The Cincinnati Bungles
For this little site of mine, this particular time of year is kind of a nightmare. So much stuff is happening that is hilarious and there is material everywhere. I have to leave so much on the cutting room floor in January because news just comes fast and furious, especially in the first two weeks when we still have plenty of playoff teams left. We had the LA news (Which obviously needs a comic too), more coaching changes, and each game pretty much has something to talk about. I could have easily done something about Kirk Cousins not liking that or the Chiefs finally winning a playoff game, but I have to pick my battles because I know next week will have just as much insanity. (on the plus side, if you want a Chiefs or Redskins or Packers thing from me, maybe this week’s Uproxx cartoons will satisfy you). Some of this is simply going to have to wait till the offseason (I have very special plans for a running gag about Rex and Rob Ryan in Buffalo, but now isn’t when I can do it).
The Bengals meltdown deserved a comic, even though now it’s practically old news. It would have been Tuesday’s comic, but I didn’t have a solid idea yet. I’ve never seen a meltdown like that. I’ve seen things close to it; hell the Giants last second failures against the Saints this season sorta feels similar. But nothing quite so bad. They had it. They really had it. We were 1:40 away from having the two longest playoff win droughts ended on the same day, and they failed completely. Let’s recap!
-Steelers go up 15 to nothing in a boring slog
-Ryan Shazier commits dirty helmet leading hit to Gio Bernard, whips Bengals/fans into a frenzy since it goes unflagged
-Bengals come back in the 4th to be down 15-10
-Big Ben is hurt during this timeframe by Vontaze Burfict (Fairly clean sack, just bad luck)
-Bengals score TD to AJ Green with 2 minutes left, go up 16-15 (Failed 2 point conversion)
-Vontaze Burfict intercepts Landry Jones with 1:40 left to play, runs off the field laughing
-Hill fumbles
-Steelers convert a 4th down, edge into Bengals territory
-Antonio Brown drops a pass and Vontaze Burfict commits incredibly dirty hit, giving the Steelers long field goal range
-Adam Jones gets into an argument with Steelers coach Joey Porter, draws another 15 yard flag
-Steelers win the game on a chip shot
Unbelievable. I almost turned the game off at halftime it was so boring. I’m so glad I didn’t, because this is historic.
The aftermath has been just like the game: ugly. Just terrible. Bengals fans are mad because Joey Porter shouldn’t have been on the field, and furious that the Gio Bernard hit wasn’t called. I’ve also seen some serious rationalization about the hit. Steelers fans are calling the Bengals fans babies, pointing out fair points about them being babies, but then also being delusional. I think what bothers me the most about all this is what usually bothers me, the Fan Hypocrisy. If these teams were reversed, you know damn well lots of Steelers fans would be defending the hell out of Vontaze for playing “Hard-nosed Steeler Football” and calling Shazier a dirty scumbag. Frankly it’s hilarious how high and mighty the Steelers fans are acting now that they finally ended up on the morally superior side of this sort of thing. This is a fanbase that spent the late 00’s defending the hell out of James Harrison for playing exactly the same way Vontaze plays. There are no winners here. Both of these fanbases are rationalizing hard. Every fanbase in the NFL rationalizes hard. All fans are scum, we are all terrible people.
For the record, I think Vontaze is dirty. I don’t think he’s this monster, but I do think he’s a hotheaded ass who better learn how to control himself. But I also think his actions are being a touch overblown, or to put it better, unfairly spotlighted. There is a lot of dirty stuff in the NFL. Late hits, just scummy things. (Here’s a Steelers example!). A lot of it seems to get ignored or go unnoticed by the right people. Then one guy does something a little too visibly and he gets branded the boogeyman, and then he starts getting over-scrutinized. Harrison. Suh. Now Burfict. It’s not that these guys don’t deserve their fines, because they do, and they are terrible jerks, but that they are taking all the blame when the problem is far more widespread. That’s why fans of the team with the player on it are always defending these people, because they see it once they are suffering the unbalanced punishments. Bengals fans are defending Vontaze by claiming that so many other players do things like him, and they aren’t wrong, but it does make them seem to be defending Vontaze when they really don’t have a leg to stand on there, because Vontaze deserves his reputation.
I don’t see how anyone can defend Vontaze after that hit. It was so dirty. It doesn’t matter if the Bengals were mad about the Gio-non call. It doesn’t matter if the hit was with a shoulder. That hit was dirty and dumb as hell. Watch the replay. Brown clearly misses the catch right in front of Vontaze. Burfict has his head up, there’s no way he missed it. Burfict is at least 2 long steps away. Even moving really fast, he had time to react. But he still lowered his shoulder and leveled Brown. It was so blatantly unnecessary it’s astounding Burfict is that stupid. He cost the Bengals everything.
Bengals/Steelers next year is going to be horrible isn’t it?
Also I smell a Panthers upset this weekend. Just hints, but it feels right.
