If he were on any other team, he would win a Super Bowl
Why does he stay?
Carson Palmer also was in his position, being the best QB in football with no team around him. He took them to the playoffs first time in like 30 years, which is the longest stretch of not reaching the playoffs by any team in NFL history, and promptly has an injury that should have ended his career. But he battled back and was their QB again, only, he refused to play for the Bungals as he demanded a trade. Problem was, the owner, Mike Brown, refused to trade him, so he promptly sat the bench and flushed $50 million down the toilet. But by that time he had made a lot of money and knew he could not by his health back, so after sitting the bench a year the owner finally traded him
Carson made a modest comeback but finally had an offensive line that would protect him. He was never the same QB after the injury, however.
Joe Burrow gets hit year after year more than any QB in the NFL, and also had a severe injury that I thought would have ended his career, but he somehow battled back like Carson. The problem with Joe, however, is that he is not as old and wise as Carson. And as we all know, all young men think they are indestructible, which they certainly are not.
Joe needs to either demand a trade like Carson Palmer did or wind up like Carson Palmer, or worse.
The Bungals are the most dysfunctional organization, not just in the NFL, but the most dysfunctional organization in professional sports in the entire world.
It all goes back to Paul Brown, a football legend who began his career as a coach with the Ohio State Buckeyes, winning OSU's first national championship in college football. He then goes on to help start the NFL with the Cleveland Browns, hence the Browns name. But he somehow lost control over his own team. It created bad blood between Paul and those that stole the team from him, so to get even he goes to Cincinnati to battle the Browns directly, and dominated them most of the time. He then goes to 2 Super Bowls, both of which he almost won against arguably the best team in NFL history, which was Joe Montana and the San Fransico 49'ers. During that era, the AFC always got blow out by the superior NFC EXCEPT when they played the Bengals.
But then tragedy struck. Paul Brown died in 1990. as the team died with him. His son, Mike Brown, took over. Problem was, Mike was just a stupid lawyer and not the football genius his father was. The other problem was, since Paul Brown had his team stolen from him in Cleveland, he became paranoid when he started the Bengals. That meant there was no GM, and little scouting. Paul simply ran it all, because he was able and still win doing it. However, once he died, a huge vacuum was created, the sucking sound can still be heard today. Now the team is run by the Brown family, with his mother in law doing payroll, and his granddaughter doing scouting, etc. The entire team now is nothing more than a way to enrich their family.
Sounds pretty bad, right? Well after Paul Brown died the team went on a horrendous losing streak lasting about 30 years or so. In addition to that losing streak, Mike Brown convinced the city of Cincinnati and their taxpayers to pay for a stadium he would use. The stadium was millions of dollars over budget, of course, which pissed off the taxpayers. But perhaps the thing that pissed them off the most was, he continued to run out their terrible teams. So the city of Cincinnati sued Mike Brown, underlying legal verbiage that said the city was providing him with the stadium to field a competitive team, underlying the word "competitive", which they were not. Then all of a sudden, they go get Carson Palmer and a new coach and make it to the playoffs in about 30 years, only to then lose and lose Carson to injury.
That is the ONLY reason the team improved, as Mike has no interest in winning, other than just to avoid getting sued.
And now you know more than you ever wanted about this pathetically sad sports franchise.
