Cincinnati Bengals: An In-Depth Review By 2nd And Wrong... Again

CINCINNATI BENGALS

By: Benjamin Martin

I would like to clear the air right away to start this article and say that I have wet dreams about Carson Palmer. Don’t judge me.

Alright, now on to the Allenville Penitentiary Mean Machine. I mean Bengals. See what I did there?

Seriously though, I have no idea why I like this team. First and foremost I am going to point out why they suck. Mike Brown. That’s right, the safety for the Chiefs, formerly of the Bears. The guy is just a curse, and until he’s dead, the Bengals cannot win.

Jay kay! It’s Mike Brown’s fault though. But the owner, not the safety. The owner is for all intents and purposes a gigantic wanker. Like fuck me sideways. The Bengals don’t just lose because he’s a dick to everyone and karma comes back to kick his ass every week. The Bengals lose because they prefer to not sign their better players. I know you can’t blame the owner for that entirely, because there’s like a general manager and numerous other executives on the board, but when your best players are constantly heading for the exit sign, it behooves the owner to step up to the plate and maybe be like “Yo, slow your roll.”

I’ll try not to get too deep into this because it’s neither the time nor the place to be discussing these matters, but it’s Mike Brown’s fault and I want to show you that. I will freely admit that misfortune has been waiting around every corner for the Bengals, but that would just be a considerable inconvenience with Mike Brown not in the picture.

Take the 2005 Bengals, AFC North champs and darling of the NFL. They went 11-5, their first above .500 season in years. And they were a good team too. Everything you’d want. Dynamic passing game, solid running game. Their defense was their weak spot, but if the Colts can make it work the Bengals can in a year or two as well.

Then disaster begins to strike. Carson Palmer blows his knee out in the opening round of the playoffs. Like annihilated that thing. You can bounce back from that though, as he proved, but that wasn’t all. David Pollack, the first round pick of the Bengals from the 2005 draft hit somebody so hard his spine exploded. Okay not entirely. But he broke his neck on a tackle. Tragedy. He didn’t have a stellar rookie campaign with 28 tackles in 14 games, but the guy wasn’t a 1^st round pick for nothing.

The entire 2005 draft class gave the Bengals problems. Odell Thurman, as we all know, apparently just loves prison. So he did everything in his power to get him there. He was taken in the second. Chris Henry was seemingly in competition with Odell to see who could make it to prison the fastest. Plus he loves committing crimes in his own jersey. Which is totally ballsy. I’d probably let him off for just that reason. He was the third pick, and is back with the team now, but still. The fourth gave Eric Ghiaciuc, who the Bengals let go in free agency. Why? I don’t know. I always thought he was pretty good, but I’m only writing small-time internet blogs, so fuck me.

The majority of the Bengals’ arrests sit with Odell and Chris, so there’s no point expanding much further. We know they’re criminals. That’s basically where the misfortune ends though. An entire draft class gone. That isn’t how you build a winning team. Ask the Toronto Maple Leafs. You need draft picks or else you’re going to be doomed to hover in the middle-to-lower tier for eternity. Fact.

This is where the incompetence sets in. Why were the ’05 Bengals so good? Because Carson Palmer is the lovechild of Zeus, Master of Olympus, and Jesus Christ, Saviour. And because they had one of the top 5 offensive lines in the league. Maybe top 3, I can’t remember that far back and don’t care to look over ancient depth charts. It was damn good though. That’s why Rudi “That’s Good Enough” Johnson was a perennial fantasy first rounder.

So what does Mike Brown do? Gets rid of them. Mistake number one was to let Eric Steinbach, a young and talented guard, go to the Browns. What did the Browns do the next year? Teamed him with Joe Thomas and they made Jamal Lewis look like a running back. Scary stuff.

Willie Anderson and Levi Jones, the pillars of Hercules of this offensive line, eventually found their way out the door as well. They were aging, true, but it’s easy to age gracefully when you’re not the only one blocking people because the rest of your line is made up of nobodies. Why stop there though? Let’s get rid of the capable backups too! This past offseason the Bengals let go of Stacy Andrews and Eric Ghiaciuc. I don’t understand it. I know Stacy Andrews was decent, because the Bengals franchised him last year, and the Eagles gave him 6 years this offseason.

That’s basically the story about why the Bengals suck. If you can’t score points, you won’t win games, it’s that simple. Offense wins games, defense wins championships. If you can’t win either, you’re totally fucked. The Bengals were totally fucked. The defense they could just never get right. Because they never focused on the line enough, and because their linebackers had a better disappearing act than my biological father…

Daddy…

On to the business at hand though: this season. The Bengals had what balanced out to be a suitable offseason. They got their starting QB back, which is sometimes enough for sportswriters to go off the wall and declare the season officially over (cough, New England). They had a beautiful draft. But they shit the bed in free agency.

