PITTSBURGH — The Bengals need to apologize to their fan base for the embarrassment they’ve become.
The Ja’Marr Chase spitting episode is just the latest indignity in a nightmarish season for the Bengals, who’ve had more than their fair share in their checkered history. The Bengals lost 34-12 Sunday in Pittsburgh to a Steelers team that was there for the taking. It was the Steelers, a team built around brute strength and toughness, and with six Super Bowls in the case, that showed they were the far tougher team, even when they lost their starting quarterback to a wrist injury.
If the Bengals ownership were smart, they would immediately apologize to their fan base for the abject failure that has been the 2025 season. The episode featuring one of their star players spitting at an opposing player only highlights what’s been a total failure by the entire organization to put a representative team on the field that was supposedly entering a Joe Burrow Super Bowl window.
Don’t wait until the end of the season. Get on top of it as soon as you’re eliminated, which should be in two weeks after getting run over by the Patriots and Ravens. It doesn’t have to be long but every fan should have this in their inbox from the Bengals.
Dear loyal and passionate Bengal fan,
We’re sorry to have embarrassed you with a deeply regrettable season.
On every level, we have failed you. We know you spend a lot of financial and emotional capital in our product. We know you are part of one of the most passionate and loyal fan bases in the NFL. We are not blind to the poor performance – and now behavior – of our team.
We know you deserve better and we will be exhaustive in our efforts this season to restructure our football operations, scour the entire country for the best defensive players to bolster our defense and have frank and hard conversations with our coaching staff to determine if they are the right group to lead this team to Super Bowl glory.
You should expect no less than a Super Bowl-caliber product on the field, not just a one or two-year shot at the prize. That’s not why we drafted Joe Burrow, Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins and extended all of them for over a half-billion dollars. We know we have not supported them with a defense that is capable of playing complementary football.
We know you come to games expecting to watch a team capable of competing with the best in the NFL. We have failed you this season but are committed to not letting one bad year become a habit. This is a new era for the Bengals and we are committed fully to making sure we don’t make the mistakes that have kept us down in past years.
We care about winning and know you care about us. We know that you deserve the kind of effort and determination that is fitting of a fan base that has waited far too long for a taste of Super Bowl championship glory. We will do better.
WhoDey Forever,
Mike, Katie, Troy, Elizabeth and Caroline
Robert Kraft, the owner of the team they’re playing this week, the 9-2 New England Patriots, wrote such a letter to their fan base after a 4-win season in 2023. (Yes, they won just 4 again in 2024 before Mike Vrabel came to town). This is a franchise, mind you, that despite having six Super Bowl trophies in the building, felt ashamed of the precipitous falloff after a certain quarterback left for Tampa Bay and then retirement and a certain head coach left after that 4-win season in ’23. But that’s what happens when you have an organization that cares about winning all the time and proving that winning is in their DNA, not just associated with a player or head coach.
The Bengals apparently have no such urgency or desire. Their performance as a team has been dreadful. Their performance as a front office has been abysmal. We saw cracks with the laughing episode after the loss to the Bears and Chase Brown’s frustration. On Sunday in Pittsburgh, it was in full meltdown when Ja’Marr Chase spat at Jalen Ramsey, doing one of the things on the field that is utterly reprehensible.
No matter how much of a bad guy you think Jalen Ramsey is or how sick and tired you are of watching a defense that can’t get off the field, you can’t be losing your cool as a team captain and spitting in the face of an opponent.
Every team says they care but to certain teams and certain owners, it means more. It’s business life-and-death. The Krafts, Hunts, Luries and Rooneys have mastered it. The Cowboys – with Jerry Jones – used to but not so much any more. The Bengals? They show up at the party, sometimes win a lottery ticket, get to dance for a season or two, then return to NFL purgatory, bringing their fans down with them.
Don’t wait till the offseason. Realize the organizational failure from top-to-bottom to put forth a product that was supposed to compete atop an AFC that is seeing the changing of the guard. The Chiefs, Bills and Ravens are not anywhere close to what they were. But the Bengals did such a poor job with the draft over the last five years building their defense that they have fallen even faster.
This year, they have fallen so far below the bar that they resemble a team much closer to the Titans than the Broncos or Patriots. Bottom line, the product on the field has been substandard and no where close to competitive. And now, you have star players lying about their repulsive behavior on the field.
The Bengals should use Sunday as the fuse to blow up how they do football business in the front office. They could turn an ugly moment in a hideous season into an opportunity to show their fan base things are different. We will change because we have to change.
