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Quick Bengals notes..

By Josh Kirkendall

Marvin Lewis sat down and chatted with the Enquirer's Mark Curnutte and Bengals.com's Geoff Hobson. This year's point that Lewis wants to drive home for his Cincinnati Bengals is, "teamwork". He also discussed increasing the margain for error with better play on the field. Now that Lewis is giving interviews, you can feel the new season saturating the air.

GEORGETOWN BACK IN '08
The Bengals released a press release that the team will resume training camp in Georgetown through 2008. Georgetown College has been the home for Bengals training camps since 1997.

WAITING ON THURMAN
Still no word on Odell Thurman's reinstatement.

RANKING WRS
Football Outsiders ranked wide receivers based on the team perspective. The Cincinnati Bengals ranked 3rd.

As good as Indianapolis' starting wide receivers were, Cincinnati's star combo of Chad Johnson (5th in DPAR) and T.J. Houshmandzadeh (4th) were right behind them. In fact, it's easy to construct a pretty convincing argument that by the time Carson Palmer had come all the way back from his knee injury, the combination were approaching the performance of Wayne and Harrison. Before the Bengals bye in Week 5, the Colts' duo were averaging 5.5 DPAR per game combined, while the Bengals' top two had a measly 2.3 DPAR per game between them. Over the rest of the year, while the Colts' stars kept their numbers up at 5.69 DPAR per game, the Bengals got up to 4.46 DPAR per game; still not at the Colts' level, but approaching it.

What separates the Colts' offense from the Bengals, though, is depth. The Bengals offense does not enjoy a threat at tight end the level of Dallas Clark, although Reggie Kelly has proven to be an effective receiver (17.8 percent DVOA in 2006) when used. While Chris Henry was an excellent third wide receiver, a full season of Anthony Gonzalez will be better than the maximum eight games Henry will be allowed to suit up for in 2007. While they're not the Colts' set of receivers — very few teams in NFL history have been — Johnson and Houshmandzadeh are an elite duo, and they are likely to continue to be for at least two more seasons.

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