Here are the biggest takeaways from Cincinnati’s loss to Green Bay in Week 6.
Ask columnist Jason Williams anything, sports or non-sports, and he’ll collect some of your questions and comments from your inbox and answer them on Cincinnati.com. Email: jwilliams@enquirer.com
Issue: Cincinnati Bengals need pressure to hire more scouts
Message: According to Dennis Doyle (of The Enquirer’s board of contributors). There are no moral victories. Until enough pressure is put on the Brown family to invest in a scouting department, nothing changes. Please do not be complicit in extending this considering what taxpayers have contributed. We deserve better.
Reply: Respectfully, Mr. Doyle glossed over the sarcasm in my column after the Bengals’ loss to Green Bay on Oct. 12, when I wrote that they “have reached the moral victory stage of their lost season.” I was making fun of the fact that the Bengals at least didn’t get eliminated this time.
Anyway, I’m not interested in a tit-for-tat with opinion writers. They have the right to criticize my columns whenever they want.
My question to you: Where will that pressure come from? The Bengals’ woefully understaffed scouting department has been a problem for decades. Fans and some media outlets have denounced it, including this columnist. Nothing has changed.
The Bengals and Hamilton County just went through a stadium lease negotiation process a few months ago. Few taxpayers said anything. Nothing changed. The Bengals got another excellent deal.
Accountability has to come from within. That never happened with the family-owned Bengals. They are not alone in their immunity from accountability. The NFL answers to no one. Its popularity, monopoly and business model guarantee it. Each team earned $433 million as part of the NFL’s revenue sharing last season, according to Sportico. The Bengals earn that money whether they are undefeated or 0-17.
The understaffing of the Bengals’ scouting department was a big story in the 1990s and early 2000s. Remember when the Bengals hired former Ohio State coach John Cooper as a part-time scouting consultant in early 2002, after the franchise’s 11th consecutive winless season? Yes, that was the Bengals’ solution to trying to improve player evaluations: hire an unemployed former college coach who had no prior NFL experience.
The Bengals added some scouts earlier this year, but they still have the smallest scouting department in the NFL and about a third of the staff of most teams.
The Bengals will never win a Super Bowl or have sustained success until they invest in their scouting department like the Chiefs, Ravens and Steelers do. The Bengals occasionally have good seasons because they have high draft picks like Joe Burrow and Ja’Marr Chase.
Burrow, when healthy, would win anywhere. He’s that good. And with Burrow currently sidelined with a toe injury, all of the Bengals’ problems are being exposed.
Contact columnist Jason Williams at jwilliams@enquirer.com