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The Cincinnati Bengals may have been on a roll the past few seasons after not winning a single playoff game between 1990 and 2021, but Stephen A. Smith still thinks the organization stinks.
Mostly it appears to have to do with one of the usual suspects when someone complains about the Bengals: the team’s owner Mike Brown.
It also has to do with one of the usual reasons why someone complains about Mike Brown: he’s too cheap.
“You are listening to a guy and looking at a guy who hopes Cincinnati loses every single damn game they play,” Stephen A. Smith exclaimed during First Take on Thursday, “until they sign that man [Ja’Marr Chase] and they give him his money.
“I hope that the Cincinnati Bengals fall flat on their damn face. That organization makes me sick.
“This man Mike Brown, here you are, you got Joe Burrow who is an all-world quarterback. Won a national championship at LSU. Came into the NFL. He got injured his first year as a rookie. His second year he comes back. His third year he comes back. All he does is go to back-to-back AFC Championship games.
“This is an organization that spent years having fans wear bags over their heads. This is how horrid they were with his notoriously cheap a– self, okay? He was considered the damn Donald Sterling of the National Football League.
“And here you are, you luck up, you get a guy like Joe Burrow on your squad who flat out balls. It doesn’t matter who he goes up against. You pay him his money, but then going to give a problem to the people that he utilizes as his primary weapons…”
Stephen A. Smith lays into the Bengals and owner Mike Brown for not paying Ja'Marr Chase.
"I hope that the Cincinnati Bengals fall flat on their damn face. That organization makes me sick." pic.twitter.com/vEhlQHrnAl
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) September 12, 2024
Sportico reports “the Bengals are among a few teams around the league that are averse to handing out multiyear contracts to veterans that contain significant guaranteed money,” and “have been known to use signing bonuses instead of guaranteed money, which allows them to dump players more easily without accruing dead cap cash.”
Those are perhaps reasons why Ja’Marr Chase, Tee Higgins and Joe Mixon had or are having so much trouble getting new contracts from Cincinnati.
But hey, at least there haven’t been any dead bodies found in porta-potties in the parking lot at the Bengals’ stadium since 2015! Bright side!