When the players meet up together for their first players-only workout this offseason as a team, the Bengals local media will be able to attend. We're not exactly sure what news will come out of the workout other than what drills are being run and who actually is attending. More or less it wouldn't be too dissimilar to regular OTAs during a typical offseason where a few practices are run and the only news that comes from them is who got hurt and who actually attended.
But we have to imagine that someone must have read Yahoo! Sports Michael Silver's piece -- actually, let's call it a rant -- after the Carolina Panthers hired a security guard to turn away the media from watching their workouts.
Well, the truth is, from Reedy's account, the media will only be allowed to watch one hour worth of defensive drills this and next Tuesday.
Said Peko in an e-mail about the workouts: “This is a two week mini camp is designed to build chemistry, cohesiveness, review the defensive playbook and to work on our strength and conditioning as a unit.”
Like Reedy, we do applaud Peko for allowing the media to check in with the players, perhaps get some time with them to talk about something OTHER than the current NFL lockout or god forbid, their opinion on Carson Palmer (not that we wouldn't mind reading about it). Ask them what they've been up to. How do they pass the time during the offseason?
In the end, we applaud the Bengals more for conducting the workouts, whether the media would be allowed to watch or not. With the way players are today, we're not so much concerned with their actual conditioning as we are the youth movement being welcomed into the Bengals family and as Peko said, "build chemistry" and "cohesiveness".