Sunday, January 02, 2000
Pickens looks to Big Daddy for best way to escape Bengals
BENGALS INSIDER
BY GEOFF HOBSON
The Cincinnati Enquirer
JACKSONVILLE — The next thing to happen in the Carl Pickens fiasco during the off-season is most likely his demand to get traded. Again.
He did apologize for his negative comments of coach Bruce Coslet last week. But if you think it was a statement he wrote or believed, you also believed the world would end on New Year's Day.
Pickens could pop off after today's game, but don't expect it. The one thing he has in common with Bengals President Mike Brown is they are men who have a price. Apparently it was $265,000, the size of a game check. Locker room scuttlebutt says Pickens chose the apology rather than suspension for the last game.
And according to league sources, if a player violates his contract with “conduct detrimental to the team,” the club could conceivably ask to recoup Pickens' $3.5 million bonus signed in September.
But Brown isn't talking in an effort to shrink an off-season controversy into merely a final-week tiff. And Pickens isn't talking. At least to The Cincinnati Enquirer.
Yet this one isn't going away during the summer. You have to believe Pickens wants out and since it didn't happen last year
when he tried to go through the normal channels, it appears he's taking the Dan Wilkinson route and is going stir it up until he gets his wish.
Hey, no one's blaming Pickens for wanting out. If you care about winning, the Bengal Way just gnaws your insides. And he's got nothing left. He was apparently miffed earlier this year when the Bengals didn't stop the game to honor his 500th career catch and just added fuel to frustration.
And his point about Coslet coming back even though coaches with better records are getting fired is valid. But he did it the wrong way because he hurt his team before a game and because it probably puts a good dent into his trade value.
There are two reasons why the thing won't go away: Enough key players have Pickens' same questions and Coslet is going to have to do a major selling job on them before next season.
And what does it do to the club if they let Pickens stick around? Former Chiefs coach Marty Schottenheimer has already gone on record on ESPN saying Pickens can't be allowed to stay. The Patriots sent Terry Glenn home for the last game when they didn't like his attitude. Pickens thinks keeping Coslet sends a message, but what message does keeping Pickens send?
The Bengals don't like to get rid of players until they have a replacement and they claim they didn't get any serious offers for Pickens last year and figure to get less in a year he turns 30.
The worst mistake on '99 Draft Day wasn't refusing the trade with New Orleans. It was not trying harder to peddle Pickens for a second-round pick and taking a receiver with it.
It won't go away until he does.
BROWN ON BLAKE: During quarterback Jeff Blake's next-to-last practice at Spinney Field last week, he lofted one
of his signature 50-yard bombs right over Pickens' shoulder on the dead run. On the next play, he fired a five-yard dump pass that was too low and bounced off fullback Clif Groce's shin.
The one-minute display is why the Bengals gave up on Blake and turned to Akili Smith. Blake has never been as consistent on those short, high-percentage passes as he is throwing the NFL's best deep ball. How he could chuck the ball so far on a dime and then bounce a swing pass into the turf kept the Bengals up late plenty of nights.
Blake hasn't hid his feelings that he feels Brown doesn't like him, never wanted him, and he admitted last week it bothered him Brown never had a conversation with him that went much past hello.
That's Brown's style, preferring to let the coaches deal with the players if there are no major problems. It's a casualty of Art Modell's relationship with Browns' players in Cleveland when Brown's father Paul was the coach. Mike felt Modell's friendship with players compromised the coach and he'll have none of that.
“I'm grateful and appreciative of what (Blake) did,” Brown said. “There is frustration and in one or two years when you see each other, all that's forgotten and you remember only the good times. I have respect for Jeff in many ways. He's as courageous as they come, he has first-rate mobility, he throws the long-ball accurately and I've seen him when he has a joyful attitude that spreads through the whole team.”
Brown insists Blake is here because of him. On Cutdown Day, 1994, when Blake got cut from the Jets, he wanted to bring him in. But when he met with coach Dave Shula's staff, no one else had anything good to say. Brown figured that Coslet, Blake's head coach with the Jets the two previous years and the Bengals new offensive coordinator, was being cautious in his first year back with the team.
So Brown said he asked Coslet about Blake and Coslet's answer was, “ "He'd be a plus.” So Brown says Blake became a Bengal.
BREAKFAST BREAK: Proof the Bengals are serving breakfast next year at Paul Brown Stadium's practice facility. Coslet handed out food and beverage surveys to the four captains and some other players last week as Ogden Entertainment tries to get a handle on the players' likes and dislikes.
The survey asked the players how food service can be improved, rate diet items in order of preference and what specific foods they want at breakfast and lunch.
Players have complained the team does not serve breakfast. But now it's going to be better than a bed and breakfast, going by some of the items on the survey. There will be hash browns, roasted potatoes, scrambled or poached eggs, pancakes and biscuits and gravy hash.
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