SportsHandle surveyed NFL fans across the country to ask all about their drinking habits in order to find out which are the “booziest” of them all.
Cincinnati fans drink more but spend slightly less.
Baltimore fans come in second at 4.7 drinks per/game. Bengals fans top all of the NFL teams averaging 5.2 drinks at the Jungle inside Paul Brown Stadium.
Since this is a fan survey, perhaps Bengals fans skewed the results; maybe needing something/anything to brag about. Or, is it that local fans drown their sorrows.
Will this stat go up this season with toasts to Joe Burrow’s successes?
Willie Lutz reporting for Loveland Magazine from Tiger Stadium in 2014
by Cassie Mattia
Loveland, Ohio – Loveland Magazine throughout the years has had many opportunities to both meet and mold journalism interns into talented multi-dimensional professional journalists. Many have gone on to be very successful writers, broadcasters, reporters, and filmmakers; recently one previous Loveland Magazine intern and former Loveland High School grad announced he just landed a new writing gig!
Willie Lutz was a paid intern at Loveland Magazine during his Junior and Senior years at LHS, his primary role being to write about LHS sports and to do on-air post-game reports. Lutz has since been a frequent contributor to Loveland Magazine.
Lutz recently released the news that he accepted a position at Last Word on Sports where he will be responsible for reporting all things NFL, primarily the Cincinnati Bengals.
Willie Lutz file photo from when he reported sports for Loveland Magazine
“I’m excited to join the team at Last Word On Sports,” Lutz announced on his Facebook page, “I’ve greatly missed sports writing and I found a perfect landing spot! To kick things off, I wrote about Joe Burrow’s desire to keep Zac Taylor in Cincinnati and what that means for the Bengals.”
Loveland Magazine’s Editor in Chief David Miller was estatic about Lutz’s new opportunity!
“I’m not the biggest Bengal’s fan but if I was I would certainly be keeping up with what Willie is writing! He’s very, very good at what he does. I read what Willie writes and follow him and he’s now got me following the Bengals,” Miller said.
LastWordOnSports.com is essentially a network of sports-related entities encompassing type media and radio. The site was established in August 2011 with a focus on the major professional leagues.
Read on at:
We would like to take the opportunity to congratulate Willie Lutz for obtaining such an awesome journalism position! Thank you so much Willie for providing Loveland Magazine with your outstanding articles! We hope that you will continue to succeed and thrive in the world of Sports Journalism! Good Luck!
Stay tuned for more of your Sports 411 With Me, Cassie Mattia!
Former Loveland Magazine sports writer Willie Lutz is now writing for Last Word On Sports. Here is what he says about Jessie Bates III being honored as Second-Team All-Pro.
As playoff weekend arrives with the Bengals sitting at home, an emerging member of the team’s core received exciting news. Finding his footing well in the NFL so far, Cincinnati Bengals safety Jessie Bates III was named to the AP All-Pro Second Team as a Safety.
After a 4-11-1 season with a crash ending, Cincinnati Bengals fans have a reason to celebrate their campaign. Third-year safety Jessie Bates III was selected as an AP All-Pro safety on their Second Team. This news comes as the team heads towards an incredibly important offseason that includes augmenting the defense around Bates. Earlier, Bates was named a first-team All-Pro by Pro Football Focus, who graded him the fourth-best defender of the 2020 season, earning a 90.1 grade on the season.
In early September, former Bengals tight end Tyler Eifert announced that he would choose to honor the memory of David Dorn, a retired St. Louis police captain who was killed in June of this year.
Christopher Ball is a longtime Loveland resident and an attorney
Eifert was selected by the Bengals in the first round of the 2013 NFL Draft and played his first seven seasons in Cincinnati. He recently signed a 2-year $9.5 million deal with the Jacksonville Jaguars, where he hopes to make a comeback after several injury-plagued seasons with the Bengals.
