The Cincinnati Bengals, after three consecutive seasons without a playoff appearance despite having The Big Three on the roster, announced they would be making no changes to either the front office or the coaching staff. While nearly any other franchise would’ve fired at least someone—probably several someones—the most Mike Brown and Katie Blackburn were willing to do was offer up Duke Tobin, the team’s de facto general manager, to the media.
That press conference lasted a little over an hour. Beat reporters asked tough questions. Tobin said nothing—at least nothing that would convince fans that he, or anyone else in the front office, has taken real accountability for the 2024 and 2025 seasons.
I’m not going to go through every question asked and every half-answer given, but I want to focus on one exchange in particular.
The question:
“Joe Burrow was pretty adamant about change. In your mind, what has to change?”
The answer:
“Our record. We need to win games that we should win, instead of finding ways to lose games that we should win. But we change every offseason. They’ll be new faces, they’ll be new players, they’ll be new schematics. Our coaches will spend the whole offseason dialing into what went right, what went wrong, what can we build on? How can we change in what we do? Our personnel staff will spend the entire off-season on what went right, what went wrong. What can we change in who we have. So, we’re working on the who. They’ll work on the what. The players need to work on the how. That’s the technique and the assignments. That’s why it’s the who, the what, and the how; all of that needs to improve. All three phases need to improve. And so there’ll be changes through that process. There’ll be changes in the who, what we’re doing, and how we’re getting it accomplished.”
In case you’re not fluent in coach-speak, Tobin basically used about 160 words to say nothing more than “we need to get better.”
No sh*t.
We all know Tobin isn’t the owner of the team. The owner is Mike Brown. Tobin can’t say anything publicly that contradicts what the Brown’s or the Blackburn’s want said. He’s an employee—and even if he might have the best job security in America, he can’t exactly walk up to the podium and say, “What needs to change is ownership.”
Expecting Tobin to say the Bengals need to fundamentally change how they operate would be like expecting Ronald McDonald to step out and announce that fast food is bad for you. He’s not going to bite the hand that feeds him, even if that means talking in circles until every last eye in the room is glazed over.
So yes, it’s frustrating to hear nothing. But at the same time, nothing was expected. This press conference was an attempt to look transparent. Instead, it only pushed an already angry fan base one step closer to apathy.
When—and only when—ownership’s bottom line is affected by canceled season tickets or dwindling interest will meaningful changes happen.
Until then, the plan appears to be to make no changes and hope the last three seasons were just a fluke—and that the 2021 and 2022 Bengals are the “real” version of this franchise.
There are only a handful of people in Cincinnati—and in the world—who seem to believe that’s true.
They own the team.
Random thoughts from Wildcard Weekend:
- There’s no way a quarterback could get sacked six times and still win a playoff game… right? Justin Herbert was sacked six times by the Patriots on their way to a road loss in Foxborough.
- Joe Burrow was sacked nine times by the Titans in Nashville in January of 2022—and still led the Bengals to victory.
- I’ve never really had strong feelings about the Bears. I don’t like them. I don’t dislike them. I kind of nothing them. They’ve always existed in the NFC and never bothered the Bengals much. That changed this weekend. Watching Chicago come back against the Packers was an absolute delight. I won’t be rooting for them in 2026, but if they’re going to keep playing fun, entertaining football right now, I’ll happily enjoy a Chicago Dog (sans sport peppers) and a deep-dish pizza.
- The Ravens firing John Harbaugh was both surprising and completely unsurprising at the same time. I’m glad he won’t be calling the shots in Baltimore anymore—but I still think the Ravens made a mistake.
- If the Ravens had beaten the Steelers in Week 18 and Pittsburgh fired Mike Tomlin, I’d say the exact same thing. Personally, I hope the Texans beat them up badly on Monday night (I’m writing this just before kickoff) and Pittsburgh decides to send Tomlin packing anyway.
- It’s funny when you think about it: if the Steelers do fire Tomlin, every team in the AFC North except the Bengals would have fired their head coach.
- I think Tomlin, Harbaugh, and Kevin Stefanski are all superior coaches when compared to Zac Taylor.
What were your takeaways from Tobin’s presser, and who will you be rooting for in the divisional round?
Like a dull knife that just ain’t cuttin’
We’re just talkin’ a lot and sayin’ nothing
Just sayin’ nothing, what, sayin’ nothing
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