Both Mike Brown and Marvin Lewis have addressed the Adam Jones situation this week. The owner was verbose, pulling a page out of the ways-to-justify-keeping-crappy-human-being-on-the-payroll playbook that included such maneuvers as humanizing Adam Jones (He's got a cute little girl), pointing to someone else's decision for justification (The prosecutor dropped the felony charge!), admitting that a mistake was made ("I'm not condoning his actions"), then swiftly passing the buck elsewhere (The local prosecutor and the NFL commissioner can handle this for me) before finally expressing contrition on behalf of Adam Jones (He's sorry. Really. He means it. Promise.)
The coach was more succinct, but far more tone-deaf...
"As time has come out, other than his language what did he do?”
That quote is staggering for its ignorance.
I wish both Mike and Marvin would just save their breath, and make it easier for the people paid to gather and transcribe their quotes and just answer questions about Adam Jones with three simple words:
We. Don't. Care.
Because they don't. So why not just admit it? It'd be a lot less insulting to our intelligence if instead of Mike weaving his way through an awkward justification for keeping Adam Jones, or instead of Marvin coming off as blatantly out of touch, they just told us that they just don't care.
They don't care how much Adam Jones compromises his own availability.
They don't care about the optics of bringing back someone who showed such egregious disregard for other people.
They don't care that one of their most prominent employees continues to act a fool in public.
They don't care that a guy they keep giving chances takes advantage of their patience again. And again. And again.
They don't care.
They don't even really care about Adam Jones, at least not in the way they claim to. You don't enable the destructive behaviors of someone you care about. And you don't allow them to abuse opportunity by granting them time and again. You punish, and you do so independent of whatever outside consequences there are. You demonstrate the real-world consequences pernicious, embarrassing behavior. And you absolutely do not allow someone to unceasingly walk all over you the way Adam Jones regularly jaunts all over the people he works for.
The Bengals are using Adam Jones the way he uses them. He represents to the Bengals the team's best chances of winning, and the Bengals represent to him an organization that will tolerate, and excuse, the way he behaves. There's nothing else to the relationship beyond that. If Adam Jones truly valued the people he works for, he'd stop putting them in the position of having to answer for him. If the Bengals truly valued Adam Jones, they'd stop enabling him.
Instead, Adam has been prancing around like nothing's happened, smirking like the conniving child who's pulled another fast one on his parents. Mike and Marvin are shrugging their shoulders, having been had yet again, but lacking the will to really do anything about it. Neither party is acting like they care about the other.