Nice Guys Get Cut Too

By the end of each and every training camp there is always at least one player who is cut that causes something of a stir. Typically this isn’t one of the team’s marquee players, but does sometimes come in the form of a starter or key backup. There are a few prime candidates on the Bengals this season who could become the next victim of the proverbial chopping block.

One such man whose hopes of having a great season may be dashed before it even begins, is the world’s traveler, Dhani Jones. There are many solid reasons as to why Jones should remain with the team—a veteran presence among a youthful linebacker corps, a cerebral and analytical player who reads before he reacts, and the simple fact that he adds depth to a near-suicidally dangerous job—to name a few.

Yet if a cold, indifferent computer program were to analyze the roster, it might zero in on Dhani and without hesitation—only an old, crappy computer like mine ever hesitates— label him as expendable. He’s old for a position that has the life span of a goldfish (my fish tank is positioned so that my goldfish can read this and they’re now glaring at me with contempt). With the new wave of Keith Rivers, Rey Maualuga and Brandon Johnson settled in as the future of Bengal linebacking, Dhani is simply keeping a seat warm, and how much does one pay for a person to do that? If players like Darryl Blackstock or Rashad Jeanty impress the coaching staff enough during training camp, team management may feel more comfortable letting Jones go, especially if an attractive free agent were to be let go elsewhere and the team needed to free up some cap-space to procure him.

I like the guy. I enjoy his eccentricities, like riding his bike to the stadium with his hipster jeans rolled to his calf, brandishing his army-green wool socks, listening to his ipod and carrying a smallish backpack with probably philosophical reading material inside. And, of course, his television show where he travels the world and competes in zany sports that Americans think they’ve only recalled seeing in a movie somewhere before has done wonders for his public image and fan base. Another certain eccentric character on the Bengals roster could do well to notice how one can intrigue the public in a refined and dignified manner such as Dhani’s.

Nonetheless, football is serious business where friendships are cast off to the side with the sweaty towels, and even teammates must compete against each other—particularly in the summer months. Jones could be seen as something like the grizzle on the edges of a succulent steak; good for seasoning and flavor during its preparation and broiling, but not something you necessarily want to eat. His main priority in the short-term is to season the youngsters who are thought to be the main course of the future. If training camp comes to a close and Dhani is not counted among the surviving 53 players, we as fans can take solace in knowing that he has passed on sage wisdom to his successors. Such a scenario sounds very similar to the fate of Willie Anderson.

I sincerely hope I’m wrong.

Mojokong—killing off my characters.

Coping With Collateral Damage

Now that the media windstorm of nonsense and ballyhoo has briefly calmed—with all the fuss centered around the expected return of the brash and attention-starved pariah, No. 85—the Bengals, and those who follow them, can focus on the actual playing field. As we speak, football is being played—well, practices are taking place— but the point is, the team is actively preparing itself for its 2009 campaign, and I for one, would rather think and write about what takes place on the field as opposed to what may or may not be on another person’s face.

Last year the Bengals felt the sharp stinger of the injury bug which resulted in a ragtag roster of random players; the duct-tape and scrap-metal guys of the NFL. Out of this bunch, some made a name for themselves, most notably Cedric Benson, and in the process, legitimized some of these drifters from strictly back-up status to serviceable-player status.

By giving the coaches the chance to evaluate young players in real-game scenarios (and realize what veterans had become obsolete), the team’s lack of depth last season has conversely strengthened that very thing for ‘09. Now that the youngsters have some games under their belts and are ready to run with the big dogs, the Bengals cannot afford another season of injury devastation. That dreadful scenario would result with starters becoming even younger and less experienced and eventually would resemble a minor-league football team. Sounds like the NFL’s version of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, doesn’t it?

Cincinnati has learned the value of certain positions the hard way. When Carson goes down, the black veils come out and mothers weep at the season’s untimely or premature death, or both. The team upgraded the backup QB spot with J.T. O’Sullivan, but no one–perhaps not even himself–wants to see O’Sullivan play a single down. While Palmer may be at times misconstrued as the Golden Boy and the single variable that hinges on the team’s success, he’s damn sure the best quarterback on the roster and the Bengals badly need him to win.

