Lovie Smith may not be the greatest coach in the world, but he is a master of the art of coach speak, which is the art of saying absolutely nothing while making it sound like you are saying something.  While old school coaches like Bill Parcells, Jim Mora and Bill Cowher tell you the unvarnished truth, coaches like Lovie deal only in the obvious. Fortunately, some of us are trained as translators in coach speak and can interpret the meaning.

Reading between the lines of Lovie Smith's latest comments on the Bengals 45-10 ass kicking of the Bears.  Translation is in italics:

We were beaten by a good football team yesterday. (Not good enough to beat Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, San Diego, Denver and the better teams in the AFC, but good enough to kick our sorry asses.) You have to give the Cincinnati Bengals a lot of the credit. They played well in all three phases. We didn't. (We sucked like Paris Hilton at a frat party) We're a better football team than we displayed yesterday on the football field (Pause for laughter).

This week, we should be a little be closer to getting Adrian Peterson back. (Maybe we can actually run the ball this week.  I'd love to give it to anyone not named Garret Wolfe) Tommie Harris should be good to go this week.(Tommie Harris will play if and only if he gets his lazy ass in gear) So we'll have our full group back ready to go (the healthy group, anyway.  Damn, I miss Urlacher.)

It was once loss though, as I told the football team. Doesn't count as two losses in the loss column (actually, I told them it should count as six losses). For us, we're 3-3 right now (when we should be 5-1) with a lot of football left to go (thank God we're playing Cleveland and Detroit. That way, we can't be any worse than 5-11). We have a home stretch coming up that we need to take advantage of, starting off with Cleveland this week (and if we can't beat them, last one out, turn off the lights.)

Again, anything bad you want to say about the football game (I have several things, but in order to keep my stoic and religious image I can't say them, although I have thought them)... of course, as a head football coach, I did not have our football team ready to go( I'm blaming myself because even I know I have to). Definitely not one of my better coaching days(See, still taking responsibility as expected.) ... our best coaching days (Wait! I have assistants.  I can throw them under the bus, too!) . And, of course, the players didn't play the way that they need to (...to be on the roster next year.)

We all have looked in the mirror (It's on the way to the showers). We were able to look at the video earlier today (and I swear, the last time I saw that much disaster on video tape, i was watching CNN on 9/11), to put it behind us. We will learn from that video and get ready for the Browns this week. (Because, gosh darn it, that's our job.)