The Beginning of the End

[*SHRacerX*]

(07-17-2017, 01:22 PM)3wt Wrote: http://www.cincinnati.com/story/sports/nfl/bengals/2017/07/14/cincinnati-bengals-50-david-klingler-and-akili-smith/366545001/ 



Given the Brown family's obsession with drafting QBs - here is an article that points out 2 different failures drafting QBs.

The surprising one for me?    David Klingler - Wasn't a Mike Brown decision at all.   The one who wanted him so bad was Dave Shula, who now qualifies in my mind as one of the biggest reasons for the creation of the "Bungles" mystique.   It wasn't bad enough that he did not know how to run a franchise and was not respected by his players.   He was the one who insisted that we take David Klingler resulting in our trading Boomer Esiason a year later.

What might have happened if the Bengals had selected Troy Vincent in the first round?

The article does not ascribe the responsibility for drafting Akili Smith.  But I think it's interesting that Bruce Coslet noted the major red flag raised by what Smith's college head coach raised by saying that he only played Smith his last year in college because he did not trust him.

We could have had a lot of draft picks and another great corner.

Between those two decisions the Bungles era dawned.


I know there are a lot more knowledgeable Bengals fans than me.   What are your thoughts?

These, combined with Ki-Jana's injury doomed the Bengals in the pre-rookie wage scale era.

The frustrating thing is, now that the Bengals seem to have drafting down pretty well, teams that have made incredibly bad picks (Locker, Ponder, Gabbert recently come to mind) are able to move on without near the penalty of just a few years ago.  I guess that helps the NFL overall as there shouldn't be any proverbial door mats (Cleveland is finally getting it right...johnny fartball was the dumbest pick ever for them).