News has been somewhat slow again -- typical stupid off-season. Though my personal life has been rather hectic with other writing projects and "real work". Been considering putting out a call for a co-writer -- so if you're interested, send me an email (joshkirkendall [at] gmail [dot] com).
Case in point that it's a slooooooooooooooow news week.
Chad Johnson is interviewed by ESPN's "best" NFL personality, Stephan A. Smith (for those of you that take sports WAY too seriously, that's a joke). Take the interview for what it's worth. Boring. Uneventful.
Matt Miller grades Eric Steinbach as the NFL's best guard (after five minutes of crying, I continue writing) Stacy Andrews is the highest ranked guard at #18 (especially considerate considering a majority of his playing time was at right tackle). Nate Livings came in at #76 with Bobbie Williams two spots behind (#78). We think Matt puts out some awesome stuff, but we're not sure how Livings, on the practice squad until the final game of the season against Miami (and listed as inactive even on the 53-man roster), beats out Williams who has started all but three games since joining the Bengals in 2004. Andrew Whitworth (starting left guard) didn't make the list while offensive tackle Scott Kooistra (#145) and center Dan Santucci (#98) did. The irony there is that Santucci struggled to keep his spot while Williams who took snaps at center.
Chris Maier supports center Eric Ghiaciuc. It's not like we think he's awful, but there were times that Rudi Johnson took the brunt of angry fans when in truth, several of the guys that Ghiaciuc tried to block, either stopped Rudi in the backfield, or forced him to stop momentum (a fatality with Johnson's style). We're also starting to wonder if it's worth linking to other Bengals blogs when they either don't list us as a link, use us as a source (odds state that we can accidentally put out good material at times) or finds some childish way to link us through creative mythical URLs because we simply disagreed with one of their assessments.
Real men don't do Yoga, right? Actually, we're reading and hearing more and more stories that Yoga is a major contributor to help a player stay healthy, recover quicker and even extend their careers. Houshmandzadeh will be in Cincinnati a bit earlier before training camp hosting his first youth football camp.
Amazingly, no Bengals player earned NFL Network's top 10 single-season performances in NFL history. Amazingly, the Bengals own no record defined by the NFL Networks's top 10 records never to be broken. Let's see, no top 10 pass rusher or NFL drafts or cool NFL nicknames.
We did however make two entries in the top NFL feuds in NFL History. The top was Joey Porter's "shouting" with Chad Johnson. Apparently the league doesn't discipline guys that takes a posse, hides in some Las Vegas alley and jumps left tackles from a rival division foe with primarily orange colors. The other was Paul Brown versus the Cleveland Browns.
Finally, I'm organizing a "banter" between us and Stripe Hype in the coming days. If there's a topic that you think would be a good one, let us know.