Wednesday, February 24, 1999
Blake: 'I can't trust' Bengals
QB wants club to commit to him as starter
BY GEOFF HOBSON
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Disgruntled quarterback Jeff Blake will know by the end of this week if he's in the Bengals' plans for the upcoming season.
But the man who revived the franchise with a Pro Bowl season in 1995 isn't so sure he wants to stick around.
“I can't trust anyone there. There's no loyalty to me there,” Blake said Tuesday. “I was demoted twice and no one worked harder in practice and it showed when I got on the field. If Boomer Esiason announced tomorrow he was coming back to football, he'd be named the starter.”
Ironically, Esiason made a “friendly visit” to the Bengals offices Tuesday and met with President Mike Brown and some coaches.
But Esiason said there was no discussion about coming back to play, and that he was in town to complete the sale of his house. Plus, Esiason said he wanted to console head coach Bruce Coslet on the death of his close friend, Vikings offensive coordinator Chip Myers.
While Esiason closed on his house, Blake pondered about going on the market himself.
Brown indicated Tuesday that if Blake is here March 1 to receive his $500,000 roster bonus, he'll likely be here for the rest of a season in which he's scheduled to make $2.1 million in salary.
Brown says the No.1 job will take time to play out, but Blake wants to know now. If they commit to him as the starter, that's fine. But Blake clearly feels hurt by a team that turned to Esiason and Neil O'Donnell when he slumped in 1997 and early in last year's training camp.
“There's been no communication. No one's called me to see how I'm doing,” said Blake, who is recovering from a broken throwing wrist. “If I'm made the starting quarterback and I get the ball, I'm ready to go, get guys going and throwing the ball to guys in workouts. But I don't want to waste my time.”
Brown said the Bengals don't want to wait to cut a player until June 2, when the salary cap count of any player they cut is spread over 1999 and 2000 instead of just 1999. Brown would prefer to take the hit all at once.
That's a major issue because if the Bengals cut O'Donnell before June, they have to take a $4.4 million hit in this year's cap, forcing them to cut other players.
“No one is looking to push cap count into the future anymore,” Brown said. “We would like to keep the count in the year we have to absorb it and not tie up ourselves with more burdens in the future. It's something (taking a big salary hit) we could do.”
Blake, 28, lost the starter's job to O'Donnell last summer, but later replaced O'Donnell and led the Bengals to a victory over Pittsburgh before suffering the broken hand.
Blake went to the Pro Bowl after leading the Bengals to their only three wins in 1995, but led the club to a 7-9 record in 1996 and x-x in 1997 before being replaced by Esiason.
Blake doesn't want to totally criticize an organization that took him off the waiver wire in 1994 after he got cut by a Jetsteam that took him in the sixth round out of East Carolina in 1992.
But he has a gnawing feeling he simply doesn't matter to the Bengals.
“I appreciate the opportunity,” Blake said. “I accomplished a lot of great things. But there are guys there who haven't done half of the things I've done and they got opportunity after opportunity after opportunity and I've never been given an explanation. That's what happens when you don't matter. That's why we can't win. It's not only me, it's the whole locker room.”
The Bengals say no decision has been made yet on their staff of four quarterbacks that includes Blake, O'Donnell, Paul Justin and Eric Kresser. Justin has a salary cap figure of $1.5 million and Kresser's is $238,000.
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