The pain and misery experienced yearly by Cincinnati sports fans needs to be felt by fans in every city across the country. Everyone needs to know what it is like to have two inept "professional" organizations in their city. The Reds found themselves as sellers at the trade deadline, AGAIN. Now they are stuck with an overpaid closer, an overpaid manager, and a line-up that could not score more than three runs off of Jericho Scott(right). While there are some talented young players waiting in the wings, there is no reason to believe this team will be ready to compete for the division until 2010 (at the earliest). Chris Dickerson looks like a fine athlete, but is he an everyday centerfielder? Jay Bruce has cooled off tremendously since his torrid start, and there is still nowhere to go but up for him, but I find myself wondering if the Reds will someday look back on the Josh Hamilton-Edinson Volquez deal and wonder if they could have traded Bruce instead of Hamilton. Still, there is some reasonable hope for their future with young arms like Volquez, Johnny Cueto, and Daryl Thompson, that is as long as the Reds don't find a way to screw them all up.
The Bengals have yet to complete pre-season, and fans are already in panic mode. The team has looked TERRIBLE thus far, and there is little reason to believe this team will be any better than the 2007 club that finished 7-9. I will say that the defense looks like it has a chance to be pretty good.......in 2009. They will still miss the presence of a big, stud defensive tackle, but at least the John Thorton era is nearly finished. The more frustrating part of the team is the offense that has looked out of sync and disoriented all pre-season. The offensive line looks slow, and weak, and
Carson Palmer(right) will be lucky to finish the season in an upright position at this point. Also, I am still confused over their support for Eric Ghiaciuc at center. Of course, I was reading somethings I wrote a little over a year ago, and I about threw up. Here is an excerpt of what I wrote after the Bengals selected Kenny Irons in the 2nd round of the 2007 NFL Draft:"I even convinced myself it would ok if they took an offensive player, but that player was Ryan Kalil, the center out of USC, who looks like he will become one of the best centers in the league in a short time. I told myself Kalil would be a great pick because Rich Braham retired and the rest of the Bengals' centers were average at best. Then, the Bengals pick was read.......RUNNINGBACK.......those are the only words I heard before I started throwing stuff around the room. RUNNINGBACK, are you serious????????????"
OK, so hindsight is 20/20, but Kalil is currently penciled in as the starting center in Carolina where they are expecting big things out of their running game. Ghiaciuc should take me calling him average as a tremendous compliment. This may not mean anything, but keep an eye on Kalil and the Panthers' offensive line play this season, and we might be wishing he was anchoring the middle of the Bengals O-Line.
Oh, and regarding Kenny Irons, who suffered a knee injury in his first pre-season game, and is no longer on the Bengals roster, here is what I said then:
"Yet, Marvin does something like this, and then he will have the nerve to tell us that everything is ok as the defense gets their ass handed to them week after week after week. So now we have an undersized, change of pace back with durability issues, instead of someone to help out the defense. Thank you, Marvin Lewis. Your genius knows no bounds." (emphasis added).
Again, I'm not the smartest guy in the world, but I can read what other experts said about Irons at the time. Apparently the Bengals don't have access to the internet or magazines or any publication that could have given them that little bit of information. Of course, during the draft I was watching the Cowboys' war room, and I was amazed at all the laptops, flatscreens, and other technological devices in that room. Then I found myself imagining what the Bengals' war room looks like, and I saw Mike Brown, Katie and Troy, and Marvin sitting around a table with legal
pads and pencils, an old rotary phone, and maybe a computer that looked something like this-->As long as Mike Brown continues to run the organization like its a mom and pop store, there will be ZERO chance of sustained success. It will take all of the planets aligning and everything else going the Bengals way for them to succeed in a given year, like 2005. The injuries have been a problem the past couple of years, but every team has injuries. The difference is that those other teams are much more prepared to deal with them because they have a larger scouting staff and personnel department. When an injury happens, those organizations don't panic, they simply look at their scouting lists and find another player who fits their system. Does anyone honestly believe the Bengals ever consider how a given player fits their system?? Better yet, do the Bengals even have a system which they can base their decisions off of??
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