GEORGETOWN, Ky. - In eight stops over his 24-year coaching career, Bob Bratkowski has earned the nickname “The Professor” for his demeanor and studious approach to offensive football.

        The Professor took on perhaps his toughest assignment in 2001, when he was hired to teach a new scheme to a Bengals offense that was the NFL's worst in 2000.

        Bratkowski had some moderate success in 2001, his first season with the Bengals. They tallied 41 more points - including a break-out 49 in two season-capping victories - but were still the league's lowest-scoring unit.

        “The perseverance we showed, all of us, was a good thing,” Bratkowski said at training camp. “We learned to keep grinding.”

        The first exam of 2002 will come Friday night when the Bengals open their preseason at Buffalo.

        With the possible exception of special teams coach Al Roberts, no Bengals coach faced more scrutiny last season or will encounter more this year than Bratkowski.

        Playing opposite a defense poised to improve on its No. 9 league ranking, Bratkowski's offense is under pressure to score enough points to get the Bengals into the playoffs for the first time since 1990.

        “Every year in this business, especially as a coordinator, and I've been a coordinator for years and years in college and the NFL, I put the same pressure on myself,” he said. “I feel it.”

        Pressure, yes. Lack of confidence, no.

        “When we saw the few hints of how we can perform, that's what I'm used to,” said Bratkowski, 46. “I've been fortunate. I've had some success doing this thing.”

        In his four years as coordinator of the Seattle offense, the Seahawks had the league's best pass offense and were third-best in total offense one season, and set franchise records for passing yards and completions in another.

        At the University of Miami from 1989-91, Bratkowski was offensive coordinator for two national championship teams.

        He is accustomed to success and said he is sure it will occur in Cincinnati. So are his bosses, team president Mike Brown and head coach Dick LeBeau.

        “He brought in a new system, and it takes awhile to get everyone up and running in a new system,” Brown said. “It's a different language essentially. I am optimistic. I have my sights. I don't let them run away with me, because these other teams are pretty good, too.”

        Said LeBeau, who hired Bratkowski: “He knows his system works. We all know it works. We just have to get the execution we got in the last two games last year on a weekly basis.”

        Last season was a difficult, learning process for Bratkowski and the Bengals' offensive players. They had to get to know each other. The players had to learn a new offense. There was a first-year quarterback, Jon Kitna, two other new starters and a corps of young wide receivers.

        Now they know each other and the system. Bratkowski, who says he is not a yeller and screamer, nonetheless has taken a more aggressive and vocal teaching style onto the practice fields at Georgetown College.

        He confronts wide receivers who run incorrect pass routes. He encourages linemen who jump offside. And he's always talking to Kitna, Gus Frerotte and Akili Smith, the team's top three quarterbacks.

        “When something isn't right, I'm going to let them know without any hesitation and no B.S. to it,” Bratkowski said. “So I feel more comfortable, because I know them and they know me and why I'm doing it, and it's all for one purpose: to get us to be as good as we can be.”

        His calm confidence is a trait he shows off the field, too, says Bratkowski's wife, Rebecca. Bob taught her to ski and drive a stick-shift.

        “He doesn't get ahead of himself. He goes from one game or one task to the next,” Rebecca Bratkowski said. “I'm a fan. It's hard for me to be patient. But Bob is.”

        And he has won over the people who work for him.

        “He handles the pressure of being a coordinator as well as anyone I've been around,” Bengals wide receivers coach Steve Mooshagian said. “He never takes his anger out on the other position coaches, and he was as frustrated last year as any of us.”

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