Is Shemar holding out?

[Soonerpeace]

(06-12-2025, 05:49 PM)rfaulk34 Wrote: Here is the thing that people who think this way don't seem to see, for whatever reason. Keep in mind, i'm not being sarcastic, negative or in any way malicious when i point this out. Just giving perspective from the 'other' side. 

When you look at the success they've had and you factor in the injuries, you can certainly say they've been one of the more successful franchises since '21. 

But when you look at that success, you can point to very clear reasons why the success ended when it did and you can assign blame for why those issues were there. 

The offensive line is first and foremost, the reason Burrow sustained a knee injury in '20. The Bengals 'attempted' to fix this in '21, yet in the most crucial time, the line failed to protect him again and a SB was lost. In '22, the same thing happened. They attempted to fix the line, yet when it came down to the end, the line failed to protect him well enough and a SB appearance was lost. 

Despite being the family of one of, if not the, most influential minds in NFL history, the current Bengals front office does not value the Oline--specifically the IOL--like PB did. They've tried to do things their own way by loading up on offensive skill players and they were able to bolster the defense through free agency. When that defense broke down, the shortcomings of the offensive line were magnified, though mitigated to some extent by Burrow and company. 

So, if you want to talk about success, you have to first talk about the abilities of Burrow, followed by Chase, Higgins, Perine, Brown, etc. The front office is near, if not the bottom of the list of reasons why they've been successful because they had to be a bad enough team to draft the #1OA and #5OA players in consecutive drafts and they've failed to provide him a line and replacements for the defenders that left or didn't perform to the level they did in '21 and '22. 

I don’t necessarily disagree with any of this. But I’ll add the OL and defense are more related to poor drafting. The defense was helped by FA.