GEORGETOWN, Ky. — The Bengals addressed several needs with players in the offseason: left tackle, wide receiver, quarterback and defensive tackle all have received an infusion of talent. But one of the team's major weaknesses a year ago, cornerback, will feature an unchanged cast of characters.

        Cornerback is a position the Bengals will try this season to upgrade with a coach. Make that two coaches.

        The Bengals joined a growing NFL trend of splitting defensive backfield coaching duties in half. Last season, Ray Horton coached Bengals defensive backs. This year, he's got safeties only.

        And Kevin Coyle, a longtime assistant coach for new Bengals defensive coordinator Mark Duffner, was hired to concentrate on turning a largely underachieving group of high draft picks from liability to asset.

        Ten days into training camp it's clear Coyle is going back to basics to boost the performance of cornerbacks who had only three of the team's nine interceptions. In yielding 223 yards a game, the Bengals also were 23rd of 31 teams against the pass.

        At camp, Coyle is running the cornerbacks through hours of drills that focus on footwork and train the eye to look at the receiver's knees

        and feet. There's also been a steady diet of block protection drills and tackling drills and drills that teach the best way to jam wide receivers.

        Coyle has spent the past 15 years as a college defensive coordinator — Holy Cross, Syracuse, Maryland and Fresno State — so he believes in going back to school.

        “If you look at any of the great athletes in any sport, they have tremendous natural ability, but the guys who really take it to another level are the guys who have terrific work ethic and do a tremendous job on focusing on the little things and paying attention to detail,” Coyle said. “You listen to the stories of the Larry Birds and Magic Johnsons. You watch Tiger Woods on the golf course, it's years and years of constant study.”

        The Bengals, as team president Mike Brown often says, don't have any “shut-down” corners.

        But they do have a pair of second-round picks in Artrell Hawkins (1998) and Mark Roman (2000), and a fifth-rounder, Robert Bean (2000). They've got a former free agent and returning starter, Rodney Heath. And two veterans, Tom Carter and Carlton Gray, are third on the depth chart on the left and right corners.

        Carter was re-signed at a lower price after he was cut by the Bengals this spring, and Gray, the Forest Park native, was signed as a free agent from Kansas City.

        The cornerbacks like the personal attention.

        “It's good for us because it puts a lot of emphasis on one-on-one and hands on teaching, instead of Ray Horton have both groups to teach,” Bean said. “We get twice as much work, but it makes us better.”

        Coyle works on details.

        “He wants you to get every itsy bitsy little think right,” Bean said. “You might be doing everything else right, bit he finds that one little thing you need to get better at.

        “It's a game of inches at cornerback. You might be right there with a receiver, and what (Coyle's) telling us might make the difference between an interception or a completion.”

        Carter, who led the cornerbacks with two interceptions, had a cornerbacks coach his first four years in the league at Washington. The span also was Carter's most productive, when he had 18 interceptions.

        “All the movements are tailored for us - it's kind of like getting a custom-fit suit,” said Carter, referring to the differences in how cornerbacks and safeties move on the field.

        Coyle's methods might be working already. The physically gifted Hawkins, who had three interceptions as a rookie but none the past two seasons, made a nice move on a Jon Kitna pass during Saturday's scrimmage, picked off the ball in mid-stride and would have gone 95 yards for a touch down if scrimmage rules didn't blow the play dead on a turnover.

        As the preseason advances, cornerbacks and safeties will work more together and less as position groups.

        “I think it can be helpful to both groups when you have individual meeting time that is focused soley on that one area,” Coyle said. “But it's also a position (secondary) that you need the four guys, or sometimes five or six, who are in the game having great communication. There will be a lot of work together.”

        Coach Dick LeBeau, a cornerback for 14 years with the Detroit Lions whose 62 career interceptions are sixth most in NFL history, likes what he sees so far from his two defensive backs coaches.

        “I love it,” he said. “Together, our secondary is going to be better with those two guys (Coyle and Horton) working with them. That was a good move.”

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