Fans don’t need to apologize for booing the Cincinnati Bengals

Running back Joe Mixon shouldn’t be upset the home team was booed or the fan base left early. What he should be upset with is his Cincinnati Bengals getting routed 41-17 in their own building.

It’s hard to get jazzed about the home team getting wrecked by the visiting team. Fans who went to go see the Cincinnati Bengals play the San Francisco 49ers can attest to that first hand. Now fans being fans, and of course you know, paying for things like tickets and parking, took issue with the home team playing badly, very badly, and rendered a verdict long before the game was decided.

As the crowd began to exit Paul Brown Stadium early in the second half, boos could be heard. Lots of them. But perhaps most surprising were Bengals players, high profile players no less, taking issue with fans booing.

"“That’s definitely frustrating to see that,” said Joe Mixon, who finished with 11 rushes for 17 yards. “We down 11 (points), I wanna say in the second quarter and then you see hella fans leaving and booing.” “At the end of the day, we wanna win, too. If they feel like they can do it better, then come try out.”"

Yeah, that’ll help with the fan base after a sound and thorough beating, 41-17. Perhaps fans were responding to Mixon rushing for 17 yards on 11 carries. To his credit, Mixon would offer this tweet later in the afternoon.

Now, I realize Bengals Uber Fan will tell me it’s totes cool, it’s only one bad game.
Uh-huh.

Hey look, the NFL has bad team’s. And I readily agree it’s WAY too early to debate who Cincinnati should take with the second overall pick in the 2020 NFL Draft. I mean, seeing as the Miami Dolphins do have No. #1 pretty much locked up.

As for Cincinnati Bengals fans booing a lousy performance, they should. It’s fair. If players don’t want to hear it, play better and win more. Or at least play better when you’re losing. That was something missing Sunday afternoon at Paul Brown Stadium, and something head coach Zac Taylor got right when speaking on the subject.

"“We were playing poorly in all three phases. It was not anything to be excited about if I was a fan in the stands that paid money to come to that game.” “It’s on us to fix the issues we have and play better and the fans will rally behind that. But right now, we didn’t give them a good enough product to be excited about.”"

A 41-17 loss isn’t anything to get excited about much less cheer for. Fans showed their displeasure and they certainly don’t need to apologize for that. However, for players to express disappointment with that is misplaced, when what they should be disappointed in is how poorly they played.