NFL Franchise Rankings (Fox Sports)

I gave the Bengals a “9” for quarterback, which shows you I still view the human jugs machine Carson Palmer as a great quarterback, despite his most recent injury. It also shows you how low Cincy graded out for ownership and front office, despite an excellent offseason. And Chad Ochocinco’s presence and the continued trend of bringing in players with character issues is a negative and it is why Cincinnati got a “2” for intangibles. Ochocino is a walking distraction for a team that has had an otherwise great offseason.

I think Schein’s points nails it.

because there is no argument that could really dispute it. We could have been dead last and I would not have blinked an eye. Since Mikey took over, it’s a s#$% organization. Things have gotten better under Marvin, and I was amazed by the strength of their offseason this year, but I am not ready to say things have changed.

Is blanket character arguments they make. We know that the Bengals, at best, are in-line with character issues across the league — however, that’s a stretch. In reality, many more teams need to worry about character issues affecting their product than Cincinnati does.

That’s always been my frustration. Not where they’re ranked in power rankings — which are conjecture based on the writer only. There’s no right way to rank these things.

But in some he misses the boat badly.

Carson does deserve his 9. He’s a great QB who has a very good chance to end up a 9.5 or a 10 in the future if we can give him a line that can keep him healthy.

The intangibles are probably semi-close. We don’t have a truly rabid fan base. We don’t have a stadium that just blows people away. Etc. Maybe that changes in the future, but for now it’s fairly close. Maybe it should be a 4 instead because we aren’t bad here, but we are merely average.

Since he neglects to give us the other scores, we’ll have to guess. We’ve accounted for 11 of 40 points. In the other 6 categories we only get 29. Owner likely had to be a 2 and front office as well. Lets say that Marvin got an 7, his staff as well, offense was likely a 4 and defense was a 7.

OK so where was he right and where was he wrong? Marvin deserves his props. He’s not the best coach ever but he’s not bad either. A 7 is about right, but given the mess he inherited and the fact that he got a team that was 0-8 to avoid giving up I’m going to bump him to 7.5. If Bratkowski was the primary determinant of staff scores we’d get a 3, but if Zimmer was we’d get a 10. So a 7 is probably about right there too.

If we remember that these rankings are based on last year not on potential for this year, then the offense and defense scores are about right as well. Offense was horrid last year at least overall, but the running game significantly improved late year which saves us from a 1. And the defense improved the last 8 games as well, which saves us from a 4 or 5.

But he blows it on ownership. Mike Brown has been a very bad owner. This is incontestable. But he has improved. How much? Not sure. But he has improved. And so has the front office (which is actually the coaching staff because they are essentially one-and-the-same) at least a small amount. Giving either a 2 is too low on its own. And when you consider that he gave Arthur Blank a 10, it’s even worse. This is a man who he admits has a laundry list of past screwups that rivals Mike’s, and just because last year he made some really good moves he gets a 10? By those standards Mike is an 8. And he’s not. But he should still get a 5, and the front office as well.

Adding 8.5 extra points jumps us only 3 slots to #22. But I think next year we will be up in the top half. Our D should stay strong or get better, the O should get a lot so, and the intangibles will go up with a few wins next year. I wouldn’t be surprised to see us at 55 to 60 next year, which could get us anywhere from 10 to 18. But that’s still improvement.

dead last. it doesn’t matter.

the results each sunday are what matter.