The Enquirer's Mark Curnutte made a startling point. The Bengals drafts are one of the league's best -- in terms of numbers still in the NFL.
Team president Mike Brown strongly defended the performance of the Bengals' scouting department in an interview requested by The Enquirer late last week.
"Isn't this what matters? This is the product," Brown said. "Not the number of employees, but what the group as a whole produces, and I would argue that we do well."
What? What does this mean? Of the total players drafted in the NFL, the Bengals are ranked fifth for drafting the fifth most since 2003? Does this even matter when you don't hold on to many of them?
Dude, we're 42-38 since 2003. The talent drafted, during that span, is hardly the core of our team. Of the starting offensive players, how many were drafted during the Marvin Lewis era? Let's see, Jeremi Johnson, Carson Palmer, Eric Ghiaciuc and Andrew Whitworth. If you want, you can add Mr. Reliable, Chris Henry.
Since 2003, the period of which Curnutte bases his arguments, the Bengals are 42-38.
Furthermore, the Bengals defensive ranks haven't shown any reflection of the draft on the team's improvements. Since 2003, the Bengals sport the 22nd best scoring defense and 26th overall defense.
So let's not delude ourselves in creating positive stories that are just not there. It's like Bengals.com justifying the rising ticket prices being below league average. We don't care about averages. We care that you're rising our ticket prices. We care that no matter how you spin our personnel department, it's NOT helping us win ball games nor does it position ourselves for a playoff run.
Most of you know that I try to be as positive as possible. But this? This is just pointing out that the team is so completely deluded in their thinking. Don't rank well on trivial matters like total players drafted being fifth most in the league. That's not the point. You're not even keeping them on your team. Uh-hum, Eric Steinbach being the biggest point of that argument.