Ask Mark

        Bengals fans are as angry, if not angrier, after the Week2 loss at Cleveland than they were following the opening day blowout. The several dozen fans who sent e-mails since the 20-7 loss to the Browns don't like the attitude of coaches and management. Too often, they write, they've heard the refrain that the players “tried hard” and the game was “hard-fought” and turned on just a couple of plays.

        Question, from Travis in Newport: (Gus) Frerotte looked awful Sunday. He would only look at one side of the field, even when he had time. So what's the deal with Kenny Anderson keeping his job as quarterbacks coach? We get high-round rookie QBs, and they never develop. We get free agents that have had some past success, and they get worse.

        We've had different head coaches and offensive coordinators and, thus, different schemes. The only constant has been the QB coach.

        Answer: The record of Bengals quarterbacks since Jeff Blake's glory days and Boomer Esiason's encore is clearly poor. Frerotte, like Jon Kitna last season and Akili Smith the year before, is at the bottom of league passer ratings.

        Who knows how much of that is Anderson's doing, if any. In contrast, though, look at the Pro Bowl-caliber performance of Cleveland's Kelly Holcomb and the coaching he receives. Bruce Arians, the Browns' offensive coordinator, was Holcomb's quarterbacks coach at Indianapolis and brought Holcomb with him to Cleveland.

        What now frustrates Bengals fans most is Frerotte talking about how he and his receivers are still a little out of sync and need more time to get comfortable. Isn't that what training camp and the preseason are for? Didn't Kitna say he and his receivers weren't on “the same page” for much of last season after a quarterback competition consumed all of training camp? Now LeBeau says he's thinking about making a change.

        The Bengals, like many teams around the league, didn't seem to take preseason games seriously. Wouldn't it have been better for Frerotte and Peter Warrick to discuss how the receiver should stay put in an empty zone, rather than drift farther away, during the second preseason game than Game2 of the season?

        Akili Smith played the entire second half of three preseason games. If the Bengals weren't serious about starting - and they really weren't - Frerotte and Kitna should have shared many of those valuable snaps. Frerotte himself had said he didn't care if he played with second-stringers.

        The Bengals repeatedly wait until the end of the preseason to pick a starting quarterback.

        Another layer of the quarterback problem is how the Bengals have failed to sign a clear No.1. They tried. Elvis Grbac ditched them - twice - and Trent Dilfer wanted to come here but was turned off by the Bengals' last-minute talk of a soft market and lower salary. Even Frerotte, in his first Bengals courtship in March 2001, walked away when he wasn't promised the starting job. He seemed to understand the problems inherent in quarterback competitions.

        There's plenty of blame to go around.

        Q, from Ed in Dayton, Ohio: Don't you think it is time to finally clean house with the coaching staff? They are the same coaches that love to make excuses for everyone being lousy. If you want to get players' attention, bench the guys who play badly.

        A: The indisputable fact is no other NFL team has, for years, been as patient with players (except QBs) and coaches as the Bengals.

        LeBeau did make three changes in the defensive starting lineup that made significant contributions in improved run defense.

        Send your question.

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