Shortly before the Bengals second preseason game against the Atlanta Falcons, NFL.com’s Gregg Rosenthal posted his Offensive Power Rankings. The rankings, of course, are based on what is projected for team offenses in 2012. To better understand Rosenthal’s rankings, he points out they determined where to place each team’s offense based on depth chart, offensive coach and scheme they would want as a team owner or as a general manager.

Rosenthal offered his rankings in tiers rather than a numerical list. Rosenthal’s tiers are ordered as follows: Top Shelf, Next Level, Knocking On The Door, Middle of The Pack, Not Sold, and Bottom of The Barrel.

Rosenthal has the Bengals falling in the "Not Sold" (second to last) tier. Unfortunately, he offers an extremely brief assessment of the Bengals, a team he places in company with the likes of the Arizona Cardinals, Jacksonville Jaguars, and Indianapolis Colts among several other teams:

Cincinnati's wideout position is ugly after A.J. Green.

No, really – that’s the extent of Rosenthal’s justification for considering the Bengals as a team he’s not sold on. Now, we’ll cut Rosenthal and the NFL.com staff some slack considering the article is designed to serve as more of a list than an in-depth analysis, and it’s not as though he elaborated any further on any of the other teams. Either way, it’s clear that Rosenthal believes that the giant question mark behind AJ Green on the depth chart is at the forefront of discussion when considering the Bengals as a team he’s “Not Sold” on.

Once again, these rankings were posted before the Bengals second preseason game. I’m not entirely convinced it would change the rankings for NFL.com, but Thursday's preseason game hints that the wide receiver depth may be slowly morphing the perceived question mark behind AJ Green to an awesome exclamation point. Games 3 and 4 will provide more clarity on that, but I guess the point is that the wide receiver battle seems to be trending with positive results. One other thing to note with NFL.com’s rankings is that they ranked the Bengals defense as a Next Level defense (second from top tier) last week. Regardless, it’s doubtful there will be a general manager position opening anytime soon for the Bengals, Mr. Rosenthal.