Mr. Benson is another crucial cog in this new and strange vessel, apparently called an offense, which Marvin Lewis and Bob Bratkowski continue to scurry about desperately trying to make it seaworthy in time for Week 1. Last year Benson showed his stuff (cut-back runner, square head, has a knack for screen passes and draw-plays) and is easily the No. 1 running back on the depth chart, or, as the cliched world of sports terminology insists on calling it, the team’s bell-cow. It’s true that the Bengals have collected some new running backs—Brian Leonard, Bernard Scott and Gary Russell—and still have my main-man, DeDe Dorsey, all who should find some kind of role on the team (perhaps not Russell, he may not make it out of training camp). Still, an injury to Benson, coupled with an unproven offensive line, could sink this team back into the running-game doldrums.

As for that offensive line, rookie tackle Andre Smith would be difficult to replace should he fall to injury or mentally crumble under the duress of the media microscope and public scorn. The versatility of Andrew Whitworth would help soften that kind of a blow as he can move from guard to tackle in a pinch, and Anthony Collins can play either right or left tackle too, but Smith comes to town with expectations as large as his tummy and if the running game is going to mature out of its adolescence, they need Big Andre out there leading the charge.

Defensively, an injury to a starting cornerback it seems would have dire consequences, particularly against three-receiver sets. Third cornerback David Jones, showed consistent improvement last season and the team could survive with him as a starter if need be, but the worry then would become who would play the nickel. Simeon Castille and David Pope are cannon fodder, good for special teams and practice reps for our starting receivers. The Bengals would prefer to not have to push these kind of players into significant action if they can help it. Cornerback Morgan Trent, was drafted in the sixth round, possibly with this kind of a concern in mind. Jonathan Joseph has yet to complete a full season thanks to injuries, and if that continues into ‘09, look for opposing passing attacks to feature a lot of down-field passes to the slot receiver, based on the inadequacies of the available nickel backs in such a scenario.

Every team this season will be hit by injuries; it’s the inevitable collateral damage brought on by the carnage of professional football. Through strategy and preparation, the best teams handle their injury woes the most effectively. A team can only carry 53 players on its roster as it trots onto the field on Sundays, and if the Bengals are to taste even a morsel of success this year, their 53 players activated for Week 1 should look reasonably similar to the 53 on Week 17. A large discrepancy between these rosters, and it could become a season of auditions for younger players and free-agent workouts, while the team’s collective eye gazes ahead to the future...once again.

Mojokong — eat your Wheaties boys; it’s a long season.

Salary-Capped Mountains

The gilded age of the salary-cap era that the NFL has enjoyed for the past 14 years, is expected to come to a close after this season. Reading about the death of the cap fills me with the same sense of doom as do ecological statistics about water shortages and endless heat waves we’re primed to suffer through someday.

When the owner of your favorite team is a notorious miser and a generally frowned-upon guy, the idea of allowing him to pay less on players is a scary one. The worry with Mike Brown in an uncapped environment is the absence of a salary floor. Under the current labor agreement, teams cannot pay players more the than the cap; conversely, owners cannot go below a certain amount of player payroll.

This year’s salary cap is near $128 million per team, but its floor is about $112 million. Without a floor, Mr. Brown can spend as little as he chooses. With that in mind, the Bengals’ fan turns its worrisome gaze to Marvin Lewis, and, feeling as if it has no other choice, hands him its faith and its hope for the future.

I remember standing on the top row of Paul Brown Stadium on a grey November Sunday in 2003, feeling mesmerized by how slowly individual seconds actually pass when you watch it on a clock. This clock was on a giant scoreboard and was ticking backwards but now it was stopped. There were three minutes left to tick away. Rudi Johnson was handed the ball. He broke free and ran 54 yards, the clock started again and everyone there clapped one another on the back and agreed that Marvin Lewis was a genius indeed. He could have run for president back then and won; the myth had swallowed the man.

As fans filed out after witnessing that legendary conquest over unbeaten Kansas City, they gaped at the scoreboard that showed the Bengals atop the division at a modest 4-4. Is it true? can it be? First place. Even the scoreboard seemed confused and embarrassed to display such a ludicrous scenario. Hadn’t this franchise been mired in the cellar of the AFC North, and before it, the AFC Central, for seemingly eons? Even the scoreboard had to agree that Marvin seemed to be some kind of a miracle worker. And so it began: Marvin’s Miracle – 2003.

We know the rest. Success continued, crescendoed in ‘05, and has ebbed back into disaster last year. Fans have hardened on Marvin, and the more impatient of those have hastily called for his head. Some optimism has been restored with a favorable off-season, but the long-term picture, with the absence of a salary cap and a salary floor, remains worrisome.

