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Award-winning columnist Tom Archdeacon — an old-school storyteller in a brand-new venue — writes about sports, the city, southwest Ohio and anything else that catches his fancy… or yours.Home > Blogs > Through the Arch > Archives > 2007 > October
October 2007
Chad’s Not The Problem
CINCINNATI — Here are a few observations — and one point of debate — I have after the Cincinnati Bengals topped the New York Jets, 38-31, Sunday.
Before this victory — when all anybody had to focus on were the four straight losses by this under-achieving team — one popular line of thinking shared by some sportswriters and fans was that Chad Johnson might just be more trouble than he’s worth.
I couldn’t disagree more.
I know the argument. They say his extra-curricular activities — jawing with his head coach, his quarterback, the other teams defenders, not to mention those touchdown celebrations — are a distraction.
They say they too often cost the team its focus. They awaken the opposition. They make it tough for Marvin Lewis to dispense equal discipline and keep calm in his dressing room and on the sideline.
Me, I don’t think Chad’s the problem.
If only the defensive players — with a couple of exceptions — had the same talent, same passion and same ability to make the big play in crunch time.
I know there’s a knock from some that Chad doesn’t always block and others think he’s quit on some routes, but I’ve seen him game after game after game make catches few players around the league can make. He had 102 yards in receptions again Sunday and has 680 for the season, second only to New England’s Randy Moss.
If the Bengals mostly had been winning these first two months of the season, none of this would have come up. When you lose, you need someone to point the finger at and he makes an easy target.
Rather, the critical attention should remain squarely on the defensive unit. It had its hands full with the lowly Jets.
Defensive end Justin Smith — designated the franchise player — has just 1 1/2 sacks and missed another Sunday when Chad Pennington brushed him off like unwanted dandruff before running six yards for a first down.
And veteran cornerback Deltha O’Neal — after getting burned on a touchdown pass to Laveranues Coles on the Jets’ first possession — ended up tackling air rather than Coles — same as his teammate Jonathan Joseph did — in the second quarter and that resulted in a second Jets’ score.
This team’s Achilles heel is still its defense — and not Chad Johnson — that will mean trouble when Pittsburgh comes to town next Sunday.
But there was one especially promising thing to surface Sunday. It was the coming out party that running back Kenny Watson had.
Filling in for injured Rudi Johnson, the often-marginalized Watson, carried the ball a yeoman 31 times for 130 yards and three touchdowns. He also caught three passes for 27 yards.
The offensive line and fullback Jeremi Johnson certainly blocked for him, but Watson put on a versatile show of his own. I agreed with quarterback Carson Palmer, who admitted afterward: “In the past, we haven’t used him enough.
“Most people look at him as a small back, but he’s all of 210, 215 pounds and he runs like he’s 225. When he gets to the hole, he runs people over. He never dives at the ground and avoids hits. He always hits people and falls forward.
“When he gets in the open field, he’s got a quick little sidestep he puts on safeties. At times he runs like a scatback. He can do it all. He’s got vision, hands, quickness and power. He can do anything.”
If Watson finally gives the Bengals a running game again, this is going to be a better season than it appeared it would be just before kick-off.
And finally here’s a Marvin Lewis’ note.
After the Bengals last home game here — an embarrassing loss to New England — the head coach ripped into his team big time in the dressing room. His yelling was heard by some writers through the closed dressing room doors.
A day later — after his eruption had been made public — he vowed no one would hear something like that again.
Sunday he had an entire posse of security types and team personnel guarding the outer doors that lead to a hallway approaching the dressing room. Too bad that much attention wasn’t put on the team’s other defense, the one on the field.
And too bad Lewis didn’t let folks get close enough to hear a dressing room rarity again.
For the first time since Sept. 10, he was able to give a victory speech.
TweetDusty Baker, the Reds and Race
Well, Cincinnati Reds fans wanted a big-name manager and now they have one.
Turns out, plenty of them seem to have wanted a big-name WHITE manager.
Or, at least, not this black manager.
Saturday night the Reds signed Dusty Baker to a three-year deal — making him the first black manager in the history of baseball’s oldest franchise — and by Sunday morning the move was being met with some very nasty venom on internet web sites and call-ins to talk radio shows.
Baker — who’s had 10 winning seasons in his 14 years as a big league manager in San Francisco and with the Chicago Cubs, who three times was named National League Manager of the Year — was being painted as a racist by several callers to Ken Broo’s Sunday morning show on WLW.
They kept pointing out his 2003 comment about — and I’m paraphrasing here — whites not playing as well in the sunshine and heat, not like blacks and Latin players, so he’d like more night games at Wrigley Field.
One caller — who kept saying Reds management was condoning a racist by this hiring — said although he was a longtime fan, he would no longer come to games, bring his business clients there or spend any money on the team until Baker was gone.
“I don’t support racists,” he kept saying.
I don’t seem to remember this outcry from most Reds fans when owner Marge Schott made some of her infamous comments.
That race so quickly jumped into the thought process here makes me question what’s really going on here.
If you want to rip Baker for the way he handled pitching phenoms like Kerry Wood and Mark Prior, I’ll buy it. Or knock him for his teams coming up short in the post-season.
I’ll even give a nod to anyone who believes Pete Mackanin deserved a shot at somehow getting this under-achieving Reds’ bunch to finally perform after seven straight losing seasons.
But to turn the whole argument on race, makes me wonder just who the bigot is here.
