Week 17 Preview

week 17 preview
Category: Sports

This article was written on Christmas Day 2006.

On a fittingly grey, morose Christmas Day, I contemplate why I care so much. Why do I allow myself to feel hurt over a game played by people who don't even know who I am? I should be able to shrug it off and enjoy the fact that today's Christmas, instead of feeling shell-shocked as if I watched my dog get struck by a Metro bus. It feels silly, but I cant shake it yet.

That's why we're fans. The sting of defeat is what keeps us coming back for more. To fail in such a dramatic, painful fashion ensures us that we'll return to our televisions the next time things matter, even more so than if we had we won. It keeps the fire lit. Had we been crushed by 30, we would throw our hands up and say "screw it, they're not that good anyway." That would be easier to sort out. But we recognize the vast potential for success and are therefore naturally disappointed when it doesn't transpire that way. It's the expectations we create that leads to such an immense feeling of letdown.

We can take the easy route and blame Brad St. Louis for missing the playoffs and there is some validity in that, but we know that's not what its come down to. The Bengals just haven't behaved like a playoff team all season. It's not that they've been overmatched and physically the players seem more than adequate, so why the letdown?

I watched Mike Patrick talk about Bobby Knight's philosophy on basketball. Knight says that a team doesn't compete against the other team, they compete against the game itself. If a team loses it's because they didn't play the game the right way and not because of what the other team did to them. I like that and think you could attribute that thinking to the Bengals this season. Everyone knows the talent is there but the mindstate of the team devoured the chance for the dominence we came to expect from them.

The collective mind of the Bengals is a fragile one. It's easily influenced, it craves attention, it's self-concious and has a hard time bouncing back from letdowns. The perverbial hypothalamus that is Marvin and his flunkies are to blame for not firing off the correct nuerons at the correct times, or whatever it is that a hypothalalmus actually does. That is to say, they haven't molded a winning attitude and it's translated into unnecessary losses. The entire orginazation needs to mature and it has to start with Marvin shedding his stubborness on doing things "his way".

It's like he'd rather develope players than win games. It's the classic square-peg-in-the-round-hole scenario with forcing players to do it the Marvin way instead of utilizing thier unique abilites in the most effecient way. In Blatimre, Marvin had the most technically sound players a coach could ask for. He didn't have to take on the nearly impossible task of changing the way his players play the game because they were already prepared for success in the NFL. He didn't have to start from scratch like he's had to do here. I personally dont have the patience to watch the team lose while the players learn to play Marvin ball instead of football. The staff refuses to break from their philosophy and demand players fall into the roles the coaches have designed for them rather than do what they do best.

Ultimately, stubborness is killing the program. It's effecting the players attitudes about winning, creating unnecessary anxiety within the locker room, and losing games. Maybe it's time to evalute Marvin as a less-than-stellar game coach. The man knows talent and drafts well. He's good at not overpaying glamorous free agents and he does have some direction he wants to see the team go in. All those qualities would make a hell of a GM, but as a head coach, he may not be the best man for the job. He seems a better behind the scenes guy. We need a coach with a better handle on group dynamics, a better handle on cultivating a winning attitude and a guy who can "rally the troops". Marvin surrounds himself with great position coaches, but the playcallers fall victim to his stubborness and his phobias. They have a job to keep, afterall.

I hope Sunday we play a crsip game and give us more hope for next season. We can't figure we'll make the playoffs with such distant cosmic forces that need to line up just right to make it happen. We blew it last week on penalties more than anything else. We didn't play the game the right way and that's why we lost. Not because Denver was better than us. It's been that way in every loss this season. It all points back to one brain....Marvin's.



Mojokong- still shakin' my monkey head