I can’t tell if that’s a Mass Effect reference or if I am just really out-of-date when it comes to video games that use choice wheels.
Also problem I have with Burfict is the same one I had with Harrison and the same one I didn’t have with Suh. Suh did some stupid, dirty stuff like the stomp and standing on Rodgers whatnot, but a lot of the stuff with him I thought was overblown, like the Schaub groin kick or some of the alleged “helmet kicks” this year, but as a whole, he didn’t strike me as dirty, just a hothead who lets his emotions get the best of him. Meanwhile, Harrison has always struck me as a guy who takes pride in injuring opponents, while Burfict goes out of his way to injure other players even if they’re out of the play. I’ve seen him take a shot at the helmet of a receiver who’s sixty yards away from where the ball’s being thrown, I’ve seen him opt for a cheap shot on a player who wasn’t even chasing anyone because he was already injured instead of blocking on an interception, and of course we all saw him twist Cam’s ankle. Hell, he even went after Matt Barkley’s knees in high school back when they were both USC commits before he switched to ASU. He has a flagrant history.
I’m not a Bengals fan or a Steelers fan, I don’t have a horse one way or the other in this argument, or a reason to be biased for or against one or the other in the wake of this gmae. I’m just giving my honest observations. There are a lot of players around the league who take cheap shots, but in terms of currently active players, Harrison and Burfict take the cake.
Just as an example of what you were saying, Burfict managed to injure the three best players on the steelers offense this year: Bell, Ben, and then Brown.
Only the Brown hit was dirty/illegal, but you have to think that a guy like Burfict knows how to make it hurt when he tackles you. On the Bell hit, he leaps and swings his body around, coming down on the back of Bell’s legs. Totally legal way to make a tackle, totally could have been unintentional. If that was the only steeler he injured this season, I would fully believe that it was 100% unintentional. With Ben, he gets Ben high and tackles him with Ben’s shoulder going into the ground. 100% legal hit, but exactly the kind of LEGAL hit QBs worry about taking. Ben talked about after the game how he tried to twist and fall on his back, but wasn’t able to and landed right on the shoulder. The Brown hit doesn’t need to be described any further.
It just seems like a massive coincidence to me that a single player manages to injure the three biggest stars on a rival team’s offense over the course of a single season, and it was totally accidental.
I don’t remember if it was Ike Taylor and MJD or Nate Burleson and Michael Robinson in one of the NFL media podcasts, but they made the point that legal and dirty are two different things, and that Burfict’s hit on Ben was both. He knows how to hit legally with intent to injure.
The hit on Ben was legal. Driving a knee into his shoulder, repeatedly, after he was down isn’t.
I was going to note that Burfict has a long history on this stuff; I wouldn’t be surprised if he already had a target on him from the NFL as Dave notes.
Most of the Steelers fans I’ve talked with agree that the Gio hit by Shazier should have been flagged. Burfict’s tackle on Big Ben was clean, but then he seemed to drive his knee into his shoulder while he was getting up. As for the whole Joey Porter incident, well, I’ll just post this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wysECduSPfk
While I appreciate the Zapruder like film breakdown, it doesn’t address why Porter was on the field in the first place. It also conveniently starts at the point of Brown being helped off the field, when Porter was out on the field long before Brown was on his way off. I’m not going to say that what Burfict and Jones did wasn’t stupid, because it was, but to act like Porter is an innocent bystander? Not buying what that video is selling.
There was a post on Reddit that went into an in depth analysis on the altercation, and it seemed like Porter was talking with Burfict before Brown was helped off the field. He didn’t seem to interact with anyone else, so I don’t know why Gilberry bumped him into that Bengals circle. Maybe he was antagonizing Burfict (believable considering the outcome of the play), but Burfict doesn’t seem to be arguing with Porter until after the chest bump.
I would have to go back and rewatch the video, but at this point it’s pretty much moot. I was just pointing out that the video on YouTube had some suspicious timing to it – I could run into a restaurant and start shouting terrible things, but if you only saw a video that started with me getting pummeled it would look like I did nothing wrong.
And regardless of whether or not Joey Porter was actually instigating anyone (and it’s Joey Porter, c’mon, we know he was) he still shouldn’t have been on the field.
Burfict and Harrison play in the wrong era. If they played in the 60s, they would be hailed and worshipped like butkus and deacon jones. Speakinf of Jones, Can’t wait until Saturday
On behalf of the yinzers, all hail joey porter and the son of arena football great Eddie Brown (Albany/Indiana Firebirds 1990-2002), Antonio brown
> -Bengals score TD to AJ Green with 2 minutes left, go up 16-15 (Failed 2 point conversion)
You forgot that it was a *hilariously bad attempt* at a 2-pt conversion. That may have been the worst 2-pt try I’ve ever seen. The Bengals were lucky that it wasn’t a fumble or interception (which it easily could have been, given how bad the throw was), because there would be no way the Steelers weren’t going to take it back for their own 2pts.
