A lot of football fans may have forgotten Joey Porter’s name until Saturday night, but his knucklehead behavior has been a part of AFC North lore for over a decade.  A few of my favorite highlights include…

• The time in 2000 when he kept trying to paralyze Browns punter Chris Gardocki
• A 2003 incident when he randomly got shot in the ass while standing around as an ‘innocent bystander’ at a bar on the wrong side of town
• His ejection during warmups of a 2004 matchup at Cleveland when he brawled with Browns RB William Green (starting James Harrison’s career)…

His greatest knucklehead moment, however, came in 2006 when, despite having just signed with Miami, his years of pent-up Bengals hatred boiled over at a casino in Las Vegas…

Joey Porter may be too old for fistfights by this point, but he proved he can still get under his rivals’ skins on Saturday night when he goaded Pacman Jones into the dumbest penalty in the history of the NFL playoffs…

Absolutely ridiculous…  Joey Porter knew exactly what he was doing there and the Bengals are fucking morons for taking that bait, especially when you consider all the pregame warnings the league gave out.  Bullshit call or not, it doesn’t change the fact that all you have to do is keep your mouth shut and cover somebody one more time to move on to New England.

The Burfict penalty was also unacceptable.  It’s a textbook example of the CTE-inducing hit that the NFL has been persistently reiterating can no longer be a part of the game.  It was pretty much the only way a linebacker could fuck up the game in that situation, and somehow Burfict managed to pull it off.

This brings us to Marvin Lewis…  If the Bengals were an organization that truly cared about winning, they would’ve sacked this dude by now.  Even when he’s gifted the opportunity to swap out a choke artist quarterback for Mr. Clutch himself (and boy was McCarron clutch), he still loses playoff games because his players do not have the mental tenacity to come through in the big moment.

Some people say that players like Burfict and Jones would be out of control no matter who was coaching them and that you can’t lay blame on Lewis’s shoulders, but that’s ridiculous.  We’ve been hearing about undisciplined Bengals players for over a decade now because of a culture that Lewis has tolerated for far too long.  Remember in 2006 when they racked up twelve arrests on the year?  Remember when they had both Chad Johnson and Terrell Owens on the same team?  Remember when Carson Palmer would’ve rather retired than deal with the mess up there for another season?

Paul Brown would’ve sacked this bum a long time ago because he was a winner.  His son, on the other hand, doesn’t give a shit.  He is never going to fire a coach that can consistently reach the baseline level of mediocrity required to pique a profitable amount of fan interest, so Marvin Lewis is safe for as long as it takes Bengals fans to wise up.  Sucks for them…