4 reasons the media are split on Tua, Burrow, and the Cincinnati Bengals

The Cincinnati Bengals have taken their licks of late in the media. If you’re a fan, it hasn’t been received well. Even for local media who you’d expect to be impartial, a fair observer would and could say they too have felt equally slighted. It has created what can be seen as a local bias by those outside the Cincinnati bubble.

But fans and those who feel looked down upon should also take stock of the actions, or non-actions of a franchise whose performance earned both a 2-14 record AND the top overall pick in the draft. You don’t earn the top pick for being a media favorite, or fun to watch franchise, you earn the first overall pick because you are what your record says you are.

2-14 says a lot.

Also, avoid the 4-year snapshot, 7-year snapshot, 11-year snapshot, and woulda, coulda, shoulda that clog Bengal’s social media. At present, the Bengals are a team that has been trending down. They aren’t the first, and certainly won’t be the last to do so. But it’s a reality that overlooking or simply ignoring is a Fool’s Paradise.

Hey, it’s OK. Bad things happen to NFL teams. The Bengals have made bad choices, held on to players and coaches a bit too long, and have been terribly inactive in free agency and trading players when an opportunity presents itself. They got here on their own. The first pick is their pathway out of the cellar.