Friday morning links and notes -- Bengals catch break without Vince Young?

First things first: I want to thank you guys for not going chaotic on this place, allowing me to liberally allow you to express yourselves freely. I know that being a fan of the Bengals tend to make us all crazy; but through this week, the arguments haven't just been clean (and impersonal against each other), but they've been very intelligent and thoughtful. So thanks guys for allowing me to deal with postings and responses on the Bengals rather than playing that big brother administrator role.

My daily James Walker rebuttal. ESPN's James Walker says that the Bengals defense will catch a break by playing Kerry Collins rather than Vince Young. His reasoning is that the offense is designed around Young, who's clearly not a pure-passer quarterback. And obviously, Collins doesn't have the legs that Young has.

However, in the Bengals 35-6 win over the Titans last season, Young's performance was pretty pedestrian. In 31 pass attempts, Young completed 19 for 246 yards; including an interception to Johnathan Joseph. He only rushed for six yards. I'm not sure how much of a break we're actually catching.

Carson Palmer breaks down USC's "advantage" over tOSU.

Sherrill Headrick, one of the original Bengals on the 1968 squad, died.

Antwan Odom has been talking to trash to his old mates, Kyle Vanden Bosch and Keith Bulluck.

Defensive backs coach, Kevin Coyle is showing highlight films of the old SWAT Team (Lewis Billups, Eric Thomas, David Fulcher and Solomon Wilcots) to the young secondary.

"The idea is that they were a team; the SWAT Team," Coyle said. "They gained a lot of notoriety around here and around the league. They were feared and respected and achieved it as a group. They put the group ahead of the individual and I thought it was important to show that they were successful doing it around here and helped their team get to the Super Bowl. And that's our ultimate goal."

John Clayton actually lists Sunday's game as a game of interest; primarily because Young won't be playing after last weeks, um, issues.

Early yesterday it was reported that Beanie Wells would be at full strength. Then it came out that he'll be doubtful, and soon after that, it became a game-time decision. Matt Hinton thinks that Jim Tressel is playing games.

The 24-hour Beanie Watch.

Around the Oval breaks down Saturday night's game.