Elizabeth Hurley As Supergirl, Tom Brady Signing Autographs For Jets & Lots Of Meat At Lambeau
Where do we even start this morning? My Bengals? The red-hot email inbox?
Let's start with MY BENGALS going from the odds-on-favorite to finish last in the AFC North all the way to AFC North champions. The national media ripped the Bengals for taking Ja'Marr Chase in the draft. Then Chase was supposedly prone to drops. Then the guy was destroyed for saying he wanted to break all Bengals receiving records.
I seem to think my reaction to Chase making his records declaration is that I didn't care what happened as long as the Bengals someday got a playoff victory. And then Joe Burrow and Ja'Marr Chase had what will go down as one of the greatest days in Bengals history against the Chiefs. I spent the agonizing final four minutes of the game on the phone with my dad living through those 4th downs.
Will Mahomes have too much time? You have to go for it because Mahomes will beat you with a touchdown. Mahomes will figure out a way to win. Mahomes will throw an 80-yard Hail Mary and they'll lose.
And then the Bengals found a way to close it out. My dad was choked up. I was choked up.
Why? Because we know this is a different team than the Marvin Lewis-led teams. We know this team has a quarterback with the 'it' factor that Andy Dalton didn't have in his bones. We know this team isn't full of morons ready to implode and take season-ending personal foul penalties.
We don't know if Joe Burrow will get into the playoffs and wither away like Andy Dalton. What we know so far is that if it did happen, it would be one of helluva shock.
Will the Bengals win a playoff game and end the misery that has haunted fans since 1991? We'll see. The football gods weren't very nice back in 2006 when my dad and I were in Paul Brown Stadium to see the AFC North champion Bengals play the Steelers on Wild Card weekend. We were confident Carson Palmer was the savior only to see his knee blown out.
We were fairly confident Dalton could beat TJ Yates. It didn't happen. We thought for sure Dalton could beat Matt Schaub. Nope. And then Philip Rivers beat the Bengals while completing 12 passes in 2014.
Just one playoff win. That's all I'm asking for. I'm not getting greedy, football gods.
• Mike C. writes:
Good Morning and Congrats to you and your Bengals for winning the AFC North. As a long-time Steelers fan, it does pain me to write it, but one thing I have been working on is getting know people of rival teams. As a youth soccer coach, I teach my kids show respect for their opponent. But as an adult, I have lowered myself when it comes to rivalries. It hits me as something inconsistent in my life. To work on it something I have tried to do is show respect and appreciation for rivals' success. You are one of the few Bengals fans I know and wanted to extend to you Congratulations.
I have been meaning to write over the last part of Dec when I had time off. Thinking "I'll have more time then" but didn't have the motivation. Today is my first day back logging into my job, and as I wait for my work computer to boot up, I am firing off a note to you. It also helps that it is snowing down here in Southern MD like it would normally do in Western PA--and I imagine the same it would in OH.
There have been a number of topics I wanted to weigh in on, but I will save some of those for another email. I did want to throw out one restaurant recommendation and wanted to pose a question to the Screencaps community.
Based upon the Screencap images where BBQ is high on the quantity of images,
I recommend Pierce's Pit Bar-B-Que in Williamsburg, VA. If a reader was going to go Williamsburg on vacay, the Great Wolf Lodge is just up the street from it. If a reader was heading through Williamsburg on their way to VA Beach along I-64, it is right along the interstate, and you can see it (after the exit) right from the road. I've been there a number of times over the years, especially when I had business that took me to Hampton Roads
region. Just not much travel down that way in the past 2 years for me though.
Finally, as I read through Screencaps over Dec and there was some debate on the timing of putting up and taking down Christmas decorations (I wait until the first or second weekend of Jan--I keep the lights on until the 6 Jan for the three wise men arriving at Christmas) I wanted to ask the community about their interior decorations, mainly under the tree: How many of you guys put trains up at Christmas?
I was also wondering if it was a geographical thing, like is this more common in certain parts of the country compared to others? And I was also wondering if it was a generational
thing. I'm in my mid to late 40s are there people out there in the early 30s putting up displays?" I realize people have already taken down their decorations, but just wondering how common across the community the model train under the Christmas tree display is. I am curious, as I believe that in a generation or two I think this American tradition may disappear.