Dave, what do you think of the LA Rams?
But what the hell was that play call on the 2 point conversion? A HB Bubble screen? For two yards? No wonder the Browns are hiring Hue Jackson
It doesn’t matter if one of the Steelers used a knife earlier in the game, that hit was still going to be flagged. Stupid. And I’m glad the Titans got rid of Mr. Jones years ago.
If you told me before the weekend that a team will lose a heartbreaker because of two incredibly stupid penalties by two of their players, I could have told you it would be Bengals/Burfict/Jones and to take that to the bank.
But of the many things that bother me about this game, let’s start with 2…
1. The Shazier hit on Giovanni Bernard was clearly an illegal hit, and was absolutely what pushed a game that was already on the edge to well over it. Adding to it was Shazier continuing to celebrate on the sideline while a clearly injured Bernard was being tended to.
2. Jim Nantzy Pants acting like the Steelers were out there in tuxes drinking tea at a charity event for blind orphans and the Bengals rolled in with their brass knuckles and tire irons and starting swinging. I’m not saying the Bengals comported themselves well, but the Steelers definitely gave as good as they got.
As a Bengals fan, I have so many thoughts on this game that won’t amount to a hill of beans as to the outcome, but I think I said “Tez,” “Vontaze,” or “Burfict” at least 1,000 times all game, both positively and negatively.
BTW, I will bet my house that the league schedules the first matchup between these two teams on SNF either week 1 or week 4 (Burfict’s first game back from suspension)
Burfict’s an idiot, and the hit was entirely uncalled for, but at least he seems to be aware of it. When he put his hand on Brown’s shoulder after the latter is getting walked off the field it looked like he was apologizing.
I’m more flabbergasted by Jones being utterly certain that Brown faked the concussion. Dude was blacked out before he hit the ground.
Let’s face it, if Burfict were a steeler he’d be hailed by fans and referees alike and never draw any meaningful flag
The Steelers are, simply, the worst fanbase in the NFL, and it’s not close. I hate their team for it.
Is Burfict a dirty, idiot? Sure. Pacman’s just an idiot, but man, he’s an idiot. But they are, basically, the Steelers kind of players. And while, yeah, every fan justifies their team to an extent, most of them will at least acknowledge, after the fact, when a player was dirty or when their team was lucky. But not the Steelers fans. I despise the Steelers more than I even hate the Raiders or the Chiefs, and as a Broncos fan, that should tell you something.
If I knew that the Steelers could have an 0-16 season, but that if that happened the Raiders would knock the Broncos out of the Playoffs and then win the Super Bowl for 3 straight years, I would take the Steelers 0-16. I want to drink deep of those fat, McDonalds-grease-laden tears shed by that rancid fanbase, and watch them shrivel to oblivion.
Saying everyone has bad fans is a cop-out. Yes, all teams have bad fans, but the Steelers are the worst of the lot, and #2 isn’t even close. You’d have to take the violence of the Raiders fans, the self-satisfied smugness of the Seahawks fans, and the battery-throwing, Santa-booing psychosis of the Eagles fans, mix it with a strong dose of Boston self-righteousness, and then curdle it all with the Cowboys “America’s Team” insipidness, and that is how a Steelers fan is made. I do not know from what foul pit the sadistic, manipulative, demonic hell-spawn that forged the template of a Steelers fan crawled from, but the thousand-faced engine of doom that brings about the Apocalypse surely waits because he has thus far conceived no worse torment for this world than listening to another Steeler fan talk about their team.
As a Steelers fan, I can’t say I disagree with you. You should have seen how our fanbase acted last year to 8-8. 8-8! Some teams would kill for an 8-8 season.
I wouldn’t (probably can’t actually) go as far as you did with the Steeler Fandom, because I’ve seen far worse come out of Browns and Bengals fans that I’ve seen come out of the Steelers fandom (Cheering that a QB got injured isn’t scummy to you? Or throwing shit at him? I don’t recall Steelers fans ever tossing shit on to the field like the Browns and Bengals at the game tend to do, but ok). And I respect both fanbases regardless. (Grandpa was a Browns fan, one of my good friends is a Bengals fan, so maybe it comes easy for me)
I realize the minority doesn’t represent the majority. Those idiots at the Bengals game and some Browns fans don’t speak for the entire fanbase, just as some of the loudest and elitist (I’d be fooling myself if I didn’t think there were super elitists in the Steeler fan base. I say we tend to fit that definition) Steelers fans don’t speak for the entire fanbase.
Personally, I have a larger dislike for the Patriots fanbase sans those who have been Pats fans since before the Brady era. Big ol’ dose of bandwagon there.
I didn’t see Steelers fans throwing trash on any Bengals players who got hurt.
Oh man. As a massive Bills fan, I can’t wait for this alleged Ryan brothers series
nobody says yolo anymore
goddamn you’re one cool motherfucker