Mo Egger

Mo Egger

Mo Egger delivers his unique take on sports on Cincinnati's ESPN 1530!Full Bio

 

Three Things: The Bengals Are Set Up For The Future.

Every day there are three things, here are those three things.

I hope the three-day weekend was as restful and enjoyable for you as it was for me.  Lotsa stuff happened with the sports.  Here's three of the things that happened.

1) The Bengals decided on a roster.  Granted, their current 53 could still change, but with cut-down day, a trade, and the gripping Bullock or Elliott decision that took over the city on Friday and early Saturday, it was a pretty busy time for the Bengals.

Two things stood out.

*Bullock over Elliott.  If I was making the call, I'd have taken Elliott, and I would've lived with him making whatever adjustment to pro football kickers have to make. But with every training camp battle, we always say we want the Bengals to go with the guy that had the best camp and the best preseason, and in choosing Bullock over Elliott, they did.

God help us, though, the first time Randy misses.

*The Bengals got young. Paul Dehner Jr. outlined over the weekend just how young the Bengals have gotten, going from being the 23rd youngest team in the league on cutdown day a year ago to third this season.

In the short-term, this leads to uncertainty.  Young players can't be counted on, and as talented as most of the Bengals younger guys are, this team seems a little too dependent on players who've never done anything in the NFL to help them make significant improvements from 2017.

Long-term, I'm very excited for the young group the Bengals have. Individually and collectively, there's a lot of upside here, which bodes well for the future, meaning that 2017's greatest purpose is to set up larger scale success for 2018.

That kind of thing doesn't jive well with the win-a-playoff-game-or-else narrative fueled both by impatient Bengals fans or the national media, but I think it should set a barometer for this season where we judge it just as much by how it makes us feel for next season as we do by how many games they win and how far they go or don't go in January.

2) Your move, NFL.  The first full weekend of college football gave us UCLA's remarkable comeback over Texas A&M, Tennessee's gripping win over Georgia Tech, a stirring game between West Virginia and Virginia Tech, a blind player making his debut at long-snapper at USC, the largest point spread upset in the sport's history (Howard over UNLV), Butch Jones' turnover trash can, a 98-0 game, and Mark Stoops costing me a three-team parlay because he decided to play it safe in a game he should've been dying to pour it on in.

This coming week, the NFL will give us. Scott Tolzien v. Jared Goff, Blake Bortles v. Tom Savage, and probably Nathan Peterman v. Josh McCown.

3) Pricewatch 2017 is over. Not that it was really ever on. I mean, I never felt like Bryan Price wouldn't be brought back as Reds manager in 2018, did you?

I'm supposed to have strong feelings about this, but I don't. I have no idea if Bryan Price is a good manager, although some of the things we've seen this season - the insistence on having Billy Hamilton continue to bat leadoff, Eugenio Suarez not moving up in the order, the stale management of the bullpen - haven't been encouraging. 

I also don't think we really know if he's a bad manager.

I do know that at no point during his four seasons has Bryan Price been set up for success, so it seems fair that he get a chance at some point to actually have a reasonable chance to win.

If the progress of the young starters - which has been fun to watch - continues at the rate that it's moved over the past five weeks, then we could be getting close to finding out if Bryan Price is good at what's ultimately supposed to be the main function of a big league manager.

If it doesn't, then we're probably close to finding out who his successor will be.

Radio Show: It returns on a daily basis tomorrow. Marvin Lewis, Andy Dalton, your Twitter questions, and Richard Skinner....all tomorrow at 3:05 on ESPN1530

Also....

I'll be kicking off the NFL season this Thursday night at the new Longnecks in Richwood, Kentucky, starting at 7:00.  We'll have prizes, Bud Light specials, and more.  I hope to see you there. 

The nice people at WCPO invited me on Friday to be on their Bengals podcast, which means I got to spend time with Tanya O'Rourke, which means my Friday was better than yours.  Listen to it here..


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