Why did the Bengals draft a RB in the second round?  I think two recent developments helped move that position up the need board.  One was DT Michael Myers signing for two years.  That signing pretty much eliminated the need to draft a DT in the first or second round.  Lewis much prefers to draft DTs on the second day, and the Myers signing let him go that route, It gives Matt Toeaina a year or two to develop his skills.

The other factor was Chris Henry's suspension.  Henry is perhaps most important to the offense in the red zone; he might even be Carson Palmer's favorite goal line target.  With him gone, the red zone passing offense simply won't be as good.  That puts additional pressure on the run offense to be more productive.  My guess is that the coaches looked critically at what they had in Rudi Johnson, Kenny Watson and a bunch of who-dats and decided they needed to upgrade the red zone running game.  In particular, Henry's suspension took away the option of standing pat, going with last year's lineup of Rudi Johnson and Kenny Watson, and giving Chris Perry as much time as he needed to get healthy.  

Irons was drafted to make the red zone running offense more of a scoring threat.  That will continue to have dividends when Henry finally comes back.

It's draft day in the NFL, so good luck to the Bengals.  They've been pretty successful the last few years in the draft, which suggests more skill than luck, not only drafting good to great players, but avoiding real dogs like the new QB on the Calgary Stampeders.  Whoever the guys (or gals) are with the good eyes for college players with NFL talent, they're likely still on the team; but best wishes on the luck component.

And boo on Paul Dougherty of the Enquirer, who heaps undeserved scorn on the Bengals for, what?  Poor drafting?  According to Dougherty, there are too many Browns, too few "real scouts", too much penny-pinching; and thus, no diamonds in the rough.  What nonsense.  As the DC Examiner recently reported, over the period 2000 to 2006, the Bengals lead the league in draft picks remaining on the original drafting team.  The Bengals!  And the Bengals are among the league leaders is drafting NFL-quality players (which includes players drafted by the Bengals that now play for other teams).   As for diamonds in the rough, does he mean former college track and field stars like Stacy Andrews and Benny Brazell?; or undrafted Ben Wilkerson? or how about T.J. Houshmandzadeh in the seventh round?; or Ahmad Brooks in the Supplemental Draft for their 2007 third round pick?

Unfortunately, until the Bengals win a Super Bowl, guys like Dougherty will keep bashing the front office.  The Bengals don't lack for talent.  What they need are (a) a leader on the defense, and (b) the toughness to win at Indianapolis and at Foxboro when those games matter, the grit to win in December and beyond.

Mike Brown bleats about the Bengals being a Small Market team?  I can see why people dislike the guy.  Is he always blaming other people for his problems, his problems; and always taking credit for what other people do?  Is it really Cincinnati's fault that he doesn't make more money?  Not likely.

When Dan Snyder bought the Redskins, Fed Ex Field was part of the deal.  Except, it was called Jack Kent Cooke Stadium when he bought it; Cooke, the long-time and flamboyant owner of the team, had died just a few months before the Stadium was completed, and his son named it in his honor.  Sound vaguely familiar?  The WaPo approved of the honorific, saying how crude the trend was to sell the naming rights.  

But Snyder incurred a lot of debt when he bought the team, so he needed to sell assets and grow revenue.  Snyder is a marketing genius, that's how he made his money; no inheritance from his parents except his drive and genius.  Once the NFL approved his ownership bid, he spent maybe two seconds before deciding that honorifics don't pay his creditors.  Being a marketing genius, Snyder didn't feel constrained to look for a local company, say, the regional power company; or, as WaPo sniffs, "some drugstore" to which to sell the naming rights.  He found Fed Ex, a national company whose HQ is in Memphis, Tennessee.  What ties do Fed Ex have to the Washington DC area?  They deliver packages here.  

In addition to stadium naming rights, Snyder had added seats to the stadium, sold concession rights to national companies like Pepsi, Taco Bell, etc.  Look at the Stadium page on the Redskins web site; even that is a marketing tool to Dan Snyder.

What has Mike Brown done to generate revenue from the stadium his team plays in?  Oh, that's right, Brown doesn't own the stadium; it's the city/county/state that owns it; so it's someone else's problem.  But what about the Jets and Giants?  Curnutte's article mentions the planned Jets/Giants stadium as generating $25 million for the teams.  But the Jets and Giants won't own the stadium; that's something the taxpaying citizens of New Jersey get to fund.  Sound vaguely familiar?  The taxpayers pay, the state owns, and the Jets and Giants will get $25 million.  How?  The Jets and Giants worked out a deal to share the profits that come from the State selling the naming rights and all the other things the state does to raise revenue from the stadium.   There's nothing stopping the Browns from doing something similar, except the get-up-and-go to do it.

