Bengals Banter: Car doors won't close and the Bengals look at players that didn't play in 2009

You know it's going to be a miserable morning when you have to hold onto your car door during a 30 mile drive to Dayton because, apparently, the latch that holds the door in place wouldn't, you know, latch. During the 40 minute drive, with both of my hands occupied on the steering wheel and the car door, I couldn't drink my coffee, wave at the good looking babes (hey, it's almost Valentine's Day) or flip off slow drivers in the fast lane (a tradition in American highway transport). And as (lack of) luck would have it, roughly two miles before reaching the city garage, my door finally latched. Yes, I shouted. A pumping fist goes through the air.

I had to look up the problem (and if available, the solution). There's this thing called a striker (or is it sticker?), which the latch holds onto to keep the door shut. When you open the door, or hood, the clasp releases the striker. The issue, possibly, is that the striker could be out of alignment. However, if that were the case, one would wonder if my car door would ever shut -- would it suddenly start working or would I have needed to realign the striker to latch the door shut. Granted, I'm probably screwing up the terminology, unable to grasp the mechanisms as something as easy as a frackin' car door. And most likely, the cold temperatures this morning has everything to do with it. But if we have any experts out there about this, what should I do?

Moving on to things you actually care about.

We've had a busy couple of days. So if you missed us yesterday or the day before, let's quickly catch you up to speed.

• It was reported late Thursday that the Bengals made an official offer to receiver Matt Jones, worked out Adam "Pacman" Jones and are expected to have interest in Donte Stallworth.
• The Bengals aren't expected to use the Franchise Tag this year.
• However, the Bengals are expected to focus on their restricted free agents. Dollar amounts were released Thursday afternoon.
• Mojokong talks about Bob Bratkowski.
• Jay takes a look at mock drafts.
• Vman talks about being a football fan in the military.
• We asked how strong our depth is after the starters.

Matt Jones, Pacman Jones and Donte Stallworth, oh my. As one should expect, there's backlash with the news Thursday night that Cincinnati is looking at three players that didn't play in 2009 because of issues off the field. However, my belief is that we're making more of an issue than we should right now. For one thing, the Bengals can't talk about, or negotiate with players that will be free agents this year. It's still considered tampering because players that will be free agents in less than a month, are still under contract. The players that the Bengals are expressing interest in haven't played in 2009 and therefore are allowed to negotiate, work out, whatever. So they're talking to players that they can talk to. If you can find any solace, think of it this way, they are looking at everyone.

More on Pacman Jones. PFT wrote Thursday night.

Then there's the question of whether Pacman is even close to being in football shape.  In a Twitter entry from February 2, Jones said that he "just got done working out first day in 6 months."

PFT did conjecture that Jones might want to play for the Bengals because that was the team his former friend and teammate, Chris Henry, played for.

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