The mistake that was the Cincinnati Bengals letting Andrew Whitworth get away has been well-documented at this point.
But Whitworth just dropped at least one new interesting detail while talking about the split all those years ago, a split that sent the Bengals into a downward spiral in the offensive trenches and Whitworth himself to multiple Super Bowls.
Appearing on “The Pivot Podcast,” Whitworth says the Bengals made the decision to move on from him a year before he ended up playing well again. He hit a point he was so disgruntled with the ordeal that he wrote Mike Brown himself a letter:
“For fans, they see the results, ‘all right, this guy leaves’. But for me, it wasn’t really free agency in 2017…it was the draft in 2016. I had asked them to make me, not let me have to play the last year of my contract without having any clue of what’s going next. And they returned my questions with drafting a first-round and a second-round offensive tackle.
“About mid-season next year, I wrote Mike Brown a letter, and I said look, I’ve reached a point where I’m frustrated. We’re having an awesome start to our season and the only thing I can think about, for 10 years I’ve done what I’ve done for you, being the leader you needed and a captain and all this stuff, and now I’m at a point where I’m begging you to treat me right.
While Whitworth says he respected the team and Brown for being up front about their decisions, he ultimately signed a one-year deal for financial reasons, then told the team to talk to his agent about a long-term pact once the team looped back and wanted to get something done.
The entire history between the Bengals and Whitworth is pretty ugly in terms of low-balling accusations and such atop the on-field ramifications. If nothing else, we now know a little more of what went on behind the scenes before the split.
Whitworth, for what it’s worth, was rooting for the Bengals to make the Super Bowl against his Rams.