If I were a politico-wannabe living in Cincinnati, I'd use the Stadium as an issue to get myself elected.  Last year, if I recall, the Bengals spread some bad will by spending a few hundred thousand dollars on a new field and handing the bill to the city.  They had a contractual right to do that, part of that sweet-heart deal they got.  However, all that's preventing the City from selling the naming rights is some local regulation.  Campaign to change that regulation.  Someone should make that an election issue; campaign on that and on conducting a search for a national or even international company to buy the naming rights.  Foreign companies are looking to establish themselves in North America, and some want to raise their profile.  Find some of those companies and sell to them.  It's a gigantic billboard, and every time the Bengals are the national game--Sunday night, Monday night, the second game on Sundays--it's a national audience hearing the name of the Stadium-sponsoring company.  Al Michaels knows to say "Fed Ex field" as often as he can when he broadcasts Redskins home games.  And if I were a politico-wannabe banging the drum about the Stadium naming rights, I'd promise to keep every dime brought in through the naming rights, and not give any money to the Browns, who certainly don't deserve any!

But this gets into local politics.  And local politicians tend to think locally.  And it's harder to get a local politico committee to get behind the effort needed to find a sponsoring company. It'd be a lot easier for the Browns to find that national/international advertiser.  And to protect themselves against political activism aimed against them, they could work a deal with the city, to take the initiative in finding corporate sponsors for the stadium, including the naming rights.  Work out some split, the City and the Browns sharing the revenue from innovative marketing connected with the Stadium.

Maybe right now, however, the Browns might not know how to do that.  Ignorance is no excuse.  Here's free advice to the Browns: make an effort to get to know Dan Snyder.  He knows marketing.  Ask the NFL to set up a committee, to help "small market" teams like yours to identify potential sponsors for stadium naming rights, both national companies and international ones.  Maybe there's a company in China, or Japan; and a sister-city arrangement as part of the deal, something for the taxpaying citizens of Cincinnati and Ohio.  There's lots that the Browns could do to make money from the stadium, even though they don't own it.  

So don't believe Mike Brown on this small market stuff.  Why is Pittsburgh a small market for baseball and not football?; Same question for Kansas City?  Why is big city Los Angeles able to have a baseball team but not a football team?  The problem in Cincinnati isn't the market size; the problem is Mike Brown.

So was Lewis hoping just to shake things up, is he feeling the hot seat?  I see some method to his madness.  True, he told the reporters at the NFL Combine that, yeah, he was on the hot seat, et cetera, et cetera, yada, yada.  But Mark Curnutte makes an observation that's almost certainly true, that Lewis could go 8-8 or 9-7 every year and make his boss, Mike Brown, happy.  From what I've read about Mike Brown, I'll agree with that.  But, Curnutte adds:  "To his credit, Lewis is not pleased with 8-8 or 9-7. He wants to win 10 games every year."  No, I don't agree with that.  Lewis doesn't want 10 win seasons, he wants Super Bowl winning seasons.  Plural.  More than one.  What baseball people call crooked numbers, like 2, or 3, or 4.  

And he's going about it in a very interesting and exciting way.  Over the last few years, and probably over the majority of Super Bowls, the winning teams have had tough, veteran, experienced defenses.  That's been the model for the Patriots, Pittsburgh, the Buccaneers, to a lesser extent, the Colts.  Lewis is not following that model.  He's following the model of the 1981 49ers and (if my memory is right) Jimmy Johnson's teams that won back to back Super Bowls.  Those teams had young, fast, aggressive, but fairly inexperienced defenses.  That sort of defense combined with the Bengals offense could beat any team, win in any stadium.