The NFL’s new stance is a stark reversal from its prior positions. In 2016 the league refused to allow Dallas Cowboys players to wear decals to honor five police officers killed by a sniper in downtown Dallas. Even Jerry Jones, the owner of the Cowboys, felt that allowing players to put unique messages on their helmets or wear pink to honor cancer survivors, would open “Pandora’s Box’ that would be difficult to ultimately control. In 2013 Bears wide receiver Brandon Marshall was fined for wearing green shoes to highlight issues surrounding mental health.
Whatever you may think of his opinions, Colin Kaepernick’s visible on-field protests against systemic racism and police violence are unquestionably a large part of the reason that he is no longer playing football. Prior to 2020, it was clear that the National Football League was doing all that it could to keep politics, protests, and uniform variance out of its brand.
Now that has all changed.
Roger Goodell has admitted that both he and the league were wrong for not listening to protesting players sooner. The new decal initiative is the National Football League’s attempt to, at least in part, allow its players to express their non-football opinions on the field, while they are at work, doing their jobs. While the new rules were ultimately put in place to allow players to place decals on their helmets “bearing names or initials of victims of systemic racism and police violence” Eifert’s choice sends a different message, one very similar to those of the 2016 Dallas Cowboys. Eifert himself has a long history of supporting military and first responders during his career, and so his choice to honor David Dorn is not surprising.
What will be interesting to see is whether the league will allow him to wear a decal honoring Dorn even though, by most standards, the slain police captain is not a “victim of systemic racism or police violence.” Early reports suggest that the players will be allowed to pick from an approved list of names, with options such as George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery. While the NFL has not officially released its policy on decals, nor have they provided the complete list of names from which its players can choose, Eifert’s decision to honor Dorn is one that will no doubt spark debate on the boundaries of the NFL’s new policy.
Whether it opens Pandora’s box, as Jerry Jones once feared, is yet to be seen.
LOVELAND MOM’S LONG RACIAL AWARENESS JOURNEY AND WHY WHITE AMERICANS NEED TO FOLLOW HER PATH
by Daniel P. Finney
Kristi Kinne-Hayes grew up in Jefferson, a Green County, Iowa city made of 4,200 almost all white people. Kristi played six-on-six girls’ basketball and became one of the best players in the state.
A Guest Column by Independent journalist Daniel P. Finney who writes for paragraphstacker.com
She knew local police officers by their first names and thought of them as just another face in the crowd rather than law enforcement.
Kristi played college basketball at Drake University, leading the Bulldogs to an NCAA Tournament berth her senior season in 1995. She seldom thought about race even though she played alongside and was friends with people of different races.
She had a longtime friend who played softball at Drake who was mixed race and never knew until someone asked her friend about her race in a Kansas City bar.
But life, love and motherhood changed her perspective and her long journey from racial indifference, maybe even racial ignorance, to awareness and empathy is one all Americans — especially whites — need to take right now.
A background like Kristi’s makes it seem unlikely that she would comment on the ghastly death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. But life, love and motherhood changed her perspective and her long journey from racial indifference, maybe even racial ignorance, to awareness and empathy is one all Americans — especially whites — need to take right now.
Kristi graduated from Drake, survived ovarian cancer and met and married Jonathan Hayes, a former University of Iowa tight end who played for the legendary Hayden Fry during the famed coach’s revitalization of the program in the early 1980s.
Hayes is also African-American. But a mixed-race relationship didn’t expose Kristi to the racial hatred the corrupts America’s soul.
The first time Kristi brought Johnathan home to Jefferson to watch a ballgame, fans swarmed the Hawkeye hero for autographs.
“That was so traumatic for me because when I was at the game, people came up for my autograph,” Kristi said. “I told Jonathan they only wanted his autograph because they already had mine.”
The couple settled in Cincinnati, where Jonathan served as tight ends coach for the NFL’s Bengals.
They had four children. Yet it wasn’t until their eldest daughter, the couple’s second child, turned 16 that evil racism finally struck the mother of four mixed-race children.
Kristi and Jonathan bought a new car and gave their older vehicle to their daughter. They put the old plates on their daughter’s vehicle and paid the fees, but Ohio Department of Transportation computers hadn’t yet processed the transaction.
One evening their daughter came home pale.
She said, ‘I was sure they were going to shoot me.
Kristi asked her what was wrong.