Anyways, congrats once again, more snow is falling here and with the day off from school, my kids and dogs are growing restless.
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That's an action-packed email from Mike. I'll start by saying thanks for the congratulations from a Steelers fan. That doesn't happen very often. As for trains, I'll say that my in-laws have a train that runs under their TV and it's pretty impressive. Our kids love it. However, we're not putting up a train in this house. No way. It's enough work keeping a young dog out of a Christmas tree. I can't imagine trying to stop her from trying to eat a moving train.
• Mark W. checks in with a weather report:
Like a lot of the country, we have experienced some crazy and schizophrenic weather. It was 75 here Saturday in Middle Tennessee and woke up to this on Monday morning. I am not complaining as many of our neighbors have endured severe storms. Take care and have a great 2022.
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I can't believe that Mark, Clay and the rest of you in Tennessee and across the south have more snow than we do here in NW Ohio. We have a dusting and that was the first snow we've had since November, I think.
Hang in there. You guys will be 60 and sunny soon. Meanwhile, we have our eyes on the long-range forecast. Very little to no snow through the middle of the month means we have six weeks of real winter left. Anything after March 1 tends to melt fairly quickly, so if things stay the way they are, your boy here in Ohio won't suffer through too much snow this season.
• Daniel J. writes:
This is from the NHL Winter Classic, check out what’s written on the tape.
• Speaking of hockey, Chris S. in Trevor, WI has a backyard rink update:
Happy New Year Joe, and to the screencap community. Well, it’s been a pretty crappy start to the year, as far as the rink goes. We had the worst combo of weather we could have early in a rink season.
We filled on 12/15, and started making ice. Things were looking good, the lighter kids even skated on about 3” of ice on 12/23. Then disaster struck, we had 50s on Christmas weekend, and we lost nearly all the ice. Usually not a killer, unless we get snow before we refreeze.
As you can see in the picture, we got snow and lots of it. 8” fell on the thin ice. This creates a layer of snow/slush, which pretty much stops the freeze in its tracks. With the ice being too thin to go on and shovel, all I have found that works is to water the rink. My first “do hard things” of the new year was spending 3 hours spraying water (it was 18 degrees) on the snow and slush in an attempt to take all the air out of the slush, so we get a solid layer of ice again.
It looks terrible, it’s as rough as a cheese grater, but hopefully, this does it. Any readers out there who have encountered this, and have a better way to overcome it, I welcome suggestions. After about a decade this is the best I have come with.
• Mike T. & Cindy T. in Eagle, Idaho held a very important ritual over the weekend. It was time for their burning of the Christmas tree. I remember fondly the first time Mike T. sent me a photo of his yard and the massive pit. I figured Mike T. burned some serious lumber in this beast only to find out that he burns a Christmas tree in there.
Here's how things looked this year (don't mind my son's old Andy Dalton pic...not sure why that's showing on Vimeo):
• Paul B. sent this in NYE:
5 hours in on this Boston Butt …about 4 more to go on a dreary day in Eastern PA.
• Chris B. in Texas, who has been an incredible emailer, knew how to end the year. He took the dogs to Galveston:
• Congratulations are in order for OutKick copy editor Cortney, who got married over the holiday season. I'm not sure the exact date this marriage took place, but it's official, she's a married woman and I think she's back to work today, so the copy around here should be incredibly clean.
Cortney's message to the readers:
Thanks for all the VT honeymoon suggestions from 'Caps readers! Unfortunately, by the time we got there, one of our doggies wasn't feeling very well, so we had to stay close to where we were staying in North Bennington. The state is beautiful though, and I hope we get the chance to visit there again. If so, I have a whole list of places to see and experience!
• Good luck to all of you returning to the office today. I know you're going to be rather worthless. I also know that the sales team is going to be all gung ho coming out of the box and there will be meetings on top of meetings in board rooms across America today. Try to stay calm as people try to be 2022 heroes on Jan. 3.
Get through the day and then get comfortable for Big Ben's final home game as a member of the Steelers.
Email: joekinsey@gmail.com