In 1981, Bill Walsh drafted Ronnie Lott in the first round; Eric Wright in the second round; and Carlton Williamson in the third round: D-back, D-back, D-back.  Those three rookies, plus Dwight Hicks, who had a year in Canada and two in the NFL, comprised the defensive backfield that won the Super Bowl.  I don't know if Lewis plans to replace Deltha O'Neal and Dexter Jackson with rookies, but it wouldn't really surprise me if he did.  I think the starting linebackers next season will be Landon Johnson, Ahmad Brooks and Odell Thurman, and they will be great.  Geathers and Smith on the ends, Sam Adams going out "in a blaze of guns" and "all his eggs in this basket", Peko having a breakout season.  Maybe the missing ingredient is a stud defensive tackle in this year's draft, a kid who can center the switch in '08 to a 3 - 4 defense.  Or maybe Adalius Thomas.  Or--why not?--both.  If Thurman can keep dry and straighten his life out, he'll come back and be great.  I think Ahmad Brooks will be near great next year and just plain great for years after that.  Johnathan Joseph , if he can learn to catch the ball, will be great.  And if the defensive line can, by itself, generate a pass rush, Lewis would have his dream defense.

I think Lewis committed to this type of defense when he signed Jason Berryman.  With all the criticism and scorn swirling around the Bengals because of all the arrests, Lewis ignored all that to sign a kid who had served about 9 months in jail.  That signing, and then cutting Simmons this week, says to me he values youth over experience.  It's captured in Bengals transactions yesterday:  Simmons's contract was terminated, and Berryman was assigned to the Berlin Thunder.  Out with the old, in with the new. It's not madness, it's evidence of a plan.

Good luck to the Bengals in the off-season effort to improve the team.  

What do Bengals fans think are the three areas the team most need improvement in?  Not just players and/or units, but coaching, game-day coaching, the defensive line coach, etc..  Along these lines, the Jets this year seemed to get a greater percentage of production out of their talent than any other team; while Palmer and Houshmandzadeh both whined after losses that the Bengals were the better team--as if past performance in other games entitled them to a win that day.  That sets up this question:  what are the biggest factors keeping the Bengals from maximizing their talent?  Is it coaching?; bad attitude?; or, like in the Redskins, a disgusting "phone it in" attitude in too many players (e.g., Deltha O'Neal)?.  

One of the problems this past year was lack of playmakers on the defense (aside from Kaesviharn early in the season).  Odell Thurman was great last year doing that and was obviously missed.  I wonder, is Coach Lewis's recent very tough talk ("not on the team, not on the horizon") designed to send Thurman a message and/or the result of end-of-season frustration, or does it reflect a final decision to get rid of the player?  Perhaps Lewis himself doesn't know. Thurman may not deserve another chance, but I hope the Bengals give him one anyway.  

My two cents about the team's needs are, number one, they need to strengthen the D-Line.  Do whatever they can to do that.  Examples of what I mean:  two years ago, the Bengals went LB/LB in the first two rounds of the draft; last year, the Jets went O-Line/O-Lind with their two first round picks; and the Ravens both signed a big name D-Lineman (Trevor Pryce) and drafted D-Line in the first round, trading up a spot to get Hagoti Ngata.  Or maybe it's time to get a new D-Line position coach.  The Bengals need some mean men on the defensive line to stop the run.  Along those lines, I looked at the Ravens depth chart and saw that their starting NT, Kelly Gregg, was originally drafted by the Bengals in the 6th round of the '99 draft.  He was cut and then practice-teamed, but the Eagles signed him off the PS in early December, 1999, then cut him at the end of pre-season 2000.  The Ravens acquired him in early 2001; he was a backup that year, and 2002 was his "breakout year" as a starter.  Interestingly, Marvin Lewis was the DC for the Ravens when they first acquired Gregg.  Maybe there's a lesson there, that it's the makeup of the guy as much as talent, the size of the fight in the dog, as they say.  How much fight is there in Jonathan Fanene?; or in Frostee Rucker?  Domata Peko? Maybe that's also why Lewis hasn't spent his first day draft picks on D-line players (with the exception of Rucker last year in the 3rd round).  D-Line has been neglected on Day 1 of the last four drafts.  And it shows.

The Bengals have spent much of their draft day capital since 2003 on linebackers and have a surfeit of young LBs; I'd be surprised if they went after a starting middle linebacker in the draft (that's another position where it's the size of the fight in the dog that matters most).  Remember that Ahmad Brooks was acquired so late that he missed all the minicamps; hopefully, with the experience he's gotten this year playing and the critiques of his playing from the coaches, he'll know what to do during the off-season and mini-camps to improve to star status next year.  Berryman is an unknow quantity, and rawer than Brooks; which is why he was assigned to NFL Europe.  Interestingly, Kelly Gregg started his Ravens career with an assignment to the Rhein Fire.  I hope Berryman develops as quickly as Gregg did for the Ravens.