She had been pulled over by police. The car tags were wrong.
“She said, ‘I was sure they were going to shoot me,’” Kristi said. “I thought, ‘Why would you think they would shoot you?’”
And the privilege of being a white star athlete from small town Iowa evaporated. She was now the mother of four children whose facial characteristics most white people would identify as black.
“If there’s a little bit of brown, to other white people, you’re black,” Kristi said.
Living with racism did not limit her children’s success. Eldest son, Jaxson Hayes, was a first-round draft pick by the NBA’s New Orleans Pelicans last year.
Daughter Jillian is a highly prized women’s basketball recruit committed to the University of Cincinnati.
Jillian Hayes and her family on the night she accepted her commemorative 1,000th point ball.
Kristi reminds them that she doesn’t care if other people label them black only, just remember that their white mother and her family loves them just as much as their African-American father and his family.
“Your name is clean,” Kristi tells her kids, “keep it that way.”
Still, she worries. Jaxson is off in New Orleans, just turned 20 years old and having the time of his life as an NBA rookie despite the league shutdown due to coronavirus.
She tells her children that if they are pulled over, put their hands at 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock on the steering wheel.
“I never thought I would have to tell my children that,” Kristi said.
The true horror of this event: None of those officers moved to stop their fellow officer from committing a crime. It was depraved indifference.
Kristi saw the news reports and videos of a Minneapolis police officer putting his knee in the back of George Floyd, an African-American man suspected of forgery.
Three other police officers stood by and did nothing. They were all fired. As of this writing, it’s unknown if they will be criminally charged.
The killing of Floyd is a complete institutional failure by the Minneapolis police. That officer pressed his knee into the back of that handcuffed man’s neck as he pleaded for mercy, he could not breath and eventually lost consciousness and died.
He stared into the crowd almost as if he was daring someone to tell him he was wrong. The crowd pleaded with him to render aid, to check Floyd for injury or get him some water.
The officer refused.
A friend of mine made this observation a few years ago: “There’s two things we learned from everybody having cameras on their phone: There are no UFOs and police sometimes kill people for no reason.”
The true horror of this event: None of those officers moved to stop their fellow officer from committing a crime. It was depraved indifference.
Here in Des Moines, some of my police sources told me they were aghast at another cop so drunk on power that his defiance led to the death of a man.
“When you have him in cuffs, get him up and in a car and off to the station,” one cop told me. “That diffuses the situation right there.”
Another cop told me police administrators were circulating a video by a top training instructor illustrating the dangers of the knee in the back hold and all Des Moines cops will have to sign off on having watched it.
There’s been little local backlash at Des Moines police because of the Minneapolis killing, but the danger of using national stories to paint local pictures hangs over every police station.
Kristi saw that news and it moved her. She lives in Cincinnati, a city that saw race riots in 2001 after police shot an unarmed African American teenager. Kristi and her family moved to Cincinnati after that terrible period.
So what does all this have to do with Kristi Kinne-Hayes, the great Iowa basketball star?
But motherhood long ago took the woman from Jefferson’s ability to be color blind.
Moved by the story, Kristi posted to her Instagram a trending meme of the officer with his knee in the back of Floyd’s neck and former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the national anthem. The caption read: “This is why.”
So what does all this have to do with Kristi Kinne-Hayes, the great Iowa basketball star?
ESPN commentator Emmanuel Acho pleaded with white America in a video posted to his Twitter feed Tuesday.
“My white brothers and sisters, we need y’all’s help,” Acho said. African-Americans have been outraged as people continued to die unnecessarily, but white Americans have remained mostly indifferent or hesitant to raise their voice in protest.
We need to take the journey Kristi Kinne-Hayes took in her 46 years. She went from living blind to race because it never directly affected her to having a profound understanding of just how horrible racism is in this country.
I’m not saying you need to repost the meme or start hashtagging everything #blacklivesmatter.
But we must all do our very best to engage empathy for people who are not like us.
It’s very hard for anyone to see life through the perspective of someone who has lived so differently.
Our failure to do that is already too late for so many, the latest being George Floyd.
