T-Dub

Stewart because he's a bargain comparatively & I don't think the team really wants to extend Trey. For some valid reasons even but this is not the stacked Bengals DL of a few years ago, at least not yet. If the other DEs look respectable through the preseason a trade still seems possible.

You ok man? Gotta pace yourself, we're weeks away from camp yet 😆 You think a rookie replaces Pratt? My money's on Oren Burks.

Guess I'm stubbornly unconvinced that firing Lou fixed everything on defense.

I thought the CBA covered the "conduct detrimental", refunds due for suspensions, off-field stuff? "Similar" language is not identical. It's possible the Bengals are still trying to do it their way instead of imitating everyone else. My hunch is the team's still in their feels over Ja'Marr/Tee & Trey. Suddenly they want to keep up with the rest of the league? Since when? And over this? Eating a first round bust is part of doing business in the NFL. If it happens too often, go hire better evaluators instead of trying to wring that money back out of the next first round pick and make better picks. If they won't do that but don't have the stomach for the risk they need to step away from the high-stakes table. Maybe sell it off to someone who doesn't need NFL matching funds to pay their bills. Owning a pro sports franchise is like end-game gambling, to be treated like a racehorse. It's the big-boy prestige item, "how we name royalty in this country" to paraphrase Billions. It's not the corner deli & no place for the cautious, safe, and timid. Honestly the Browns/Blackburns may own this team but they act more like they're only managing it. It's a line on a graph to them. Team culture, once again.

Closer to home, haven't we heard this "square peg" stuff about outgoing Bengals DCs before?

Link was broken. Regional DMCA bullshit maybe. Sleep's Holy Mountain is a classic. Matt Pike's a badass. Often I'm looking for more like Sabbath's Planet Caravan vibe.. Yeah, kinda prog/psych bordering on ambient. Anciients are touring through here this fall, I haven't really listened to them but I may have to hit up that one.

Always thought that was an awkward lyric (work... forces?), not a RATM fan myself but.. yeah. It's a problem. Secret police targeting specific ethnic groups for removal are not good. <- the "Radical Left"

You say that like those are two distinctly different groups of people. White supremacist gangs & militias go hand in hand with American law enforcement, and always have. In fact it's a relatively recent development to expect them to not be one in the same. Look at how the Proud Boys etc are treated when the cops respond as compared to any other protest group. The LASD, for example, are riddled with WP cop gangs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynwood_Vikings https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/la-is-investigating-50-year-old-police-gangs-finally-2022-03-30/ No doubt the ones on the inside are hiring their buddies through PMCs, corpo personal security, prison management firms &tc. Someone is booking group rate hotel rooms for these goons while our Marines & NG soldiers sleep on gymnasium floors.

Working backwards.. Lou is shouldering the blame for an awful lot. Some of it deserved, IDK, easy for the players and everyone else to pile on now that he's the official scapegoat. How he was using the roster is debatable. What's obvious to me is that the defensive roster was mismanaged from the top down. Geno Stone's comfort level won't make him Jessie Bates. Sheldon Rankins was a choice. Even without bird flu he's not DJ Reader. Midround rookies as the backups for both the new guy & Hill - that was another decision. The talent level has fallen off in general. Did Lou do all that? Was he blowing smoke up everyone's ass about his depth chart or did someone else at least sign off on these decisions? We know Tobin is teflon, worst that could happen to him is a happy retirement with much appreciation for his 30 year tenure & fond memories of when Joe & Ja'Marr dragged them all to a Super Bowl that one time. What does he do exactly other than cover for ownership? Reports of who precisely is responsible for what in Bengals HQ changes depending on which way the wind is blowing. Scapegoats abound. It seems a 403-479-5 franchise record is hunky-dory to them. They'll get 'em next time! That's where a team's culture comes from - not from a new slogan on this year's camp swag. As for Stewart.. He has a chance to be a good DE, eventually. Start him before he's ready and he may never get there. I don't think anyone really wants Ossai starting instead, but that's what they've got. We gonna blame Lou for that as well?