Let’s start with free agency. They let Eric Ghiaciuc, Stacy Andrews and, most importantly, T.J. Houshmandzadeh go. And they franchised Shayne Graham. I don’t care what you say and who it is that says it: special teams are not that important. Those were two prominent losses on an already depleted O-line, and they lost their Wes Welker (definition: the one player in the offense that does all the dirty work opening up the offense for other players to make it seem like they’re better than they are. Antonym: Randy Moss). They also lost Glenn Holt, mainly a return man/special teams player that was pretty damn good at what he did.

And to go with that, their free agent acquisitions were comical at best. What I can only assume to be an attempt to form a team similar to the team I alluded to in the opening, the Mean Machine from The Longest Yard, the Bengals signed anyone available with a criminal record. They re-signed Cedric Benson. And then they signed Tank Johnson.

And to make matters even more laughable, they addressed their secondary needs by signing Roy Williams. The safety. Now if you converted him to linebacker, I’d still say it was a bad move. I hope the whispers I heard about him having to play out of position in Dallas and that leading to his decrease in quality of play, but things never tend to work out for me like that.

It seems the Bengals are living in 2006 and snatching up all the big names they see that have left their primes behind. In an attempt to replace the Housh they signed Laveranues Coles. Which I normally wouldn’t have a problem with, except that he’s essentially the same player as Chad Johnson. Straight line kinda guy that doesn’t like to get too dirty, a la the Housh. They need another Housh to make this offense go, and they don’t have it. At least they managed to re-sign Chris Crocker who, despite sharing a name with that hoser from the internet, is actually good at what he does.

With the terrible offseason in the past, I assume the Bengals would do what they normally do: pretend it’s behind them and prepare to shit the bed in the draft too. And boy was I surprised on April 25^th and 26^th. The Bengals absolutely killed it. Bias aside, this draft warrants a minimum grade of an A.

To start, the Bengals did what they absolutely should have done and drafted an offensive tackle to start to fill that entire 5-spot glaring hole on their offensive line. I’m sure Meat Loaf would agree that two out of five ain’t bad. Well it’s pretty bad. But it’s a start, and mathematically better than zero out of five.

The only thing to say negatively about this pick, if you can consider it negative, is that the first round did not play out at all like predicted, and many of the top offensive tackles remained on the board at 6^th overall, like Eugene Monroe and Michael Oher, but mainly Monroe. Monroe was widely regarded as the 2^nd best tackle throughout many mock drafts, but the Bengals chose to remain with Andre Smith. Time will tell how that played out.

The next round the Bengals found themselves incredibly lucky as Rey Maualuga fell to them. They got a quality ballhawk to team with USC alum Keith Rivers, and incredibly value in the second round. The next round they continued their assault by taking Michael Johnson, who is basically like Julius Peppers Lite. He’s very boom or bust, however. If he booms, then good gosh darn. If he busts, oh well, at least it’s not a first rounder like the Bengals are used to.

The Bengals continued their day two assault by using their compensatory selection in the 3^rd to take Chase Coffman, a quality TE out of Missouri. Round four the Bengals continued to fortify their offensive line by taking Jonathan Luigs, C. This man was a Rimington Trophy finalist in 2006, and won it in 2007. The Rimington Trophy is given to the top college centre in the BCS. That’s pretty impressive to pick this kid up in the fourth.

The Bengals closed out the draft by selecting Kevin Huber, a punter from Cincinnati U. From what I hear, this guy is supposed to be a punting force, so I’m perfectly alright with that. The Bengals need all the help they can get while their offense and defense are deciding whether or not to show up. The draft tailed off with the usually flurry of picks for depth, nothing too impressive or notable.

Andre Smith has finally just signed, which will hurt the Bengals to start, considering he's missed all of camp and three preseason games. At least he signed though. To be fair, if you wanted me to play for the Bengals I would probably try to squeeze every last dollar out of you too.

THE BOTTOM LINE

All things considered… I hate liking this team. If they just kept the Housh, out of everyone, the Bengals would be a tier up this year. He made that offense go, no question about it. Because their offense will struggle a bit to find their identity again (running the ball competently enough to keep players in the box to allow Carson to work his magic) and their defense still isn’t there yet, the Bengals will miss the playoffs again this year. They definitely won’t, or at least shouldn’t, win the division, and a wild card in the AFC isn’t given out like it is in the NFC. The AFC North is a tough divison and it'll take some real work to land atop it.

And on a side note, Chad Johnson needs to be driven out of Cincinnati. Not because he’s a “cancer” to the team as some sportswriters like to term it; but because he’s just not good. He’s a poof. He doesn’t run over the middle, he doesn’t have the strength to fight for the ball and he’s just a big baby. All he can do is run over the top of defenses and hope that the secondary misses tackles (which happens with stunning regularity in the NFL). The Bengals should’ve taken the trade Washington offered, assuming it was for a first rounder. Especially with Coles in town now, Chad is doubly expendable. Get the value for him that you can get and be done with him. He’s just a big baby who thinks he’s a lot better than he is. Another stupid move on Mike Brown’s part. Keep the shitty receiver, run the good one out of town. It’s gonna be a long season.