The Aftab Curse

 

The Bengals had already beat the Chiefs heading into the playoffs. They had bounced them out of the playoffs the year before. Ja’Marr Chase had their secondary lashing out at perceived and real threats. The Chiefs as a whole were sitting at home at night stewing over whether the only recently competent Bengals were really the team that had their number. And they were right to be looking in the mirror and ruminating on if it was over for them just as quick as it had started. Heading into their AFC Championship game with the Bengals in late January of 2023, things were a little wobbly for Reid and Mahomes when it came to playing us.

And then, something really fucking stupid happened. Actually ‘happened’ isn’t the right word, since happened sort of makes it sound like the thing just aperated itself out of nowhere. Something really fucking stupid was planned and executed in the least well thought out, most hamfisted fashion, and may have altered the trajectory of the Great Conjunction for at least the last year and change.

As far as I can tell, Aftab and possibly Lis Smith, an infamous democrat consultant rumored to be working for Aftab at the time, decided to cast the Bengals asunder by committing to film a seminal work in their tone-deaf, problematic, and positively juiceless mayor-before-a-big-game “trash talk” video. When I saw that video I knew we were cooked in the AFC Championship Game, and then after the game when Kelce got to rightfully call Aftab a Jabroni, we entered a phase of cookedness that’s usually only reserved for bible characters and the federally indicted. I mean, last year was a farrago of crossed signals. The dynamic trio of Eli, Vonn and Jesse left. Burrow got hurt, played his way back to health and hope, and then got slammed to the ground so hard on his wrist he couldn’t grip a football. Big Irv’s talent got squandered. The defense fell apart. And eventually we missed the playoffs. This year remains cloudy. Hopefully it was only a light 13 month curse that momentarily swerved us off our path to eternal glory. If anything can do it, bringing Vonn home, the flash point of the conjunction, has to help the winds of change turn back in our favor.

Or maybe Aftab dropped us back into the abyss where we found ourselves wandering for decades after we injured Bo Jackson. We’ll find out in a couple months!