I have a hunch or something… A conspiracy maybe?... Hell I don’t know what to call it… A theory I guess would fit best… Yea a theory! I have a theory! Anyways… Mike Brown once said… "We don’t apologize for our scouting" and that he believed the Bengals got just as much information on prospects as anyone in the league… He may actually be right…. We may get as much information on these prospects as all the other teams... Eventually...

The Bengals obviously don’t have as many scouts as other teams… So instead of employing his own… He takes advantage of the fact that 31 other teams have a great number of people all over the country scouting prospects… What he essentially does is send out his coaches and a couple of hired guys to zero in on players they’re aiming at drafting… And when the draft comes about he either drafts the guys the coaches scouted because of a need at that position… Or he drafts a high profile prospect that has fell down the boards right into his lap (usually because of character flaws)..

This strategy causes the Bengals to miss out on a shit load of prospects that have great talent… So apparently realizing this to be the case … Mike Brown has come up with a cheap Free Agency strategy to make up for this… As seen in years past and even more apparent this year… Mike Brown waits for them to be cut and then brings in guys that at one point were thought of highly (1rst and 2nd round picks) by the army of scouts employed by other teams … Without having to spend a penny hiring guys to research these prospects to begin with…

He basically uses the other 31 teams as a kind of league wide scouting service for the Bengals… Once a team feels their scouting has failed them… Mike Brown second guesses that thought and signs them cheap to find out for himself… This way he doesn’t have to spend NFL nickels and dimes to hire full time competent men to research these guys to start with… Which as recently proved by the signings he made… You can find by searching a pool of semi successful college teams… Hell he could find competent scouts by searching no farther than his own back yard…. (U.C., Ohio State, Miami of Ohio etc…)

With that said I’m excited that he has expanded the scouting department recently and hope that he continues to acknowledge problems that have existed for some time now and takes action to solve them… Hopefully he is starting to see that the organization needs to identify where they’re weak in comparison to the rest of league… And do the things necessary to improve the overall success of the franchise…

Mike Brown is lazy and cheap… He buy's the snowman after someone else has decided it was a failure and trys to sell it in the front yard... I know this theory is extremely farfetched… And possibly way out in left field… However like I said before it’s just kind of been a "hunch" of mine for a while… And I thought I’d share it with you guys as a little food for thought…