Every day there are three things, here are those three things.
I'm a little late, because I spent most of the morning trying to determine if it's a good thing or not for the UC Bearcats on Saturday that Florida lost its third straight game last night, this one to Loyola.
I'm leaning toward bad.
1) John Ross. Two takes on the news that the Bengals will see yet another year pass without getting a thing during their first round pick's rookie season.
*This makes the final quarter of the season significantly less interesting. With their playoff chances currently sitting at 1.7 percent, there's very few interesting things about the Bengals and their final four games. There's Marvin's probable swan song (more on him in a minute), there's next Sunday's reunion with Mike Zimmer, and if the Bengals did what I wanted, there'd be some meaningful snaps for AJ McCarron.
AJ McCarron playing for the Bengals in their final four games would be interesting. More Andy Dalton is not.
And before yesterday afternoon, there was John Ross. One of the only interesting things about what's left of the season was supposed to be whether John Ross saw the field, how well he played, and what glimmers of hope he could offer the future.
Instead, he's on injured reserve. And the wide receiver spot is as murky as it was when the Bengals lost Marvin Jones and Mohamed Sanu.
*The Bengals are getting incredibly bad return on their first round picks. The quintet of Tyler Eifert, Darqueze Dennard, Cedric Ogbuehi, William Jackson, and John Ross have combined to give the Bengals three quality individual seasons. Dennard has played well this year. Jackson is an emerging star in his first season on the field. Efiert was tremendous in 2015.
And that's it.
Other than that, they've gotten nothing. Most importantly, three of those five players have given the Bengals nothing this season. Nor have recent second rounders Tyler Boyd, Jeremy Hill, and Jake Fisher.
Yes, I want a new coach. Sure, it's fair to wish the Bengals had a better quarterback. But for a variety of reasons, they're not getting what teams with sufficient roster turnover need to get from guys they use first and second round picks on. This might not be the biggest reason why the Bengals are 11-16-1 since the beginning of last season, but it's near the top of the list.
2) Cross Hue off your Christmas list....and Marvin to Cleveland???
The Browns have whacked their in-over-their-head personnel director, and announced that Hue Jackson will be back in 2018.
Which means he won't be coaching in Cincinnati next year since NFL rules forbid coaching two teams at the same time.
I was planning on talking a little about the pro and con to bringing Hue here today. Succinctly, the pro was his work and his relationship with Andy Dalton. The con would be that I'm not sure that Hue Jackson is that sharp a departure from Marvin Lewis. Both are moot now.
Hey, speaking of Marvin....
I don't have the words to describe how badly I want this to happen.
It begs a lot of questions, from whether this would be same succession plan/different city kind of thing, to why Marvin, if he wants to be a GM, would prefer to work with the sport's worst and most unstable franchise, to whether it would actually work.
It'd be interesting. It'd mean that Marvin was no longer here, which is preferable. And I need it to happen.
3) My coaching suggestion. I briefly mentioned this yesterday, with no real knowledge of how possible it is.
Once we get done sifting through all the obvious big names that we'll all add to our wish list, why not Todd Haley?
Haley is the offensive coordinator of the Steelers, running an offense that most of us want the Bengals to emulate, both in terms of talent and philosophy. The Steelers throw the ball to Antonio Brown, defensive gameplan be damned.
Wouldn't you like to see the Bengals do that with AJ?
Haley has been a head coach before, and he's taken a team to the postseason. He's a gruff, rough-around-the-edges guy, the kind of guy I'd argue this team and this quarterback could benefit from.
And he's working for the team we want the Bengals to be more like.
I know he's not the most popular guy in Pittsburgh. I know he doesn't have the sexiest name. He might not even be the first guy I'd call.
But he'd be on my list.
Radio Today: Corey Dillon is my scheduled guest at 3:20. Merrill Hoge is at 5:05. Lots of other sports-talk radio excitement on tap as well. We start at 3:05 on ESPN1530.
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