I like the Cincinnati Bengals owner, but then again I don’t pay to get into his games, nor did I have to play for him in the woeful 1990s. But still I think this ranking is based on information that’s both outdated and off the mark.
After all, the last three years the team has won 30 games and made the playoffs each season, something only five NFL teams have done. Sure, they haven’t won a postseason game, but they certainly have the talent — and that includes Andy Dalton at quarterback.
With better drafts, players now getting better pay and certainly better results, does Brown deserve the Despicable Me tag?
He was asked about that Tuesday before the team’s annual preseason luncheon at Paul Brown Stadium:
Have people changed their opinion of you?
“Listen, I’ve been up, I’ve been down and I’ve been all places in between,” he said. “Certainly being popular is better than not being popular, but do I take credit for that?
“I wasn’t out there taking credit when things weren’t going so well, so maybe I ought to shut up and not take credit when it is going a little better. But I am happy when people don’t want to take a bite out of me.”
Right now the biggest chomp somebody wants out of him is the bite Dalton would like to put on Brown’s checkbook.
The quarterback is in the last year of his contract and he wants a hefty extension with plenty of money up front. The Bengals — “Oh you know me, I just don’t like to spend,” Brown joked at one point Tuesday — would like a long-term contract, too, but one laden with performance incentives that certainly will include playoff wins. Something Dalton has yet to orchestrate.
Negotiations have been dragging on and if the sides don’t meet, Brown suggested the team would place a franchise tag on Dalton next season and keep him here another year.
“You can count on one thing,” Brown said. “He’s going to be the quarterback here in the immediate future. And I want him to be here a long time. I think he’s proved enough to merit a long-term deal.”
At one point Brown said Dalton deserved a contract similar to Colin Kaepernick’s new six-year, $126 million extension at San Francisco.
Just as Dalton’s camp likes the dollar signs in that deal, Brown said there are things the Bengals like about it because, in truth, it’s owner-friendly. Only $13 million is guaranteed. The base salary through 2017 is guaranteed only for injury.
While there’s still a question if Dalton will turn into an elite quarterback, Brown said he likes what he sees:
“We judge quarterbacks by different standards. How well do they throw? How do they run? They lead? … As a package I think he ranks pretty well. But the one other thing that really counts is how does he win? And he’s been to three playoffs straight. That’s better than (Pittsburgh’s) Roethlisberger the past three years. Better than Flacco (Baltimore) the past three years.”
That said, Brown admitted, everyone in the building is “aware to the core” that the team has faltered the past three years in the playoffs. “It’s something you carry around in the back of your mind all year long.”
Brown thinks Dalton can rally the troops: ”Out of all the quarterbacks we’ve ever had here, he’s as respected by his teammates as any of them. … Players respond to him.”
Brown was asked if the quarterback position is the most irreplaceable in sports.
“Unreplaceable turns out to be a fiction,” he said. “We all come and go. There’s always somebody behind us. It’s just as true in sports and football as in life.”
That seemed to tie straight into a favorite old saying of Paul Brown, Mike’s legendary father and Bengals founder.
“Yeah, I always liked that (saying),” Mike said with a laugh. “He used to say, ‘We’re all useful, but nobody is necessary.’ He gets credit for it, but he heard that from Dr. Bell, who way back was his doctor.”
That’s when Paul Brown was coaching Massillon High School.
“He was sick and couldn’t go to one game,” Mike said. “Dr. Bell ordered him to stay in bed. So Dad got a phone set up so he could call in — this was high tech in the 1930s — at halftime. And when he did, he said, ‘How’s it going?’ They said, ‘Well, we’re ahead 30 to nothing.’ And Dr. Bell said, ‘PB, we all are useful, but none of us are necessary.’ ”
Now 78, Mike Brown said he’s feeling that as well. Tuesday he claimed that his daughter Katie and Coach Marvin Lewis now run the franchise.
“You can tell I’m getting old,” he said. “I’m a grandfather. My granddaughters go to college. When you get older, your children get impatient with you, That’s just the way it works in life. You realize roles change. My role changed with my father, just as Katie’s role with me changed. One time I went up. Now I’m going down. That’s just the way it is.”
That may all be true, but there’s a little wolf in sheep’s clothing there.
Lewis said no one spends more time at the Bengals complex than Mike Brown. He said when he pulls in early in the morning Mike’s car is already there.
Brown said as he’s gotten older he’s gotten smarter, and you saw that Tuesday.
Since he was a kid, he said he has loved packing up and going to training camp with the team: “When I was yeah high, I’d go to training camp with the old (Cleveland) Browns at Bowling Green. I loved going along and being with the football players and the coaches, watching practice and in the old days attending the meetings.
“Even now I’d rather do that than anything. If someone offered me a trip to Hawaii, I’d say, ‘No thanks, I’d rather pack up and go to training camp.’ That’s my favorite thing.”
The Bengals used to travel to Wilmington College for training camp and then went down to Georgetown, Ky., but now they stay right at Paul Brown Stadium. No travel, no packing the bags, no adventure.
So how does Brown like that?
“Well, it’s different, but my wife helped out,” he said with a grin. “She went on vacation for two weeks.”
That brought some laughter and when he saw me writing it down, he made sure to whisper:
“You know I was just kidding, right?”
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