TweetOne Thing To Admire in Marion Jones
Heavyweight champ Joe Louis once said it and now Marion Jones has proved it:
She could run, but she couldn’t hide.
In one of the most stunning falls from grace I can remember in the sports world, Jones has gone from once being the most celebrated female athlete in the world to someone who is broke. has ruined her reputation and is facing up to six months in prison.
On Friday she stood outside a White Plains, N.Y. federal court — where she had just pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators about using performance enhancing drugs before the 2000 Sydney Olympics, the Games where she won five medals — and admitted:
“It’s with a great amount of shame I stand before you and tell you I have betrayed your trust… I have let my country down and I have let myself down.”
Although it appears Jones flat out lied to me and the other media members who questioned her both at a Olympic Media Summit in New York City in 2004 and at a press conference in Sydney — where it had just been revealed that her then husband, shot-putter C.J. Hunter had tested positive for two steroids, testosterone and a nandrolone level 1,000 times above the legal limit and was banned from the Games — Friday I still found something I admired about her.
To me, Jones’ mea culpas were refreshing. She manage to salvage some personal dignity in the otherwise overwhelming wreckage of her life.
She told the truth. Too bad some of the other high-profile athletes likely involved in this same drug scandal aren’t as candid.
Jones steroid supplier was BALCO, the lab that allegedly supplied Barry Bonds (and others) with the “clear steroid” he’s reported to have used during his record-breaking 73 home run season in 2001.
According to leaked grand jury testimony, Bonds allegedly used the same excuse that Jones did. He claimed he was told the clear liquid was flaxseed oil. A grand jury is still investigating if he lied to federal investigators
Jones — who for years denied the drug rumors — said she was told she was taking flaxseed oil by her old coach, the long-suspected Trevor Graham, who by the way, also was the coach of Trotwood Madison High hurdler Donica Merriman, the Ohio State All American, who failed to make the 2000 and 2004 Olympic teams and had her career end with a whisper.
Jones now will be stripped of the three gold and two bronze medals she won in Sydney. She faces six months in jail and will be sentenced in January.
For all her denials and lies, she did something positive on Friday. She stood up and finally told the truth and took the blame.
That’s something no other big name athlete — like Mark McGwire, Floyd Landis and, of course, Bonds — has done.
For that I hope she gets the light end of the sentence.
Honesty — whenever it comes — should be worth something.
TweetA Coach Fed Up With His Players
The party’s over for the Cincinnati Bengals.
Immediately after his team’s embarrassing 34-13 loss to New England Monday night, coach Marvin Lewis could be heard yelling at his team, just blistering them in no uncertain terms, telling them things like “we ain’t shit” and “nobody in the NFL acts like this.”
And then he slammed home a point he made last week, telling his players if they don’t want to be here, they need get out now.
Later when he met with the press, Lewis — who admitted “I’m obviously as upset as you can be,” — called his players “selfish.”
“It’s not all about you every play,” he said. “We have to understand that.”
I don’t know if that’s the talk of a guy who’s losing his team or a guy who’s fed up with his players or someone just overcome by the frustration of the moment.
It may be a little of all three.
Whatever it is, it’s not pretty. Then again nothing was Monday night.
Receiver Chad Johnson and quarterback Carson Palmer argued on the sideline after a miscommunication between them near the end of the first half ended up an interception by the Pats’ Asante Samuel near the goal line rather than a touchdown pass.
Palmer ran up to Johnson before the two left the field and an animated exchange followed. It appeared Johnson had run the wrong route, but afterward Palmer claimed he made a wrong throw.
Regardless, the two jawed at each other for the final 1:14 of the quarter and kept it up non stop as they walked from the bench to the players’ tunnel at halftime.
Early in the third quarter it was an agitated T.J. Houshmandzadeh having a heated conversation with Lewis on the sideline after three straight incompletions — to other Bengals receivers — forced Cincinnati to punt.
And then there was veteran tackle Willie Anderson in the dressing room saying the Patriots are a “bunch of grown men” and insinuating the Bengals are anything but that.
“This is about as embarrassing as it gets,” Anderson said.
How embarrassing was it?
With Monday Night Football’s national audience and a Paul Brown Stadium crowd of 66,113 all watching, the Bengals became the flesh and blood reincarnation of some of those lousy Cincinnati teams of the 1990s.
That several players were injured — including most of the linebacker corps — was a factor Monday night, but that still doesn’t excuse some of the mental errors, arm tackles, wrong assignments and sideline meltdowns.
You name it, it happened:
The Bengals stop a third down run and then get penalized for having 12 men on the field. Instead of getting the ball back, they help New England get a field goal.
Another time they force the Pats into a fourth down-and-one situation and then give up a seven-yard touchdown run.
“I feel horrible,” said cornerback Deltha O’Neal. “The truth of the matter is that we are 1-3. It’s just ugly for us right now. Our backs are up against the wall.”
Just four weeks into the season and already all the optimism is lost. Going into their bye week, the Bengals — who’ve lost three straight and, going back to last season, six of their last seven games — are in the basement of the AFC North.
Since 2000, only eight 1-3 teams have made the play-offs.
Right now these Bengals don’t seem to be the team to make it nine.
They’re going to have to find linebacker help offer the waiver wire.
They’re going to have to stop yelling at one another when things break down.
They’re going to have to quit being selfish.
That’s what Marvin Lewis told them.
But that brings up one more question:
Are these players still listening to their coach?
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