A Redditor has created Mike Pettine Bingo

Does it feel like Mike Pettine says some of the same things in every press conference? Are you starting to ignore it when Pettine speaks of the Browns owning their failures? How about discussions of coaches meetings or looking at the film or the next man up? Have you grown tired of the wishy-washiness regarding quarterback selection? Does the sight of Dwayne Bowe’s name on the inactive list evoke a vomitous feeling? Is it all growing uncomfortably familiar, from the Pop Warner-sized receivers on the field to the unused timeouts at the end of halves?

If so, then Reddit user u/Zotmaster has created the game for you: Mike Pettine Bingo. Have a look at these beauties and fire up the printer.¹

Bingo is largely self-explanatory, but the game’s creator has sketched out some guidelines to further enhance your playing experience. Waiting For Next Year does not necessarily endorse or condone all of the suggested rules, though we certainly understand the place from which they came.

I feel the rules for this game are pretty simple.

There are ten randomly generated cards. Pick the ones you like, pass them out to your friends and enemies, or whatever. Make marks whenever the event happens or a quote is said (close to the quote counts). Drink a lot. Drink even more when you get five in a row in any direction or four corners. When you pass out or forget why you’re drinking, congratulations, you’re a winner!

We’re in the middle of the week, far from game time, so perhaps you’re wondering how many boxes might get checked off in a given Mike Pettine press conference. Here are some selected portions of his Monday afternoon presser to give you a taste. (Relevant/box-filling selections indicated in bold.)

“Had the same feeling of frustration this morning after watching the film last night again today. We don’t like where we are. We own that. We know right now we’re staring at as big a test of our mental toughness that we’ll face. That doesn’t change how we have to approach things. We preach control the controllables, and that’s certainly appropriate as the negativity continues to mount…

It is a tough time for us. Losing is the worst feeling, especially when you know that you’re letting others down, people that spend their money to come see us play, our fans, not just in this area but all over. That weighs heavy on us, but we’re going to do our best. We’re going to stay positive, stay together. When you look at the tape – people want to talk about effort – it’s easy for a coach when you talk about what do we have that’s tangible, we talk about whether it’s effort, focus starting to decline…

“At this point, I’m not prepared to name a starting quarterback for Sunday yet. I’ve had preliminary discussions. I know there are reports out there as early as last night that had a decision being made. That’s not the case. I can speak for Flip (offensive coordinator John DeFilippo) and for (quarterbacks coach) Kevin (O’Connell) and I that we’ve had preliminary talk and I have a couple meetings scheduled right after this one, but I haven’t spoken to the quarterbacks yet. That’s where we are with it…

“I’m not going to sit here, throw up the white flag and just say, ‘We’re not good enough.’ That’s not what this business is about. It’s next man up. You coach your guys to the best of your ability. I know we’re playing a lot of young guys out there, and while short term there are certainly growing pains, looking at it, you hope that’s going to pay dividends for you in the long run…

“When you have the record that we have, if there is not tension in the building, there is a problem. That is what losing does to you. When you are paid to be successful, when you are paid to win in a bottom line business and we are not, of course, there is going to be tension. When you have passionate, competitive people that want to get it done right and it is not, there’s going to be, and it is part of it…”

Boom — that’s seven squares filled right there. With the right card, you could already be in the winner’s circle. Add a few more for on-field matters in the Cincinnati game — Manziel not starting, check; Cameron Erving benched, check; unused timeouts, check (although that was in the second half when the game was far beyond reach, so check*) — and you see how fast and furious the Mike Pettine Bingo action can be.

1. And if you’re a Redditor, pop on over to r/Browns and toss an upvote his way. [↩]