Sunday, January 09, 2000
'Curse of LJ' haunts Bengals special teams
BY GEOFF HOBSON
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Every Boston school kid knows “The Curse of the Bambino.” How the Red Sox sold Babe Ruth, the best player in baseball, to the New York Yankees a year after they won the World Series. And how the Sox have never won the Series since while the Yankees have won 25 rings. Now the Bengals seem to have a curse, too. Call it “The Curse of LJ.”
Remember when Bengals President Mike Brown unceremoniously cut 11-year punter Lee Johnson on Pearl Harbor Day, 1998, a day after he questioned management? Notice ever since, the Bengals special teams have been an unmitigated disaster and a major reason Cincinnati went 4-12 this season in giving up a franchise-record 460 points?
Pro Bowl kick returner Tremain Mack has saved some face, but the punting and kicking couldn't have carried Anderson High over Turpin.
Johnson, who knows full well about the “Curse of the Bambino,” after spending this past season with the New England Patriots, laughed when he heard of the new version.
“Mike took it personally, and he risked losing something that was a key element in his team,” Johnson said. “Why change something that was going well and had been pretty solid?”
Punting cost the Bengals the opener when a kick got blocked in the end zone and was the major reason they got blown out in the last two games. But forget about Johnson's punting.
He was the only holder Bengals kicker Doug Pelfrey had and regarded as one of the NFL's best. Without Johnson for the first time this season, Pelfrey had the worst season of his career, hitting just 18 of 27 tries that included misses from 20 and 25 yards and a 1-for-4 effort that cost them the Carolina game.
Could Johnson have meant 8-8 instead of 4-12? Probably not. But surely 6-10 and maybe 7-9.
But now the Bengals are scurrying around looking at the NFL kicking stats as they try to find someone to give Pelfrey the biggest training-camp challenge of his career. And John son just shakes his head.
“The person I feel sorriest for on the planet is Doug,” Johnson said. “Physically, he's still a tremendous kicker. But his confidence is shaken because of all the changes in the holders and the snappers. When we were together, he knew where the ball was going to be and the laces were going to be forward and that the soft finger was going to give him a soft hold.
“I was a kicker, too, so the advice I was able to give him came from experience. If the wind was blowing in our faces, hey, we'd been there before and knew what to expect from each other. Get him the same people around him. Give him some consistency.”
At the end of the 1996 season, Pelfrey was the most accu rate field goal kicker in history. Jacksonville's Mike Hollis holds the title now, and he's been with holder Bryan Barker virtually his entire career.
“I kicked against most of the other kickers in pregame and my leg was as strong, if not stronger just about every week,” Pelfrey said. “It seemed like every week a kicker or punter or special teams coach would say, "Sorry to see (all the changes) with your snappers and holders.'”
Coach Bruce Coslet isn't exactly a touchy-feely guy when it comes to giving kickers confidence. He tries to joke about his disdain for the position.
But is that a reason in Coslet's three full seasons as coach, Pelfrey has gone from the most accurate kicker in NFL history to the training camp bubble? Cos let's tenure with the Jets was doomed when Cary Blanchard booted New York out of the playoffs when he missed a couple of chip shots in the next-to-last game of the 1993 season.
DOUBLE STANDARD? Johnson wanted to know why he got cut for wondering if Brown had too much say over Coslet while Carl Pickens simply had to apologize for saying he didn't think Coslet deserved to be back.
“First of all I think I hit too close to the core with Mike,” Johnson said. “Pickens pretty much just went after Bruce. Plus, there's the money. What was Pickens' bonus?”
Told it was $3.5 million, Johnson said, “There's the answer.”
MATTER OF PERSPECTIVE: Johnson says there's “an Iron Curtain,” between the players and Brown, but don't tell that to Bengals safety Kelvin Moore.
Moore broke his neck in an Aug. 20 exhibition game and might not play again. Brown went to his hospital room after the game, and Moore said he has talked to him frequently on the phone.
“He's been great,” Moore said. “We've talked a lot. I think the public has the wrong perception of the guy. He's just not that way to me. I don't think many people see that side of him.”
Brown supplied a plane for Moore's trip home to Los Angeles and a hospital bed for his house. Asked what else the Bengals gave him, Moore said, “you name it, I got it.”
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