The new rules that will come into effect with the removal of the current labor agreement, will be that teams can now franchise-tag up to two players and that players won’t be eligible for unrestricted free agency until their sixth year instead of the four years of the current agreement. Neither of these rules are player-friendly and could become the sticking point that leads to a work-stoppage after the 2010 season. If the players union agrees to these terms – which they won’t do without a serious fight – the emphasis on the draft will become even more magnified.

Assuming Mr. Brown decides to run his team in the most economic way and scrimp on every purchasable facet of the franchise, than he will not pay much on free-agents and would likely rather replace these older, more expensive veterans with players who are still collecting from their rookie contracts.

That puts the onus back on Miraculous Marvin and his genius to constantly draft and cultivate talent that will serve the team in the short-term only. In that event, the roster will experience more turnover and will be perpetually young. There will be no more quick-fixes through free-agency like that of a Laveranues Coles or Antoine Odom. The starters will be marginally better than the back-ups, and players will always be “brought along” by mixing them into the rotation, perhaps sooner than the team is entirely comfortable in doing.

This glum outlook of the future business-plan the Bengals may employ once the salary cap vanishes, is based solely from Mike Brown’s shrewd business maneuvering of the past. Perhaps Marvin’s sharp reasoning and thorough organizational skills, will get through to Mr. Brown the idea that one cannot always build an enterprise to merely stay in existence. That sometimes, opportunities must be seized upon to climb upward and win! Do it, Marvin. Show him how to win!

Mojokong – We’ve made it this far,...

Expect Nothing; Prepare for Anything

From top to bottom, the NFL is the most competitive of the major sports. When the word expectations are brought up, smart analysts take a second before spouting off predictions and forecasts. Asking the expectations of the Bengals this season is like asking what you may have for dinner in three weeks, or if it will be an especially snowy winter; it all depends on a lot of things.

All we can really say without hesitation is that New England will be good and Detroit won’t be. But we’ve learned throughout the salary-cap era that teams can grow up to become contenders, or wilt and die, seemingly overnight. Miami went to the playoffs after winning just one game the season before. Cleveland’s big season of 2007 fooled the world into giving them five prime-time games in ‘08, only to watch the Brownies wind up in the basement. Expectations are a risky business in the NFL these days, but you only live once, so here it goes.

The number one reason the Bengals smelled of dead fish and turned their fans to stone when they watched was because they couldn’t run the ball. The softies up front – Levi, Andrews & Ghiaciuc – were pushed around all year, and Chris Perry showed the nasty side effects of not playing for entire seasons. Benchings and injuries ensued, and the replacements became an immediate upgrade. Benson showed a hard-running style with nifty footwork, Collins showed a capability of protecting the blind side and Kyle Cook showed that anybody could fill in at center and become an improvement.

This year the Bengals have added a few more horses to the stable of running backs. Behind Benson, the team now has the diminutive but nimble DeDe Dorsey, the strong and gritty Brian Leonard, the explosive yet problematic Bernard Scott and the old reliable Kenny Watson. They’ve beefed up the line with draft picks Andre Smith & Johnathan Luigs. There’s also a couple of new rookie fullbacks to choose from, Fui Vakapuna & Chris Pressley, not to mention an intriguing rookie tight end, Chase Coffman – whose immediate contributions will be more apparent in the passing game.

Even if the running game can muster itself into the ranks of mediocrity, Cincinnati will win between seven to nine games, and the faith in that prediction has more to do with the improving defense rather than the assumed passing attack.

There’s a pervasive assumption around the football world that when Carson Palmer is healthy, he will be spectacular and will lead an explosive passing attack, when we have watched his performance decline since that mythical 2005 season. It’s difficult to argue that when pass protection breaks down or when routes are incorrectly ran, Carson panics and he demonstrates the improvisational skills of a slug. The system must run perfectly for him to be great, and the Bengals system has been far from that.

The main sticking point to this complicated equation that involves Carson, his blockers, the running game and his coaching staff, is that the offense has been smitten with the long pass. Once Carson went down last year and Fitzpatrick was reluctantly handed the reigns, it became obvious that a play-calling shift to shorter passes and an emphasis on ball-control was necessary. It took longer than some felt was needed, but Bratkowski made the shift and the Bengals suddenly became more competitive in the season’s second half. Even with the strong-armed Carson poised to return, the offense should carry on with its West-Coast version because it has proven to be successful... for now.

