The Bodine Witch Hunt

[3wt]

(05-03-2016, 06:44 PM)SunsetBengal Wrote: I notice how you refrained from including 4th round picks in your post, as that is where the last two "drafted" Centers for the Bengals have came from.  Not only Russell Bodine, but also Jonathan Luigs was taken in the 4th round of the '09 draft.  We all remember how his Bengals career panned out..


When, oh when, will the Bengals and Paul Alexander put enough stock in the Center position to value it enough to invest a high pick on one, from the top of the heap?  They seem to have no problems taking Tackles in the 1st or 2nd, or with taking good Guards in the 1st or 3rd.  But Center seems to be the position that they value the least.

I find that a bit puzzling, especially from a maestro like Paul Alexander.  Certainly, the maestro would know that the way to build a football team is from the inside, and work outward, right?

Actually I think Luigs was a 5th round pick.

And while I agree that seem to have undervalued it over the last couple of decades the ownership has had two first round picks in the past at the center position (Johnson and Rimington).

Sometime it's a timing thing and balancing the pick against our other needs and overall evaluation.   My guess is that this year we would have taken one of the top 4 receivers over Kelly - though I don't really know where he was on their board.  Because the receiver position was a more urgent need and the top 4 receivers would have been graded about as high as Kelly.

But we were not going have a shot at Kelly and you would have to say that Boyd was a higher value for us than Martin in the second round.

Plus we don't know how they envision backing up Bodine (or challenging him).   We may let TJ Johnson go because we feel at the very least we have backups in Boling and Westerman.

My problem is that there were UDFA centers available (Friend, Brendel, Skura, etc.) and we did not manage to get one of them to develop for improved depth.

Not sure what that is frankly.  I mean players are going to sign where they want to go.   But I think it was a fail for us.