BUNGLE IN THE JUNGLE
M2H's Cincinnati Bengals
Game: Madden 12
Platform: PS3
Play Style: Coach Mode
Quarter Length: 12 min. while 20 sec. is locked in
Rosters: First update, with CAPs and edits of fake players to real ones.
Draft Classes: bobthenailer's set 2
Sliders: cusefan's with my tweaks
Banner by Smitty
Reference Links:
http://www.pro-football-reference.com/
Just a few more days until my pre-order gets here, so it's franchise thread setup time. I’ll be waiting for the opening day roster update before I start playing games, and in the interim I’ll be working on getting my sliders dialed in.
The “Bungles” have a pair of conference titles to their credit, which is more than a few teams have, but they’re still one of the NFL’s greatest examples of futility. It’s been a long hard road for them since their 20-16 loss to the 49ers in Super Bowl XXIII on January 22, 1989. The 1990 team crushed the Houston Oilers 41-14 in a wild card game before losing 20-10 to the L.A. Raiders in the divisional round. It’s now over 20 years since Cincy won a playoff game, and they’ve only been to the postseason twice in that time, going 0-2 in wild card games, including that January 8, 2006 loss to the Steelers in which Carson Palmer got his knee blown out on his first and only pass attempt of the game (a 66 yard completion to the late Chris Henry). With Palmer sticking to his trade-me-or-I’ll-retire guns and Chad Ochenta y Cinco now doing his child-pleasing with the Evil Empire, a new era is beginning for Cincinnati, with rookies Andy Dalton and A.J. Green under the tutelage of first-year offensive coordinator Jay Gruden.
Both of Cincy’s playoff appearances of the past 20 years have come with Marvin Lewis as the head coach, but in his 8 seasons Lewis has an overall record of 60-67-1 and the Bengals have finished third or worse in the division in 4 of those seasons. Under most circumstances, this would be a make-or-break year for Lewis, but the departures of Palmer and Ochocinco and the arrivals of Dalton, Green and Gruden may actually have bought him some more time as Dalton and Green adjust to NFL play while learning and maturing in Grudens’s system. But at least some kind of improvement over the abysmal 4-12 2010 season is going to need to be shown.
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