A little after 8 p.m on Thursday night, a new Bengals era will commence with the calling of Joe Burrow’s name. Zac Taylor won’t label it a new anything. To him, it’s simply the continuation of the massive rebuild he started last year.

It’s not, though.

It’s the latest fresh start for a franchise that has had more than a few. It’s also the last fresh start. The final beginning for the Cincinnati Bengals. If they screw this one up, their next one will be in another town.

Joe Burrow probably doesn’t know that the Bengals stadium lease is up in 2026. Definitely, he doesn’t care. It’s not his concern that his performance for the next four years – the length of a rookie contract in the NFL – likely will determine if the city keeps its NFL team.

Burrow could save the franchise or help it pack. Lease discussions will start in 2024. That gives the Burrow Bengals four seasons to figure things out. Burrow will get a mulligan his rookie year. After that, things need to change, radically and quickly. Or the moving vans will idle outside Paul Brown Stadium.

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If the Bengals stay on the 6-10/7-9 hamster wheel, well, maybe San Diego will still need a team. Burrow is that significant. There’s a reason I started calling him Saint Joe last December.

Burrow offers the Bengals their last, best chance to get it right. If he is as good as most "experts" believe, he is the foundational reason for the franchise to change what it is. Its philosophies, its arrogance, its stubbornness, its identity. Everything. Carson Palmer, the last player with Burrow’s heft, couldn’t do it. That’s why he left here.

Signing a fistful of free agents was a welcome change, but ingrained organizational inertia isn’t cured in one offseason. Bengalization has been a career-long malady. Its biggest symptom is a pervasive OK-ness with being OK.

Burrow can change that. He’s the only one who can.

What does "competitive" mean to you?

Are you good with the Bengals wanting to be "competitive"? That’s what Duke Brown, er, Mike Tobin, er, Duke Tobin said the goal was, during a recent Zoom moment with the media.

"So that's always been our focus, taking advantage of every opportunity we get and putting together the best team possible," he said, "because we believe that's what our fans want moreso than any one name, a team that's gonna be competitive. And ultimately if we give them that, I think they'll be happy."

Do you think Bob Kraft stands in front of his Patriots each spring and asks them to be competitive in the coming year?

The Steelers fall out of bed and compete. Mostly, so do the Ravens.

It’s the bare minimum.

The NFL rigs itself so all teams can be competitive. Competitive is 7-9/8-8/9-7. It’s in the far left of the photo, grinning, happy to be there. It’s a neither here nor there state of being. Enough to keep fans engaged, not enough to get them expecting much. Which is a very good way to describe how the Bengals do business.

I understand what Tobin is trying to say. But fans don’t want a team that is competitive. They want a team that wins championships. Just once, wouldn’t you like someone at PBS to say, "Anyone can be competitive in the NFL. We want to be great. For the first time in our history, we are going to dare to be something beyond OK. We intend to reward your loyalty the way we reward the loyalty of all the people in this building.

"For all the years of asking you to hang in there with us. For the tap water we sold you when the bottled water ran out. For the ways we have tested your patience, for how we have unintentionally caused you to rethink the possibilities of Sundays in the fall. . .

"For unwittingly convincing some of you of the value of lowered expectations, and defining for you the difference between wanting to win and needing it.

"For all that, our new goal is to be great. Which has nothing to do with being competitive. Nothing at all."

The only person who can move that mountain is Joseph Lee Burrow. He’ll be a Bengal by 8:15 p.m. Thursday night, when the clock starts ticking on the last new beginning for professional football in Cincinnati.