Mike Brown doesn’t look much different than he did a year ago. He will be 87 years old on Aug. 10. He says his hearing is failing. “I’m an old man,” he says. “Please speak loudly.”
But if the owner of the Cincinnati Bengals doesn’t look much different, he is seen differently. Last July, Brown was perceived as an out-of-touch penny-pincher heading a floundering franchise. Now, as the Bengals open training camp Wednesday, he owns the American Football Conference champions with a franchise quarterback and a blindingly bright future.
“I always think we’re gonna have a good year,” Brown said Monday at the team’s annual pre-training camp luncheon when asked about 2022 expectations. “That’s my inner thought and I don’t like to share them publicly. Maybe people will say, ‘How could you have thought that? That was stupid.’ Better not to say anything. You write what you want to write and I’ll think what I want to think and it’ll play out.”
