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We all need vacations. It's only natural. Work gets tedious, boring, suffocating and even your coworkers annoy the living hell out of you. Instead of daydreaming about being a ninja and completely revamping the entire personnel staff at your organization -- as some of you are doing about the Bengals organization -- sometimes we just need to reset, get away, recharge the batteries. Then again, how many of you take a vacation and actually look forward to coming back to work. I'm sure on Monday when you return you're already regretting not extending your vacation by at least one day. Then again, who comes back on a Monday? That's just dumb.
The Bengals have just had their own vacation, heading into last week's bye with a disappointing 2-3 start to the season, loudly exasperated with back-to-back losses to the Cleveland Browns and Tampa Bay Buccaneers. One can only hope that Cincinnati takes the time to find better personnel packages, implement better gameplans, or, for the love of god, have a general sense of pride so that interceptions aren't the result from passes falling off finger tips, miscommunication in routes, better coverage packages and how about limiting the opposing running back to less than five years a rush?
A bye week gives the Bengals a chance to regroup, put the mediocre 2010 start to bed while preparing for the home stretch right in the middle of rough patch in the team's schedule.
Unfortunately, history shows that the Bengals first game after the bye week is no different than a Monday following vacation. During the Marvin Lewis era, the Bengals are 2-4-1 coming out of the bye week break. And both of those wins were against the Baltimore Ravens. On the bright side, aside from the Browns 17-point win over the Bengals in 2004, Cincinnati has never lost by more than one possession coming out of the break. Hell, Cincinnati plays just as effectively as most of us work on Friday afternoons just before a two week vacation, heading into the bye week with a 3-5 record during the Marvin Lewis era, including Cincinnati's 21-24 loss the Buccaneers.
| Before The Bye Week | After The Bye Week | |||
| 2003 | Buffalo Bills | L, 16-22 | Baltimore Ravens | W, 34-26 |
| 2004 | Pittsburgh Steelers | L, 17-28 | Cleveland Browns | L, 17-34 |
| 2005 | Baltimore Ravens | W, 21-9 | Indianapolis Colts | L, 37-45 |
| 2006 | New England Patriots | L, 13-38 | Tampa Bay Buccaneers | L, 13-14 |
| 2007 | New England Patriots | L, 13-34 | Kansas City Chiefs | L, 20-27 |
| 2008 | Jacksonville Jaguars | W, 21-19 | Philadelphia Eagles | T, 13-13 |
| 2009 | Chicago Bears | W, 45-10 | Baltimore Ravens | W, 17-7 |
| 2010 | Tampa Bay Buccaneers | L, 21-24 | ||
If you want to spin this to sound really nice, then consider Cincinnati hasn't lost a game coming out of the bye week since 2007. Alternatively, Cincinnati has only won game in the past six years after the bye.
Either way, if the Bengals play terribly against the Falcons, it might be us that needs a vacation.