The league’s trends and philosophies of the game are fluid and ever changing. The stagnant nature of the play-calling the Bengals have suffered through for two and a half seasons was why the change was needed in the first place. Once the league catches on to the Bengals West-Coast version of its offense – and it will – then they can return to the vertical game, or better yet, innovate a new strategy. One of Marvin Lewis’ favorite slogans is ‘moving forward’; the philosophy behind that statement would apply nicely to the way this year’s offense is constructed.

The defense is far less of a concern for Cincinnati, which is has been so unlike this team that the words look funny printed on the screen. They’re a young, hungry bunch who are collectively benefitting from the experience and wisdom of defensive coordinator Mike Zimmer, linebackers coach Jeff Fitzgerald & Marvin himself. The front office has identified a prototype of a successful defense, and it’s gone about its business collecting the necessary new parts. Rookies Maualuga & Michael Johnson, mixed in with free-agent veterans Tank Johnson & Roy Williams bring some specific skill sets that will assist Zimmer in his scheme, which calls for specialists and experts in various situations. The Bengals have accrued defenders who aren’t great overall players, but rather do one or two things better than the rest. It’s the assembly-line defense that quietly and efficiently produces three & outs; Henry Ford would be proud of this defense.

So if the running game improves, even a little, and the defense matures into the winner that they’re capable of becoming, the last brick in the road to the playoffs rests with the special teams. Franchise-tagging a kicker (Shayne Graham) and drafting the best punter in the country (Kevin Huber), it seems the issue has been, to some extent, addressed. A threatening return-man is still needed, but Caldwell showed some skills last season and Bernard Scott could be a candidate for the job. Special teams has broken down the last few seasons and it cannot decline any further for the team to be successful

After an abysmal 2008, to say that the Bengals will improve this season isn’t going too far out on that limb. To say they won’t win the division is also a bit of a mollycoddled prediction, but ear-marking them as a Wild-Card team, well, that’s just crazy. But with the perfect storm described here, it may all add up to celebrating the New Year with a playoff birth. Alternately, if the Bengals suffer some early setbacks and their stubbornness gets in the way of progress, they could repeat the nightmares of last season. When the dust settles, you can expect a 7-9 season and another year of missing out. We’re not quite there yet.

I’ll eat nothing but tuna in three weeks and it won’t snow once this winter.

Mojokong – working with a badly cracked crystal ball.

AFC North: A Sunday Drive

If the AFC North were a car, it would be an old Buick sedan; nothing flashy, but big enough to survive any accident. It’d be a little rusted and would have torn seat cushions. Pittsburgh always drives and Baltimore usually sits shotgun. The younger twin siblings, the Browns & Bengals, fight it out in the back seat every year. Little has changed.

Pittsburgh’s formula of power mixed with deception has resulted in yet another Super Bowl, and defensive coordinator, Dick LeBeau, lives on in his campaign to rid, first the division and then the world, of serviceable offenses.

New to the diabolical genius’ scheme is first-round defensive tackle, Evander Hood. While not a stay-puff fat guy like Casey Hampton, Hood still weighs in just over 300 lbs. and could find a home as an end in LaBeau’s harebrained 3-4 defensive set. The Steelers also added depth to their secondary drafting a pair of cornerbacks; Keenan Lewis in the third round, and Joe Burnett in the fifth.

Offensively, the Steelers will enjoy the return of Rashard Mendenhall who will team with Willie Parker in Pittsburgh’s perennially effective running game. With the wily Roethlisburger at the helm, two quality running backs, and the same offensive line as last season, the Steelers don’t have many holes to exploit on offense either.

Baltimore has no secrets. They’re big and rugged and will punch you in the face when they see you. It seems that every year pundits line up to say how old the Ravens are on defense or how the offense still lacks a play-making receiver, and every year it seems those pundits are quickly silenced. If it weren’t for the Steelers regularly outsmarting Baltimore, the Ravens would be Super Bowl champs.

They seem to have an assembly line in Baltimore where young players are molded into Pro-Bowlers and once they hit the free-market and become too expensive, general manager Ozzie Newsome reloads with another infusion of talented youth. Bart Scott and Chris McCalister have been replaced by rookie Paul Kruger and free-agent Chris Carr. On offense, Jason Brown and Willie Anderson are replaced with veteran Matt Birk and first-round pick Michael Oher. It all works out for the Ravens because they have a very scripted, very public blueprint of how they want their team to operate and dares the world to stop them if they can. Sadly for the Ravens, the Steelers are still driving the Buick.

