Duke Tobin's dereliction of duty cost Bengals dearly (again) in Week 11

To Who Dey Nation and the Cincinnati Bengals fandom at large: I know we're hurting right now. I feel powerless. What are we to do in the wake of another abysmal loss in Week 11?

Should I quit writing and just start picketing outside Paycor Stadium? Because clearly the message isn't getting through. Duke Tobin is the ultimate Bengals saboteur. The man cannot build a football roster to save his life. Joe Burrow has masked so many issues ever since he was drafted in 2020.

Tobin's incompetence and perpetual reactive nature were on full display in the Bengals' 34-12 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday. It all stemmed from one game-changing play.

Stupid-obvious Bengals trade target pick-sixes Joe Flacco to spark Steelers rout

Look, I said in my winners-losers piece for Week 11 that Joe Flacco's arm looked like a cooked noodle. T.J. Watt roughed up Flacco and earned a 15-yard penalty for crushing him into the Acrisure Stadium grass.

Flacco couldn't get as much mustard on the ball after that. Whether he didn't see Steelers safety Kyle Dugger when he tried to hit Tee Higgins on an in-breaking route, the ball looked like it kind of died in the air. Didn't help that there were blustery conditions abound in the Steel City.

Anyway, Dugger housed that thing 73 yards as the Bengals were driving to possibly take the lead. The rest is history.

Noah Fant fumbled away a scoop-and-score TD for the second time this season. Weird that it's happened twice. By then, it was already 27-12, and again, Flacco was looking a little weary and pained out there on the gridiron.

The main point here is that Dugger was on the trade block for ages. The New England Patriots demoted him, and back when Trey Hendrickson still had trade value in August, I advocated for Dugger to be part of a prospective package from the Pats not once, but twice on public record.

Duke Tobin did not share my beliefs. He thought rolling with Geno Stone and Jordan Battle for all of 2025 was a great plan. Meanwhile, all Pittsburgh did to get Dugger was swap a seventh-round pick for a sixth-rounder. That's it!

And yeah, never mind all the other moves they made to upgrade their safety corps! I also stumped for another ex-Pat, Jabrill Peppers, for what it's worth.

See this is my problem with the Bengals' front office and how they approach things. They're never on the cutting edge. Never on the front foot.

The reigning Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles didn't "need" a pass rusher on paper. So what? That's what Howie Roseman probably said. Roseman traded a third-round selection for Jaelan Phillips, and he absolutely balled out in his debut.

For the umpteenth time, Tobin was caught napping for a player who could've bolstered the ever-awful Bengals pass rush.

I was out here in August calling for Kyle Dugger to be in a Bengals uniform. You're telling me he couldn't start over Stone or Battle? Or at least help the cause? Instead, Dugger was racing the other way with the biggest play of Week 11 that effectively ended Cincinnati's season about two months early.

Tobin is drawing stone-dead and staring down a 3-7 season of irrelevance. It's a lopsided battle of epic proportions between the immovable object that is Tobin and the unstoppable force with which the rest of the NFL's model franchises move.

And I wish I could say Tobin wasn't a digger, or a dugger, who's digging himself a deeper hole. And I wish I could say Sunday's embarrassment in Pittsburgh was the final dagger to cement his eventual firing.

Nothing will change. Probably. And don't even get me started on Barrett Carter again.

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