Cero Ocho: Cincy in The Cellar

From Studyofsports.com

Where did the Bengals go wrong?

In 2005 they had the most high powered offense in all of football. Carson Palmer proved that he was the face of the franchise and the rest of the offense had promise with Chad Johnson, T.J. Houshmandzadeh and Rudi Johnson.  

Now we are just three years removed from that AFC Central championship, and at 0-8 we are definitely in need of change.

So where did the Bengals go so wrong in such a short amount of time? Here’s my analysis:

1. Trouble off the field: With Odell Thurman and Chris Henry serving suspensions from the NFL and several other Bengals in the news for being arrested, this can only be bad for the program.  

What good can come out of players who cannot keep their noses out of trouble? This appeared to get better after Odell Thurman and Chris Henry were both released.

However, it has not gotten better because Chris Henry was re-signed just before the start of the season, and they brought in oft-arrested Cedric Benson to run the ball. Matters off the field have not changed.

2. Chad Johnson: The guy is signed through 2010, but hasn’t wanted to play for the team since 2007. How can ownership let someone degrade the team, demand to be traded, and then tell him he won’t be traded?  

If the man wants out, trade him. This can only cause problems in the locker room. How can you trust putting a guy out there if he doesn’t want to be involved in your organization? He needs to be traded.

3. Ownership vs. Management: This is probably the largest problem the Bengals have. They have Mike Brown’s son going to scout NFL games. The guy is not an NFL scout, he’s the owner’s son. The Bengals scouting department is far inferior to other teams in the league in both number of scouts and talent of scouts. 

This causes the Bengals to scout opponents poorly, as well as draft questionable players, and signing free agents who are past their prime or not very solid.  

Marvin Lewis also said early in this season that he would NOT be bringing back Chris Henry because of his off field issues. However, Mike Brown overrules Lewis and brings Chris Henry back.

If team management cannot be on the same page, how do you expect things to work?

These are the most glaring problems the Bengals have, but if they cannot fix their off field issues, How can they expect to produce on the field? 

From Studyofsports.com