As for that squabbling coming from the backseat, Cleveland and Cincinnati continue to scratch and claw at one another while Baltimore laughs and Pittsburgh threatens to stop the car if they don’t behave. While each has had a brief moment in the sun in the past five years, neither has found much footing within the black-and-blue AFC North.

On paper, Cleveland looks disastrous. If the Browns have any brains at all, they will finally euthanize the Derek Anderson experiment and write off any of his past success as a mirage. Brady Quinn, a marketable yet unproven quarterback, remains the most logical candidate to start the ‘09 season. With a battered and tired old workhorse like Jamal Lewis in the backfield, some semblance of a decent passing game seems required if the Browns expect any offensive production at all this year. Too bad for the Brownies, they have a moody superstar who drops passes and a former quarterback who hasn’t impressed anyone as a receiver. The Cleveland front office did address the passing game concerns in the draft by selecting two receivers in the second round. They took center Alex Mack with their first selection, strengthening a talented, but inconsistent offensive line.

Defensively, they also have lots of problems, and the free-agent signings of Eric Barton and Cory Ivy are wet band-aids at best. Don’t expect the Browns to improve their run defense much which finished 28th in 2008. I expect Mangini to take some lumps on the head in the AFC North before he can get the franchise headed in any forward direction.

The Bengals have experienced their best off-season under Marvin Lewis, and the result will be finishing somewhere in the middle of the pack in the AFC North. They’ve taken care of a lot of needs that indicate that they might have turned a corner in regards to staying competitive.

So as the Buick cris-crosses Ohio and Pennsylvania (and a bit of Maryland) this season, when it finally comes to a stop, the seating chart should remain intact. Perhaps in the near future, the Bengals will get another shot at seeing the world from the front seat. Until then, they have to put up with their bratty twin sibling, Cleveland, poking them in the ribs and not staying on their own side.

Mojokong – Don’t make me stop this car!

Resurrecting Brat

For seven years the Bengals’ defense lagged behind and subsequently became each off-season’s point of emphasis. It appears that the team’s preoccupation of stopping the run and allowing big plays, led them to lose track of the offense and as a result, it rusted in the rain. Now, with the defense upright and sturdy, the front office, Marvin Lewis & his staff, all wandered over to the antiquated, dilapidated offense with tools in hand and began hammering on the weatherbeaten machine. What new form the offense takes, with all of its shiny new parts and renewed focus, will determine how competitive the Bengals can be this season.

During this era, only one man, Bob Bratkowski, has been at the wheel of the offense, perhaps asleep at times. He quickly rose to fame behind the big arm of Carson Palmer and the gold teeth of Chad Johnson, but quietly benefitted most from an elite offensive line. His vertical-passing offense caught the league by surprise and climaxed in the 2005 playoff season, earning the Bengals a reputation for demonstrating an explosive passing attack. Satisfied with his acclaimed game plan, Bratkowski went on to call the same plays for the next three seasons. The results were never as effective, and it became obvious that his recipe was no longer a secret when defenses feasted on the sputtering Bengals during last season’s first four games; a stretch when Palmer was still playing.

This time, Brat says he’s finally changing the play-book, and for good reason. There will be 40 new players arriving in Georgetown, Kentucky this season, and most of those are on offense. Gone are three ineffective offensive linemen, a top receiver, a squirrely backup quarterback, a fumbling runner and one overweight fullback. The replacements to those positions suggest that the Bengals have committed to the run – a slogan the team has historically discussed but never enacted.

First-rounder Andre Smith is the proverbial mauler; a run-blocker who regularly smashes opponents into the ground. Assuming Smith becomes the right tackle – a move that would keep Anthony Collins on the left and seems to make the most sense – he would have the immense Bobby Williams mauling beside him. Such a behemoth right side should immediately provide Brat with a preferred spot to run behind. As for center, Luigs, though disconcertingly labeled as finesse, is an improvement over Ghaicuic because, frankly, you couldn’t possibly do much worse than that. Along those lines, seventh-round draft pick, Fui Vakapuna, can only improve a fullback position that hasn’t recovered from Jeremi Johnson’s eating binges.

All of this is terrific news for Cedric Benson. The former first-rounder and Bears’ castaway, has harbored together all of the intense emotion that drives him and formed it into an angry running style; one that produced good numbers in a comical Bengals offense last season. When it comes time to pulverize the opponent into submission this year, that big and powerful right side, coupled with Benson’s large, square head can hopefully hold their own against the villainous defenses of the AFC North.

