is heavily favored over the 5-8 Jungle, but Andy Dalton and A.J. Green know how to surprise a crowd; with his accuracy only getting better this year and the constant threat of Green’s hands of steel, the Red Rifle and his offense can clearly upset the Twin Cities’ representative to the National Football League. The New York Jets are playing an NFC demon, the Drew Brees led New Orleans Saints. The Saints have a clear advantage over the J-E-T-S Jets! Jets! Jets!, so maybe “Who Dat?!” will help their brothers to the far north, “Who Dey?!” by eliminating the Jets. Incidentally, if the Bengals and Saints both win, Minnesota and New Orleans would be tied for the second bye week in the NFC (the Vikings, however have the tiebreaker as they defeated the Saints in their only matchup this year 29-19 in Week One). The Miami Dolphins and Buffalo Bills are playing each other and both teams are in the hunt. If the Bills win, the Dolphins are pretty much out of the picture and the Bills would continue to hold that last playoff spot in the AFC. The bright side of that for the Bengals is that they beat Buffalo in their sole clash 20-16 in Week Five, giving Cincy the tiebreaker, if the season should come to a tie between the two after Week 17 (the Bengals would have to go undefeated the rest of the way and the Bills would have to lose their last two games). The next game pertinent to Cincy is the Oakland Raiders versus the Dallas Cowboys. If Dak Prescott can pull off a victory, his last game without Ezekiel Elliott, over Derek Carr and Michael Crabtree, the Raiders would be tied with the Bengals and that would help Cincy a great deal to finally be equal with their rivals. The Raiders lost last week to the Kansas City Chiefs, 26-14 and the Cowboys won their last two games 38-14 over the Washington Redskins and 30-10 over the New York Giants respectively, so that points to a Dallas victory. The Los Angeles Chargers lost to the Kansas City Chiefs 30-13 on Thursday night, so at 7-7, if the Chargers go 1-1 the rest of the way, or 0-2, the Bengals have a shot. If the Chargers win against the Jets next week (that week doesn’t affect the Bengals’ chances if the Saints win), but they still lose the week after, Week 17, against the Oakland Raiders (who would have to lose both this week and next week to help Cincinnati), the two teams (Cincinnati and LA) would be tied at 8-8, with the Bengals having the tiebreaker because they would have the better record inside their own division. The last game the Bengals are counting on is rather unlikely, for it’s the 7-6 Baltimore Ravens against the 0-14 Cleveland Browns. That game looks like a gimme for Joe Flacco and the Ravens, but the Bengals and Ravens play each other in Week 17 and if they Bengals win, despite their 20-0 Week One loss to Baltimore, Cincy would have the better record in their division, the AFC North, and possess the tiebreaker, putting the 8-8 Cincinnati Bengals in the playoffs. Fans out of southwestern Ohio, southeastern Indiana and northern Kentucky got some exciting news this morning that hated Bengals’ coach Marvin Lewis would be leaving after this season, so they have more hope for next year, the 2018-19 season, but they’re not done for 2017-18. The Bengals, though unlucky, are optimistic. Jesse A. Cook “Not Impossible: The Bengals Can Make The Playoffs” December 17, 2017
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The Detroit Lions signed quarterback Matthew Stafford to the highest paid deal in NFL history. Stafford was surprised at the magnitude of the offer; he said, “I had no expectations going into it.”
The contract is for $135 over the course of five years. That’s $27 million per year total and $16.5 million per year in cash. The largest contract privy to the recent transaction occurred earlier in 2017 for $125 million over five years. He signed for $25 million per year total with roughly between $20 million and $18 million in cash per year. That contract exists between quarterback Derek Carr and the Oakland, soon-to-be Las Vegas, Raiders. The glaring issue with the difference in salary of the two deals is a matter of skill. That is an aspect of play that Stafford does not exceed most expectations in. Most statisticians and critics would have fans believe that the New England Patriots’ legendary quarterback, generally considered, by-some, to be the greatest player, not solely in football, but in all sports, of all-time, Tom Brady, should be the highest paid player in NFL history by leaps and bounds, but he graciously allowed the Foxboro-based organization to pay him less, so they could sign other great players. Clearly, the Detroit team has taken a different approach, with a subpar man at the helm of their offense. During his eight year career, the Michigan quarterback has only achieved a 51-58 record. That’s a winning percentage of only 46.8%. By comparison, Brady, who has been in the league since 2000, is 183-52. He has a career winning percentage of 77.9%. Going 9-7 last year, Stafford completed 65.3% of his passes for 4,327 yards and 24 touchdowns. Tied for the second worst record in the NFC playoff picture, Stafford led his team to an atrocious 26-6 loss in the Wild Card Game to the Seattle Seahawks. Again, by comparison, Brady completed 67.4% of his passes for 3,554 yards and 28 touchdowns in only 12 games (due to his four game suspension for the “DeflateGate” scandal that started the 2016-17 season), four games less than Stafford had to play during the regular season. Brady also was the MVP of the Super Bowl in his team’s historic 25 point comeback to beat the Atlanta Falcons in New England’s 34-28 overtime victory. Stafford’s dwindling numbers are representative of the absurdity of the deal. The Detroit decision is quite perplexing to the football world. Jesse A. Cook “The Matthew Stafford Deal Makes No Sense” August 28, 2017 It’s pretty clear that the New England Patriots are much better than the Cincinnati Bengals; five Super Bowls since 2000 versus zero Super Bowls total speaks for itself, but why is New England so much more successful? It’s not just because of the expert coaching of head coach Bill Belichick and the godly athleticism of quarterback Tom Brady. So what makes them the best team in football? Their owner, Robert Kraft.
