A Uniquely Stupid Man - Mike Brown

If Jerry Jones is the most outspoken NFL owner, then Mike Brown is the most stupid.  At the NFL’s recent annual meetings in Arizona, it appeared that Mike Brown was both acting as though he was Cincinnati’s Moses who would rescue the city from its years of mediocrity, while also lambasting its fans for acting too “spoiled.” It would have been in Brown’s best interest, for once, to do what he has been doing with his football team for the last decade – nothing.

Brown admitted in Paul Dehner Jr.'s article in the Cincinnati Enquirer that the hire of Zac Taylor as the new head coach “was the biggest change in one year in the history of the franchise.” Considering this is Brown’s now eighth head coach since he inherited the title of “Owner of the Bengals” from his late father, it wouldn’t appear that the hiring of a new head coach would constitute the greatest change in the history of the franchise. Then again Brown is eighty-three years old.  Although he is not the oldest owner in the NFL, he does appear to be the one owner who may have the highest probability of being deemed incapacitated.

Now Brown may also believe that the hiring of Taylor is the biggest change in the franchise’s history because, for nearly the past two decades, Brown has been comfortable putting a bag over his head and letting Marvin Lewis run full roughshod with the organization. What caused Brown to “part ways” with Lewis is a bit of mystery. If it was because of Lewis’ third consecutive year of lackluster seasons, then it would have seemed plausible that Lewis would have been let go after the 2008 campaign in which the Bengals, for the third straight year, failed to muster a winning season. On the other hand, it may be that Brown set, like his team in recent years, mediocre goals. For instance, the only reason for which it appears Brown never made a head coaching change was that in nearly half of Lewis’ campaigns he made the playoffs, and five of those appearances happened from 2011 thru 2015. However, under Lewis, the Bengals would only ever be able to accomplish “playoff appearances.” Playoff appearances and no wins is a recipe for a head coach termination. John Fox, the head coach of the Denver Broncos from 2011 thru 2014, made the playoffs in each of those years and even made a Super Bowl appearance. In spite of Fox’s ability to make the playoffs in each of these seasons, he was terminated from the Broncos after a “disappointing” season in which the Broncos lost in the Divisional Round of the 2014 playoffs. If Brown disregards this example, then he may want to take a look at Norv Turner’s tenure with the San Diego Chargers from 2007 thru 2012. In Turner’s first three years, he made the playoffs and in his very first year he made it to the AFC Championship game. However, Turner would be fired after the 2012 season because he had three consecutive seasons of missing the playoffs, not three consecutive losing seasons.  If Lewis recorded the same record in his last three years as what Turner recorded in his, then Brown would probably be giving Lewis another ten-year extension.

At the annual meeting, Brown would later tell reporters that “[the Bengals] have gone through a tremendous revival.” This may be Brown’s senile mind escaping his mouth again because in all likelihood the Bengals, at least this season, won’t have a revival. First history and, yes, science has indicated that coaching changes do not produce better results the year after the coaching change occurred. In Jon Wertheim and Sam Sommer’s book titled, This is Your Brain on Sports, they noted Middle Tennessee State University’s professor’s, Michael Roach, study on the effects of NFL coaching changes. “According to Roach’s model, a team that fired its coach reduced its win total the following year by 0.8 victories. The team’s point differential decreased by 27 points. Its odds of making the playoffs dropped by 12 percent.” Regardless of the merits of this study, on paper it would be hard for one not to have to squint to find the talent on this Bengals roster.

According to ESPN, the Bengals finished the 2018 season as the 26^th best offense in the NFL and the NFL’s worst defense. Of course, the reasoning for the atrocious defense may be a result of injuries but look closer and it may be due to the fact that their best defensive players are nearly a decade into the league. The last defensive pro bowlers the Bengals had were drafted in 2010. In recent years the offensive line has been a liability that fared no better in the 2018 season. According to Pro Football Focus’ rankings, the Bengals finished as the 27^th best offensive line and this takes into account the additions of Cordy Glenn and Billy Price. The failures of the offensive line are what led to “franchise” quarterback Andy Dalton having to be sidelined for the rest of the season after incurring a finger injury in week 12. According to Chris Roling of BengalsWire, it may make financial sense to cut Dalton in the offseason. Combine this with the fact that the lone consistent star on the Bengals, wide receiver AJ Green, is entering the last year of his contract and is turning 31, it would seem logical that Green would want to be on a team that doesn’t have the scent of tanking while he is nearing the twilight of his career. This team has depleted the talent it once had and failed to properly acquire the talent it could have had.

After Mike Brown was done with his self-promotion stint, he then started to take aim at the very people who keep this, to the rest of America, irrelevant franchise, well, relevant – the fans. For instance, Brown went on some tangent about how the fans complain about the concession prices. “[T]hey will say why don’t you do what they do in Atlanta what they do with cheap hot dogs. They have cheap prices, but they charge for tickets about three times what we charge. Which would you rather have?”  I’m not sure what, or even if Brown knows, what he is trying to accomplish with this rhetoric. Considering that the Cincinnati Bengals fans still show up to a team who has routinely underachieved, and the fact that those fans have started a website called, mikebrownsucks.com, it would seem in Brown’s best interest to try and take some interest in his fans.

There are two more remarks that Brown made in his interview with reports while in Arizona. The first was the fact that he admitted that fans were right in wanting change. It may be Brown’s senile mind coming into play, but a first time visitor to a Bengals game could have told you that the fans wanted a head coaching change about five years ago. The very fact that Brown, acting with the same muster as some paternal master over his fans, has to grant the fans a sense of being “right” to want change is a slap in the face to the very people who have been supporting Brown’s livelihood since ’91. The second quote that made my jaw drop was when Brown, with the same sense as a blind man suddenly being able to see, stated, “[i]t is remarkable how fast these problems get resolved if you start winning.” Hopefully every reporter, when recording this statement, suddenly put down their pencils and said in unison, “no duh.” For a man who has owned a team for over a quarter of century, this “idea” should have appeared to be a “no brainer.” The fact that this suddenly came into Brown’s head is the very reason why the Bengals are in the position they are in now – a mess.

P.S. At the annual meeting, the owners voted, 31-1 to allow offensive and defensive pass interference to be subject to a coach’s challenge and review (spurred by the 2018 NFC Championship Game). The lone dissent was none other than the senile Mike Brown. There is a good chance he had no idea what he was voting for.