Daniel P. Finney, independent journalist – Cut loose and cashiered by corporate media, lone paragraph stacker Daniel P. Finney makes his way telling stories about his city, state and nation. No more metrics or Google trends, he writes stories about people and life ignored by the oligarchy. ParagraphStacker.com is reader-supported media. Please consider donating at paypal.me/paragraphstacker.
KALAMAZOO, Mich. – A native of Loveland, Ohio, Giovanni Ricci was a four-time Academic All-MAC selection at Western Michigan who was a third-team all-league selection in 2018 before bumping up to the first team in 2019. He finished with 21 games with two or more receptions and 22 contests with 20 or more receiving yards. Ricci received the Iron Bronco Award in 2019 for having played the most snaps during the regular season and represented WMU at the East-West Shrine Bowl in St. Petersburg, Fla., on January 18, 2020. Ricci was a standout player for Loveland High School Tigers. Ricci was on the Loveland High Schoo’s 2013 Ohio State Championship team.
In 2013 Gio Ricci catches a pass for a touchdown late in the 4th quarter against the Zanesville Blue Devils. The Tiger win sent them to the State Championship. (Loveland Magazine File Photo by David Burig)
Ricci has agreed to terms with the Carolina Panthers to join the NFL organization as an undrafted free agent.
A two-time All-Mid-American Conference selection and one of eight semifinalists for the John Mackey Award in 2019, Ricci was a four-year letterwinner for the Broncos. In 45 career games with 21 starts, Ricci tallied 98 receptions for 1,114 yards (11.37) and 11 touchdowns.
During his 2019 senior season, Ricci started all 13 games, catching 51 passes for 642 yards (12.59) and eight touchdowns. He tied for the team lead in receptions and finished second on the squad in receiving yards. Ricci also tied for the lead in the MAC, and for 40th nationally, in receiving touchdowns. Among tight ends nationally, he tied for third in receiving TDs. Ricci caught two TD passes versus Monmouth and Ohio and had one score against Michigan State, Syracuse, Central Michigan and Toledo.
As a senior, Ricci caught two or more passes in 11 games and made four or more receptions in eight contests. He finished with a personal-best eight grabs at Syracuse and added a career-high 105 receiving yards versus the Orange. In his two games against Power 5 opponents (Michigan State & Syracuse) during the season, Ricci finished with 14 receptions for 158 yards and two TDs.
During his junior campaign in 2018, Ricci caught 35 passes for 392 yards (11.20) and three touchdowns to finish third on the team in receptions and receiving yards. He registered two touchdown catches against Delaware State and one against Ball State, hauling in a nine-yard pass from Kaleb Eleby with 1:48 left in the fourth quarter to tie the game at 35-35. Earlier in the final quarter against the Cardinals, Ricci caught a two-point conversion pass from Eleby to knot the contest at 28-28.
A member of one of the best Western Michigan teams in program history, Ricci primarily played on special teams in 2016 as the Broncos captured the MAC West Division title and Marathon MAC Championship Game crown and made an appearance in the Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic. Ricci recovered a fumble against Ohio in the Marathon MAC Championship Game, setting up WMU at the Bobcat 17-yard line and leading to a Bronco field goal and a 6-0 lead.
Ricci graduated from Western Michigan in April, 2019, with a degree in finance.
Willie Lutz is a former Loveland resident, a graduate of Loveland High School, and former sportswriter for Loveland Magazine
By Willie Lutz
Closing the regular season with a convincing 33-23 victory over the listless Cleveland Browns, the Cincinnati Bengals closed their first run with Zac Taylor at head coach with a 2-14 record and a whole lot of questions left to answer. Granted, the close of the regular season now brings the season of change for this organization.
While the Bengals have plenty of structural reloading to do across this roster, with changes being needed in just about every position category, the team has to decide how the foundation of their team progresses with two key contracts this offseason; A.J. Green and Joe Mixon.
Both players have also made their interest in remaining Bengals-for-life pretty clear, especially for Green who’s modeled his career after Arizona Cardinals-lifer Larry Fitzgerald.
