Bengals OC Hue Jackson: 'I'm tired of being the brunt of jokes'

There's only one way to solve this problem.

By Jared Dubin

Jun 18, 2015 at 9:10 am ET • 2 min read

The Cincinnati Bengals, though they have been relatively successful in recent years, do not always get a ton of respect. I mean, Urban Dictionary actually has a page devoted to the team's derogatory nickname, the Cincinnati Bungles:

Cincinnati Bungles

The unfortunate, yet accurate nickname given to the (once beloved) Queen City NFL team, the Cincinnati Bengals.

Websters dictionary defines the word bungle as a verb that means to botch or mishandle.

With the score 7-6 and the ball on the Broncos own 13-yard line and 28 seconds on the clock, Broncos quarterback attempted a pass to Brandon Marshall that was deflected by Leon Hall and caught by Brandon Stokley, who took it 87 yards for the score after running along the goalline to burn additional time off the clock. Yep, the Cincinnati Bungles did it again.

They seem to so often be the brunt of jokes, especially when it comes to their history of miscues, and their offensive coordinator, Hue Jackson, is tired of it.

“It’s got to mean something to you when it doesn’t go right,” Jackson said, per the Cincinnati Enquirer. “It’s got to cut you to the core. Last season cut me to the core. I promise you that. I think it’s cut a lot of people at the core because we are tired. I’m tired of being the brunt of jokes. I’m tired of our organization being the brunt of jokes. At the end of the day, that’s what we do this for. I don’t want to be the laughingstock of anything and neither do those players in there on the offense. You have to take a stand.”

The only way to stop the jokes from coming, of course, is to win some big games. The Bengals have played plenty of them in the last few years, but they've managed to consistently fall short. They've made the postseason six times in 12 seasons under head coach Marvin Lewis, but they've lost in the first round on each of those occasions.

If they manage to advance in the postseason, maybe people will go back to calling them the Mighty Bengals of Cincinnati?

OK, so I admit that scene's not all that funny out of context, but I loved Sports Night so I wanted to drop it in there. And "Mighty Bengals" is definitely better than "Bungles."