AFCN

With just a week remaining until the 2021 NFL Draft, let’s wander around the division and see what’s happening…   Bengals director of player personnel Duke Tobin hasn’t ruled out a trade, but hasn’t ruled out standing pat with the #5 pick. Bengals QB Joe Burrow claims he’s content to let the front office determine their…

“Confidence…thrives on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection and on unselfish performance. Without them it cannot live.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow, 2020’s NFL wunderkind until he shredded his ACL in Week 11, is an interesting study. 2019’s Heisman Trophy winner, Burrow was trotted out to start…

“It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.” – Carl Sagan It goes well beyond hyperbole to say that CY2020 didn’t unfold as most had hoped.  As COVID-19 laid waste to sports protocols and norms for months, players and fans were left…

“Hubris is one of the great renewable resources.” – P.J. O’Rourke Let’s just be perfectly honest here – the terms “Browns” and “elite talent” have rarely been synonymous the last 22 years.  Sure, there’s been a few Browns players that matched that description, like LT Joe Thomas or WR Josh Gordon (whose talent was clearly…

“It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.” – Ernest Hemingway As followers of the AFC North, we’re all keenly aware of who Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger is.   We’ve followed his career, spent entirely in Pittsburgh, thus far.  We know all about the…

The NFL offseason’s here. Although it may seem strange, I like the offseason.  As I opine every year, it’s the lone time annually that every team is 0-0 on both the scoreboard and the standings, and the losers of the previous season can exercise hope that the next season will be much greater and more…

It’s Super Bowl Week!  Yay…? Super Bowl Week is always a little…wistful.  If your team isn’t playing in the title game, watching myriad interviews, retrospectives and pressers with teams, players and coaches you care little about becomes tiresome, bordering on depressing after awhile.  This year in particular, the doldrums surely began to settle in as…

The AFC North may not be in the Super Bowl this year, but it remains the best overall conference in the NFL…as far as we’re concerned, anyway.  As such, while the NFL celebrates the notion of the “Pro Bowl” this week, I’ll run down the latest news items and discussions regarding our favorite teams.  Onward……

Been awhile since I’ve written one of these, but in a week featuring a tense presidential inauguration, there wasn’t much football to write directly about.  Sure, it’s the playoffs and all, but without an AFC North representative, what’s there to pay attention to? It’s Conference Championship Week, and despite three playoff entrants, the AFC North…