If it comes down to a pick-em, it seems relatively clear that Mixon will carry the day.
Certainly, a “why not both” reality exists, as the $17.7 million owed to QB Andy Dalton, $11.1 million owed to CB Dre Kirkpatrick, and $9.5 million owed to LT Cordy Glenn in 2020 could very easily come off the books at some point early in this offseason. Despite the ability to make up the money, the team may decide it’s one or the other; if it comes down to a pick-em, it seems relatively clear that Mixon will carry the day.
Here’s how Mixon and Green have fared over the past two seasons:
Joe Mixon: 30 games, 2,305 rushing yards, 96.3 total yards per game, 17 total touchdowns, 4.5 yards per rushing attempt.
A.J. Green: 9 games (none since Week 13 of 2018), 694 receiving yards, 77.1 receiving yards per game, 6 touchdowns, 15.1 yards per catch, 9 yards per target.
Both have the ability to post league-leading numbers in addition to both being complete game-changers when at the top of their game. While it’s been 395 days since we’ve seen Green play football and 437 days since he posted his last 100-plus yard receiving game, what Bengals fans have seen A.J. do in Cincinnati over his eight-year career is plenty convincing.
Going into the offseason, everyone in and around the organization is pretty aware that the team’s star running back will plan to hold out for a new contract before the final year of his rookie deal in 2020. Considering Mixon attempted a hold out before the 2019 season, it seems inevitable that the running back will match his colleagues’ tactics and try to push for a healthy pile of cash from the Cincinnati Bengals.
It’s not to say that Mixon will have a big drop in production, but typically players in his position group tend to start falling off around the age of 27.
Recent changes in football spending wisdom have pointed out the inefficiencies of signing running backs to a second contract, as the burn-out factor has frequently out-weighed the value of the deal. It’s not to say that Mixon will have a big drop in production, but typically players in his position group tend to start falling off around the age of 27.
Here’s what’s resulted for the bank accounts of other top running backs around the league who’ve held out for more money:
Ezekiel Elliot, Dallas Cowboys: Held out all of training camp, signed a six-year, $90 million ($28 million guaranteed) contract on Sept. 4, allowing him to rush ahead for 1,357 yards and 12 touchdowns on 4.5 yards-per-carry during the 2019 season.
Le’Veon Bell, New York Jets: Sat out for entire 2018 season with Pittsburgh Steelers, signed four-year, $52.5 million ($35 million guaranteed) with Jets in Summer 2019.
Melvin Gordon, LA Chargers: Skipped training camp, returned to Chargers in Week 5, finishing the season with 8 touchdowns and a career-low 612 yards on 3.8 yards per attempt.
As the NFL acts as something of a fraternity or perhaps a very specialized networking organization, Joe Mixon is certainly friends with a lot of the other top-flight running backs in the league who’ve recently held out for more cash. Considering Mixon ranks somewhere in the top three-to-five runners in the league, his contract seems more likely to resemble a lofty salary like Elliot’s deal from Dallas and less like the front-loaded deal Bell received from New York.
Green will be more of a specialized case; he’s the face of the franchise in a lot of ways and certainly has the healthiest jersey share of any player currently on the team.
Green will be more of a specialized case; he’s the face of the franchise in a lot of ways and certainly has the healthiest jersey share of any player currently on the team. Walking around the Paul Brown Stadium tailgate lots, you’ll find exponentially more #18 jerseys than #28, #14, or #85 (Ochocinco and Eifert) on the backs of fans.
Over the course of his time in Cincinnati, this fanbase has seen a lot more winning when Green is on the field than when he’s off; the Bengals are 66-48-1 with A.J. on the field and 7-21-1 when he doesn’t check into the game. He was also the best player on the team during their five-straight runs to the playoffs from 2011-2015. Making seven appearances in the Pro Bowl and being named to three Second-Team All-Pro squads, Green has been a talisman of greatness in his 111 starts at wide receiver in Cincinnati.
The Bengals are 66-48-1 with A.J. on the field and 7-21-1 when he doesn’t check into the game.
