Tuesday Trenches: Don’t tell us, show us

This was a rough one to watch.

The Super Bowl is the ultimate game of the ultimate sport in this country, but the game played this past Sunday against the Chiefs and Eagles was one of the worst in recent memory.

Not the ending result — I liked that — I just mean it wasn’t a good game.

You know, because the Chiefs got DESTROYED.

They were outclassed from the first snap to the last. The Eagles’ defensive front just absolutely ate the Chiefs’ offensive line up and made Patrick Mahomes look like a nervous rookie throughout the first half. The Chiefs did eventually manage to score 22 points, but the game was over long before they ever got on the board. Everything good the Chiefs offense did was garbage time.

If the Super Bowl showed us one thing, it’s that a Superstar quarterback can’t do it alone, and the defense has to show up. The Cincinnati Bengals had to learn that lesson the hard way in 2024, finishing with a 9-8 record with Joe Burrow’s MVP-caliber season and Ja’Marr Chase’s Triple Crown.

Hopefully, they go into the 2025 season with a clear direction and right the ship.

Which brings us to this, posted by the team on Twitter.

Did you watch it? Notice around the 1:20 mark they said “We’ll hit the off season with all we’ve got.”

Neat.

What does that mean? Is it:

“We’ll do EVERYTHING possible to get the Bengals to the Super Bowl in 2025?”

Or

“We’ll spend more because the salary cap is going up, but we’re not going to get out of our comfort zone to keep everyone around?”

The 2024 season was a collapse of epic proportions and will likely go down as a crazy statistical outlier in the record books. How many teams have a quarterback who finishes the season with over 4,900 passing yards and 43 touchdowns to only nine interceptions, a wide receiver who wins the Triple Crown, and a defensive end who led the league in sacks all at once?

I don’t know if it’s ever happened before, but I’m sure if it has, that team at least went to the playoffs. If it ever happens again, I’m sure that team will at least go to the playoffs. The Bengals missing out on the postseason after the performances some individual players put up is nothing short of a tragedy.

Now they have to extend Chase, which I’m 100 percent positive they will do. They have to extend Trey Hendrickson, who wants an extension or a trade. I’m about 50 percent sure they’ll get that done. They also need to find a way to keep Tee Higgins in Cincinnati, and I’m about 50 percent on that one, too.

I hope I’m wrong. If they restructure Burrow’s deal a little to free up some cash, they have enough to pay all three and then go get a few good players too. If that’s what “we’ll hit it with all we’ve got” means, then I’ll happily and publicly eat crow.

Here’s the thing: I’ve been a Bengals fan for a long time. I was writing on CJ with Josh when Carson Palmer demanded a trade. I’ve watched the Bengals squander opportunity after opportunity, and I just don’t trust them. The Bengals are a front office that has failed to learn from their mistakes.

They decided that Andrew Whitworth was too old for the amount of money he needed, and then he went to LA, was an All-Pro, and won a Super Bowl. The Bengals decided they’d go with Cedric Ogbuehi at left tackle instead. It didn’t go well.

Did they learn? Nope.

They decided Jessie Bates III wasn’t worth the money he was going to command on the market and used a first-round pick on Dax Hill to replace him in 2022. So less than six months after Bates helped get the Bengals to a second consecutive AFC Championship game, they were planning on what their defense would look like with him gone. If that’s not a message to your players and your fan base, I don’t know what is.

What happened after Bates left? Dax Hill was terrible next to Nick Scott at safety, was eventually benched and moved to corner, where he started to look like he might save his career before he was lost to the 2025 season with an injury. That’s a long way of saying their plan to replace Bates, like their plan to replace Whitworth, didn’t work.

Now I’m not going to sit here and say that Whitworth is the one thing that stopped Marvin Lewis and Andy Dalton from winning a playoff game, because it wasn’t. There were a lot of reasons, but losing one of the best left tackles in the game didn’t help.

I remember when there were questions about whether or not the Bengals would trade AJ Green before his final season in Cincinnati in hopes of adding additional draft picks. Mike Brown said something along the lines of, “We’re not in the business of making other teams better.”

The issue with that statement is it’s not true. The Bengals have been in the business of making other teams better. They made Atlanta’s secondary better (Bates), they made Detroit’s interior defensive line better (DJ Reader), and they made the Rams offensive line better (Whitworth). If they’re to continue to draft and develop, or in Hendrickson’s case, land a top-tier edge rusher in free agency (guys that good don’t just pop up as available very often), just to let them walk a few years later, they are absolutely making other teams better.

If they can’t keep Higgins and Hendrickson in Cincinnati, not only are they not giving it all they’ve got, but they’re actively making the competition better.

Look at the Eagles. They’ve spent and spent and spent, and look what they got. Do they win the Super Bowl without Saquon Barkley? They extended AJ Brown and DeVonta Smith, as well as Jordan Mailata and Landon Dickerson, all before the 2024 season. Look what it got them.

That’s the blueprint for the Bengals. Extend your own guys, and make sure your draft picks hit more often than miss. Videos like the one above are cool, but I’m tired of the Bengals talking. It’s time for them to start showing us they’re serious.

Relevant Song Lyrics.

A little less talk, if you please
A lot more loving is what I need
Let’s get on down to the main attraction,
With a little less talk, and a lot more action