Last night's episode of Hard Knocks was my favorite so far. We got great looks at several players and coaches, an introduction to Tom Nelson who caught my eye for the first time last week at New England, an explanation of Chad's other catch phrase of the minute and a look at the Rookie Show the night before camp broke at Georgetown. I'll quickly detail a couple of my favorite moments from last night's show and open the comment thread for each of you to discuss the points I make and talk about your favorite segment below.
-During the rookie show I love love loved the Samoan dance and chant led by Fui Vakapuna and Rey Maualuga. I wish the Bengals would do that before every game as they close their warmups to strike fear into the hearts of their opponents, because seeing the crazy eyes of Fui while doing the over-the-top masculine Samoan dance would loosen the bowels of many within his sightline, I imagine.
-If HBO is to be believed, Bernard Scott is now our #2 tailback. Note however that the depth chart on Bengals.com still shows the position as Cedric Benson, Brian Leonard, DeDe Dorsey, James Johnson then Scott as the #5.
-Rey Maualuga may actually kill someone on the field of play this year. I was very excited to hear the coaches say that Rey has to start somewhere for the betterment of the team. What an exciting player to have on our team. He was described as a "Hammer" last night on the show, and I couldn't think of a better word for him. The man hits like a Mack Truck and is unbelievably quick to the ball. I think if I were Hines Ward I would be getting seriously concerned about any plays that take me across the middle at this point between Rivers and Maualuga being on the field.
-Jason Shirley is also an intimidating human being, and he seems to be taking on his new role seriously and with some good results. If you were watching last night, you saw him absolutely demolish his man a couple of times during the Patriots game last week. That's one of my favorite things about Hard Knocks, the show gives us better views of the games at which they film and we see things we may have missed watching it on the network's cameras. This is a move that may pan out better than we all expected.
-Mike Zimmer is the next head coach of this football team if anything is right with the world. There is a major problem if the Bengals let Zimmer get away from them in any fashion.
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That's really all I have off the top of my head, I look forward to reading your comments and finding out what interested you most about our third look inside training camp and the preseason.
Until next time I remain,
A Pragmatic Bengals Fan