What’ll be interesting to monitor in A.J.’s contract negotiation will be his complete disgust at the concept of playing under the franchise tag. If the team does decide to tag the star wide receiver, it seems like that it would only be to drum up a trade asset so they don’t lose him without some sort of return. In a major market, Green would’ve likely been traded at the deadline for a few nice draft assets, but Cincinnati doesn’t operate with that sort of mindset.
Certainly, the organization has to consider the value of having both players around for the development of what’ll be April’s first-overall pick in the draft in LSU’s Joe Burrow. The incoming quarterback will strongly benefit from having a talented arsenal of receiving options during his first season in the NFL, as both Green and Mixon have the ability to lift great pressure off of their quarterback.
If this team drafts Joe Burrow with their first pick in next year’s draft, the trajectory of this franchise drastically changes
Willie Lutz is a former Loveland resident, graduate of Loveland High School, and former sports writer for Loveland Magazine
by Willie Lutz
The beginning of the Zac Taylor era in Cincinnati isn’t bringing the sweeping organizational changes some fans might’ve hoped when the team moved on from Marvin Lewis a little under a year ago. The team is off to a 1-13 start with their new head coach, they might lose the second-best player in franchise history after taking one snap in the team’s last 20 games, and they’re still probably not going to spend in free agency.
Further, they’ve got a lot of their cap tied into older players and don’t have a ton of obvious young talent on the roster to try to extend. Trusting Geno Atkins, Carlos Dunlap, and Shawn Williams to carry this team for the next decade isn’t going to cut it.
Key draft picks like tackle Cedric Ogbuehi, center Billy Price, and tackle Jake Fischer were trusted to be the future of this team’s line, only for the three to get benched over and over again, with Price trending towards the third in the group to be off the team before the decade flips. We won’t even get a chance to see this year’s 11th-overall pick Jonah Williams play a snap until 2020.
They’ve also had issues with buy-in, as veteran linebacker Preston Brown gained weight throughout the season, eventually getting cut from the team, and starting left tackle Cordy Glenn pretended to be so injured that he couldn’t play, only to be called on his bluff by line coach Jim Turner who eventually found a way to put Glenn on notice with a one-game suspensions.
All of that and I can still say, in the words of Dave Lapham, it’s a great day to be a Bengals fan.
Some of the ugliness of the first few weeks was mitigated and the football started to get more watchable (for lack of a better term).
The sky was falling in Cincinnati through the first eleven games of the season. After the team took its trip to London, did some bye week soul searching, and revaluated what they wanted to do with their offense, some of the ugliness of the first few weeks was mitigated and the football started to get more watchable (for lack of a better term). After clearing the hurdle with their first win of the season by taking the top off a rocky New York Jets squad, this team played a better four quarters of football than the Cleveland Browns when they visited First Energy Stadium two Sundays ago, when the men in stripes took a 19-27 loss in the battle of Ohio, a game where Andy Dalton certainly outplayed Baker Mayfield.
Around the trade deadline, players lamented the thought of any of their teammates heading to other destinations almost as much as their own departures.
Right now, I much rather be the Cincinnati Bengals than the Cleveland Browns, if for no other reason than culture alone. The Bengals’ locker room raves about the internal communication, something that was incredibly important in Zac Taylor’s initial statements about the job. Around the trade deadline, players lamented the thought of any of their teammates heading to other destinations almost as much as their own departures.
Trust me, if you’re the Bengals, you’d rather lose that game by 8 than be on the same boat as the Browns, who are drowning under their own ego clashes after coming into the year with mixed playoff and somehow Super Bowl expectations. No one thought the Bengals would be good, but at least this team doesn’t have a star player asking other quarterbacks to lineup a trade for their talents after games.
When Andy Dalton was benched, the team rallied around Ryan Finley. When Andy Dalton was renamed the starter, the team rallied around Andy with excitement you wouldn’t expect from a winless team who ranked 32nd in the league in just about every statistical category.
Not to mention, this team is really starting to play some good football. Not without their stupid mistakes, of course, but the combination of Joe Mixon getting going in the rushing game and the defense starting to kick some tail, they’ve become a pretty tough team to beat over the last five weeks.
