More on GM and the Bengals; great QB sacker dies

I'm starting to think that PFT's report that the Bengals are looking in the direction of acquiring a General Manager, is being taken as that the Bengals are looking to hire a General Manager. Mike Florio pointed out this morning on Alan Cutler's show (hosted by Nick Brunker), that the source wasn't someone within the organization nor the national media; it was a grapevine rumor in which people have repeatedly heard the same thing. Usually anonymous sources, or grapevine talk, isn't so much about accuracy, as it is to show that smoke is beginning to billow somewhere.

One caller made a suggestion that occurred to me last night (not that I sit on my couch thinking Bengals stuff). Is Mike Brown, through backdoor channels, promoting this as a means to generate buzz, and hopefully get season ticket holders that are on the fence, to renew? Personally, I doubt it. We don't have the opinion that Brown is sitting at Mr. Burns table while they hunt little puppies and use $100 bills to light thousand dollar cigars. Brown does things his way, and that's that. I'm sure he wants to put a winner on the field; he just doesn't have the means to do it (like judging personnel, or stepping aside so another can handle and have the final say on all football operations).

Officially, Coy Bacon has the unoffical record of 26 sacks in a season. Coy Bacon, who recorded 22 sacks in 1976, a team record -- though Bacon claims he had 26, died in his Ironton, Ohio home Wednesday. It was before sacks were recorded as an official stat -- and we believe that if the league went back and recorded every sack, today's totals could be blown out of the water.

Bacon's 26 sacks is extraordinary, when you think that the league was still playing a 14-game schedule. Averaging 1.9 sacks-per-game that season, the Bengals, as a team, haven't equaled or surpassed that number in five of the past nine seasons.

The Bengals contacted Chris Crocker's agent, confirmed on Monday. Crocker will be a free agent.

How many millions did Stacy Andrews lose by having his ACL (and other things) torn?

Lewis has been impressed with Cedric Benson and Chris Henry.

Christmas gifts in the AFC North.

Ol' Jim Blount has missed only two Bengals home games after 41 years, as a reporter for local papers and the team's "unofficial statistician for many years." He's retiring.