PERTINENT DATA: 4-12 last year; 100 to 1 odds to win Super Bowl XLVI.
BEST CASE SCENARIO (Raven): Carson Palmer has always seemed like a solid dude, but maybe he's tired of the wear and tear on his body, and once the last week of preseason rolls around, he's gonna saunter into camp like Brett Favre, and be able to gunsling this team to a respectable showing throughout the season. I mean, Cedric Benson has shown he can do his thing, and that should just make it less likely Palmer's ACL's get ripped to shreds by rabid Steelers or Ravens blitzkriegs. That being said, maybe even if he doesn't come back, Andy Dalton is the next Matt Ryan, and he inspires play about two levels above where the Bengals should be, and they end up better than their state rival in ineptitude, the Browns, and perhaps even give the Steelers and Ravens a thrashing they'll not soon forget. Marvin Lewis will see to it that his defense is mediocrely good enough to keep his "defensive mind" label from being downgraded by Standard & Poor's to a "defensive tendencies", after a previous downgrade from "defensive genius" back when they were giving "genius" upgrades to whatever black guy they thought might could be a head coach without any real concern for how good they might actually be.
WORST CASE SCENARIO (Neil): Look, man, I just watched my Lions absolutely eviscerate the Bengals so from where I’m sitting the worst case scenario is number one overall pick kinda shit. You can’t win, Bengals fans. Your new quarterback is a soulless ginger who is not allowed to throw the ball more than 10 yards down field, you have no real weapons – I mean, A.J. Green should be good but when was the last time a rookie wide receiver really kicked everyone’s ass? - a notoriously shitty owner and the best you can really hope for is that you’re better than the Browns, which probably isn’t even going to happen. I mean, even the Browns have surpassed you, Bengals fans. The Browns! And they’re named after shit. And then that same Shit, Paul Brown, founded your team but was too ashamed to give you his name so not only do you have to deal with the indignity of being Shit’s second family, the one he kept in a crappy apartment down by the railroad tracks and the only time you saw him as a kid is when he stopped by, half drunk, to fuck your mom while you tried to pretend that you couldn’t hear that shit through your paper thin walls, but you also have to deal with the fact that Shit refused to even honor you with his name and left all his money to his real family when he died and so now you’re just some second class citizen and the best you can ever hope to do is to show up your older brother, the Browns, but now he’s gone and started pushing himself towards at least the hint of respectability – cleaned up, gotten a job as a paralegal or some shit – and now all that’s left for you to do is get shitfaced and maybe turn some tricks in the alley behind the seedy strip club your mom works in now that Shit died and stopped paying rent on your crapshack. So that’s your worst case scenario, Bengals fans: sucking dick in a strip club alley while your mom works the pole and your older brother, who won’t even acknowledge your presence, gets to live off of the white collar scraps of the Steelers and the Ravens. Sure, he’s still fucked but you’re more fucked.
PLAYER TO PULL FOR (Raven): Neil probably hates him because he played for Michigan State, but Domata Peko is a 300-pound plus Samoan descendant with a giant bushy ponytail, so that's my man right there. He is also ringleader for a group of Samoan players who proliferate the Bengals roster, which I imagine makes for a real shitty time for all the English and Irish dudes in intramural rugby leagues in the greater Cincinnati area, because Samoans, having been brainwashed thoroughly by both Mormonism and tribal traditions, roll deep family-wise, so I imagine there's a lot of fucking Samoan cousins and brothers and nephews and uncles hanging around the rec leagues nowadays, getting all primitive on them European drunkard salespeople types that tend to play in adult rugby leagues.
PLAYER TO HATE MOST (Neil): Honestly, there’s no one here even worth hating. I mean, I guess I could look for some petty reason to hate on somebody – Andy Dalton has no soul on account of being a lovechild of Ronald McDonald and an Irish whore, Domata Peko once got a bullshit touchdown for Michigan State on a bullshit fumble recovery against my beloved Michigan Wolverines, Morgan Trent is kind of a whiney bitch – but that would be cheap and unbecoming and frankly, I am above that sort of nonsense. Hatred is a wasted emotion, like jealousy, except for when a dude really sucks and deserves that shit. Use your own judgment. I trust you.
BEST NAME ON TEAM: Quan Cosby, who I think is the eldest child of Denise Huxtable and Mickey Rourke when she disappeared into that voodoo cult that one year before coming back with long dreadlocks and that yellow-boned little girl named Raven-Symone who would grow up to look like she might be fat but maybe not but I'm not sure in the face.
IN A PERFECT WORLD (Neil): In a perfect world, the Bengals break into the house of their older brother, the Browns, and steal his wife’s jewelry, if only because he bought that shit with Pop Brown’s inheritance and because your mom deserves to actually have something nice. I’m not sure what that translates into in football terms, maybe Rey Maualuga chewing off Peyton Hillis’ balls during a particularly horrifying run through the middle? I really don’t know. What I do know is that in the Bengals perfect world, they’d at least be able to look better than their estranged older brother and maybe even take a pop at his rich asshole of a boss after getting shitfaced and crashing the company picnic. In this case, the rich asshole of a boss would be the Steelers. Maybe you can get people to at least say “Hey, how about this fuckin’ guy?” Of course, because he’s a rich asshole, he’ll have you beaten by his cronies and then sold into white slavery and you’ll spend the rest of your days being buttfucked by other rich old assholes in a Thai whorehouse or be castrated and turned into “living art” by some outrageously effete and pretentious Italian Count, but fuck it, it’s better than being the shittiest team in the AFC North. Right?
PROGNOSIS (Raven): Let's be real here - not only is Carson Palmer not coming to play, thereby making this team more fucked than if he did, but it also is run by perhaps the only management team in the league that makes Dan Snyder look smart. The Bengals will go 3-13, and finish last in AFC North.
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