If this team drafts Joe Burrow with their first pick in next year’s draft, the trajectory of this franchise drastically changes.
If this team drafts Joe Burrow with their first pick in next year’s draft, the trajectory of this franchise drastically changes.
In sports, there is no worse place to be than in the middle. That’s why the Miami Dolphins are bottoming out, that’s why the Philadelphia 76ers did the process, it’s why the Baltimore Ravens took Lamar Jackson in 2018. You can choose to be average or you can choose to be extraordinary, but extraordinary is always going to take more work. Eventually, franchises are forced to take a hard look in the mirror and decide what they want to be; usually, the answer is a title contender.
Could the Bengals have gone to Zac Taylor and given him a playoff-level roster headed into week one? Sure, but then all you’re doing is betting on Andy Dalton to take you into January, which has resulted in the same thing over and over again, a playoff loss.
Bottoming out for one season to take a franchise-changing player is a tried and true formula, even with varying results.
Bottoming out for one season to take a franchise-changing player is a tried and true formula, even with varying results. While teams are increasingly striking gold atop the draft, there’s still a Ryan Leaf for every Peyton Manning.
However, with what we’ve seen from LSU quarterback Joe Burrow this year, it looks closer to the latter than the former. If Burrow is the next quarterback of the Bengals, he should be thrilled for the opportunity to succeed in Cincinnati. On top, his coach will be Zac Taylor, who spent a large portion of the beginning of his career, including with the 2018 NFC Champion Los Angeles Rams, as a quarterback coach. Further, in the Bengals locker room, there’s a lot of interesting young talent teams around the league would clamor over, even if that’s not resulting in wins at the moment.
Whatever passer winds up in the Bengals backfield next season is going to be in a situation to succeed.
In his first year in Cincinnati, Burrow (or any quarterback the team drafts) will have incredible weapons like John Ross (who’s made a significant leap in limited year-three reps), Tyler Boyd, A.J. Green (we assume), Auden Tate (another guy who made a leap), and Joe Mixon coming out of the backfield.
Clearly heading towards a quarterback selection in the 2020 NFL Draft after Ryan Finley showed as an incapable starting option, whatever passer winds up in the Bengals backfield next season is going to be in a situation to succeed.
“We can continue as a nation to sweep problems under the rug on which we stand – or we can take a knee.”
by Steve Link,
HAVE TO SAY THIS: If I thought the NFL protests were a slap in the face to “our soldiers, our police officers, and our veterans” as some have claimed, I’d be right there with those who object.
On Tuesday, October 9 the Press Secretary for our administrative branch of government said, “We support the national anthem, the flag, and the men and women who fought to defend it.”
Well, I was proud to serve in the military. Never in harm’s way, but served on active duty for two years. I was a Drill Sergeant. Most of my …trainees went to Vietnam. They did not fight for a flag.
Our nation’s flag is supposed to denote and identify our great country. IT IS A SYMBOL, NOT AN IDOL. It symbolizes this nation of people and the systems within which we live – including the good and the bad. Certainly, no one salutes the flag to honor what’s wrong in America, but the bad is part of American life just as it is globally.
I can understand some of the confusion surrounding for whom the flag flies. Many Americans believe that the United States is the “greatest nation on earth.” That’s just not so and is, frankly, fake news. The one way in which we ARE far above all other nations is in military strength. So one might confuse the symbolism of our flag as being militaristic. But our flag is certainly not designed to represent any special segment of our citizenry. Most Americans do not serve in the military or law enforcement. Rather, the American flag it is a symbol of equality for all – among other ideals – for which we try to stand as a people. (And “equality for all” is also fake news.)
So, I do not see the NFL players disrespecting any individuals. No, they are trying the best they can to turn our collective attention to problems in our country that are morally abhorrent. I am pleased that some of them have been passionate enough to take risks and draw upon a large audience to make a statement that needs hearing (and seeing).
We can continue as a nation to sweep problems under the rug on which we stand – or we can take a knee.
Christopher Ball is a longtime Loveland resident and an attorney
A Guest Column by Independent journalist Daniel P. Finney who writes for 