More into the doom/drone/sludge stuff but I listen to all sorts of metal, even Cookie Monster vocals. Cattle Decap rip

As to who those goons ^^ might be.. ICE is running out of operating money. One way around this is to "task force" feds from other agencies, like ones laid off through that destructive, pointless, illegal and stupid DOGE tantrum. Turns out they couldn't fire a lot of them, but they can eg. reassign a former FDA health inspector, glorified security guards, FBI agents investigating their friends - whoever they want, really. Fuck your fraud (or child trafficking) investigation! Go do Gestapo shit until someone sets a dumpster on fire, so I can "civil war" & rule forever!! So patriotic right now! Another option is to simply pay bounty hunters $1000-1500 per "illegal". That may just be a rumor, allegations at this point, but rumors happen when anonymous thugs start grabbing anyone that "looks Mexican" off the street and disappearing them (Gestapo shit). The goons in the van look like a crew of home-invasion drug addicts. Long sleeves in the summer? They're either hiding track marks or WP gang/racist tattoos. Maybe both! Neighborhood tweakers after your medicine cabinet, or Federal law enforcement that also might shoot you for shining a flashlight at them, but are trained for it? Who knows?! Certainly not you, shackled in a cargo plane off to who knows where & never heard from again. So much greatness y'all. What a country!

Should add Election Day, if anything. That would be the patriotic thing to do, after all, instead of pining for the days of slavery. Is that where we are now? WTF?

White Fake-Christian Nationalism is all he's got. Only difference between him and any other fascist dictator is that most of them are (were) true believers - he's certainly a bigot, but for him it's mostly a grift. He needs them mad at someone else while he empties their pockets.

Convicted felon nepo baby & career money launderer/grifter that spends most of his time on his private golf course says there are too many paid holidays. & just happened to picked today to say so, for all his racist trash followers. I'm sure the ones getting PTO today will be sending that money back, right? 🤡

I have a hard time believing all this drama is over the Bengals trying to catch up to what the rest of the NFL is doing. Sitting out over standard league-wide boilerplate language? If this agent has any other NFL clients he'd know it's not a hill worth dying on for his client & a normal part of the business. Besides, when has keeping pace with the competition ever been their concern? It may be similar to other teams but there's something to it that was unexpected. The "conduct detrimental" stuff is too vague, there's a level of detail involved in defining language like that & we don't get to see it. That's likely where they're hung up, rather than the general idea of guaranteed money coming with some conditions. I thought some of that was in the CBA? Can a star LB still plead guilt to obstruction in a murder case and not miss training camp?

You could pay to see the Cardinals or you could pool your money and buy the whole team. Think I might have seen them on Phoenix's Craigslist. 🥷

He declared himself a certified bitch when he suckered and robbed Levi Jones 6v1 at a casino while Jones was on crutches, long before Burfict entered the picture. That's all I needed to see & he's done nothing but reinforce that impression many times over since then. He represents the Stealers well.

Your neighbor is at work when you spot these men dragging his pregnant wife towards their van - what do you do? Don't need an answer here, just something for you to think about.

Seen this shit yet? Actual Clown President.

The MAGAts will try and tell you Los Angeles was "burned down" now, just like Seattle and Portland. Completely fucking delusional. Then he orders ICE to crack down on "No Kings cities" which is basically.. all of them? There were protests in tiny towns in the middle of red states. This tells me his handlers are lying to him about the massive scale of the protests.. "Oh no sir, it was just LA and a couple of those liberal cities" - wouldn't want the Toddler in Chief throwing ketchup at the walls again. What a pathetic clown show. Sorry the Big Tough Boy Birthday Parade was a total flop.

I wouldn't say so for a RB, they're scattered all through the draft. He's pretty good though.

When was the last time they really landed a "steal" in the draft? Yoshi's pretty good for a 6th rd pick but not quite on the same level as Atkins in the 4th. Who am I forgetting? Go back very far and most of the 4th round-plus aren't even on the team.