The Patriots have made several moves that have been great: picking late draft picks, cutting players, and signing different ones. The late draft picks are fairly obvious: Tom Brady, Julian Edelman, Shaq Mason, and Marcus Cannon were all picked in the fourth round or later. Other teams will dismiss these late rounders, but under the steady hands of Kraft and Belichick, all players are looked after and effectively evaluated. One aspect that plays with the hearts and minds of Pats fans is how brilliantly ruthless their team management can be: on several occasions a player who was the star for a year will not be signed back, or they’ll be traded. That’s what made this off season’s ordeal with Malcolm Butler and Stephon Gilmore so uncertain for the team. We all remember how Darrelle Revis and Aqib Talib had one great year, each of them, with the team, then left immediately afterwards. People were concerned that since Kraft had made the deal for Gilmore, Butler would be leaving without the door hitting him on the way out. Often times, players come to New England and hit their stride, then leave and are mediocre at best. Vince Wilfork might be a Hall of Famer for his career in Foxboro, but he sort of trailed off at the end with the Houston Texans. Nobody wanted to see the hero of Super Bowl XLIX leave and never be heard from, again, yet with the Pats, it often works out best for them. The one, seemingly impossible, but still daunting possibility for one of those types of deals lies with the Joe Montana and Steve Young situation. Montana spent most of his career with the San Francisco 49ers, but one day was sent to the Kansas City Chiefs to be replaced by fellow Hall of Famer Steve Young. Could that be the case with the two quarterbacks, here? When Tom Brady is nearing the end of his hopefully endless career, will Belichick and Kraft send him away to the Buffalo Bills or Jacksonville Jaguars or any other team to be replaced with the next star New England quarterback, Jimmy Garoppolo? It’s possible, but if this were Cincinnati, it might be a different story. You see, it took them years to finally get rid of, the then declining, Carson Palmer and replace him with Andy Dalton. They will hold onto their players far past their prime. Andy Dalton has quite the leg up on A.J. McCarron, so that switch may never happen, which is reasonable, but what about Tyler Boyd versus Brandon LaFell. LaFell is getting older and Boyd is young, hotshot, up-and-coming second year who has a lot of potential. When it is time, will Cincinnati make the transition? With the comparison of New England and Cincinnati comes the comparison of not the type of players they sign, but the type of people: think about Vontaze Burfict versus Dont’a Hightower and how clearly Hightower is much more “down-to-Earth.” In any important game, let alone a playoff game, have you ever seen Hightower and Malcolm Butler get mad at Antonio Jones and shove him around and give the Steelers 30 yards off of penalties and put them in easy field goal range? NO! That thought doesn’t even enter their minds! However, with the brand of men on the Jungle, that happened on January 9, 2016 with Burfict and Adam “Pac-Man” Jones, costing the Bengals their first shot at a playoff win since January 6, 1991 over the Houston Oilers. The team then lost in the next round to the Los Angeles Raiders. That’s how long it’s been: neither team they played in that postseason exists, anymore. Apart from the amount of time elapsed since a Cincinnati playoff win (26 years, 6 months, and 7 days), Cincy does make poor choices in the type of character they choose for their program: specifically, their recent draft pick, running back Joe Mixon. Mixon can say “I am not a crook” all he wants, but punching a woman is still punching a woman. Cincinnati has a bad history with these unstable, dangerous players. Bob Kraft and the Patriots, on the other hand, make better decisions. In 1997, when he drafted defensive tackle Christian Peter, Kraft’s wife, the wonderful, but sadly, late Myra Kraft, advised him to release the man early on because of his violent background. Peter had been accused of assaulting four women during his college career at University of Nebraska and the wise choice to discard of him led to a more disciplined Drew Bledsoe-led team that, commanded by backup Brady after the Bledsoe knee injury, won their first Super Bowl in team history five years later in 2002 with Super Bowl XXXVI. New England wins so much more than Cincinnati because they have a smarter, safer, and less erratic team. Since 2002, the New England Patriots have been the best team in football: Tom Brady is the greatest quarterback ever, Rob Gronkowski is the greatest tight end ever, Bill Belichick is the greatest head coach ever, and Bob Kraft is the greatest owner ever. With five Super Bowl Rings in fifteen years, it could be pretty easy to say that this team is the greatest team ever. They turn late picks into great picks, beloved New Englanders in to see ya laters, and good players who might as well be cons into players who are gone. All of these factors and more have repeatedly added up to a good, successful, and ultimately, great organization. Cincinnati hasn’t won a playoff game 26 years, 6 months, and 7 days because their organization doesn’t dare use these clearly strategically superior tactics. Aside from Cincinnati’s signature Skyline Chili possibly having a leg up on New England’s own Dunkin’ Donuts, Bob Kraft is the man behind why there’s more than one reason why the New England Patriots are constantly hot and the Cincinnati Bengals are not. Jesse A. Cook “Krafting A Team: Why The Bengals Don’t Work And The Patriots Do” June 13, 2017 |
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