The power-running game is a second-half weapon and is instrumental to closing out games. Bratkowski once had something similar in his heyday with Rudi Johnson & Gang, but he quickly overused it and the play-calling became predictable. Fortunately for Brat, he also has a left side of the line which is quick and athletic, and to go with it: the coveted change-of-pace back in the dazzling form of the tiny DeDe Dorsey. Yes, DeDe is an exciting jitterbug with the ball and can be potent on screenplays and halfback tosses, but an unfortunate side-effect to all of that has been his propensity to fumble and become injured. The new addition of Bernard Scott, taken in the sixth round, could add a little competition for DeDe as the established third-down back.

Scott is apparently explosive both on the field and off it; after experiencing multiple run-ins with the law, most teams shied away from the reportedly talented back. Another new running back that adds both depth and grit to the team, is Brian Leonard, acquired in a trade from the Rams for defensive lineman, Orien Harris. Thanks to his ability to block and run, Leonard can play fullback too, and could be effective in pass-protection by picking up outside blitzes.

Hopefully, the Bengals passing attack has been humbled. No longer should these players assume that they can simply throw the ball high into the air, and points will rain down with the completed passes. Things don’t look quite as rosy these days: they’ve lost their leader, pass-protection remains a mystery and the league has solved Brat’s play-calling formula.

Alas, all is not lost. The brand-named Housh has been replaced with the next-best-thing, Laverneus Coles. Chris Henry is said to have finally exorcized the crazy and is primed to be the deep-threat, third-option receiver we knew from the days of yore. We have a pair of interesting second-year receivers; Andre Caldwell showed us good hands and a dash of punt-return ability, Jerome Simpson showed us nothing. And then there’s still that traveling salesman, that laughing hyena, that clown, Chad Ocho Cinco. That makes five receivers who all have a chance to call dibs on the top bunk within Brat’s new and improved play-book (and third-round tight end, Chase Coffman, promises to catch some passes too).

It could be a rebirth this season for Bob Bratkowski. His slate is clean, his new pieces are in place. The blueprints of his new machine all check out and seem to make a lot of sense. This could once again take him to the top. But will it all work? Will theory become reality? The responsibility rests with the man behind the wheel.

Mojokong – If a perfect machine can only run in a perfect environment, is it a piece worth keeping?

Some Semblance of Logic

The best off-season of the Marvin Lewis Era continued when the team signed hard-hitting safety, Roy Williams, to a one-year deal. This is yet another smart move and one of little risk considering that within his eight years as a pro, Roy has clearly shown the world what he can and can’t do.

Roy can tackle; he’s more of a mini-linebacker than he is a safety. This is the man who forced the league to outlaw horse-collar tackles, the man who has tackled over 500 times in the NFL. A coordinator could use a player like Roy in a very specialized manner. He should come in for run support and safety blitzes, and come out on passing downs. Use him in nickel formations in the linebacker slot, cut him loose on punt blocks, be creative with the guy.

He went to four Pro-Bowls when coached by Bengals defensive coordinator, Mike Zimmer, in Dallas, who said this about Roy: "I think I know how to use him a little bit."

While not turning too many heads in the process, Zimmer has significantly upgraded this defense since the opener of last season. Those upgrades include: Tank Johnson for John Thornton, Chris Crocker for Marvin White, Roy Williams for Dexter Jackson, Rey Maualuga for Dhani Jones, and possibly coming soon, Roderick Hood for David Jones. Bengals.com reported that Hood – cornerback with Arizona last year – was scheduled to visit Paul Brown Stadium today . He would add even more depth to a suddenly veteran secondary.

It seems Zimmer seeks out players who are particularly talented in one facet of the game. Tank Johnson is primarily a pass-rusher, Rey & Roy are run-stuffers who enjoy hitting people, rookie defensive end, Michael Johnson, is very tall and athletically freakish. Zimmer must play the part of Maestro, accentuating every specialized talent these newcomers posses and seamlessly blend them in with the existing sound of his emerging defense.

Marvin Lewis’ vision is finally beginning to take form. It was derailed then obscured, but now he has the living roots in his grasp and he can grow something, really grow something this time. We’ve all learned many lessons along his way, but the hardest learned for Marvin has been what not to do when next time rolls around. This, my friends, is the beginning of that next time.

To the end and beyond,

Mojokong – Levi Jones, your time with us tasted of bitter fruit. You join the ranks of the once loved but too thoroughly defeated. So it goes.