By Mark Curnutte
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Willie Anderson talks of being mentally worn down by seven years of losing.

Jon Kitna says the lack of confidence is a reason the Bengals lose so many close games.

But the Bengals, a 1-12 team whose players might benefit from a sports psychologist, are one of the few remaining teams in professional or big-time college athletics without one.

Even Tom Coughlin, the Jacksonville Jaguars' old-school coach, saw fit to hire two psychological consultants to work with his team this season.

And though the Jaguars are 5-8 entering today's game against the Bengals at Paul Brown Stadium, the experience of working with team counselors has helped.

"Those guys put in our minds that if you think positive, if you just envision positive things happening, good things will happen," said Jaguars running back Fred Taylor, who initially was skeptical but now meets each Thursday with one of the psychologists. "Try to focus those negative thoughts out, and don't even think about negative things. If something negative does cross your mind, have a backup plan to get it out quickly."

Now nearing the end of their 12th consecutive season of non-winning football, the Bengals seem to play in the opposite direction. They're almost waiting for something bad to happen and don't appear to know how to handle team success.

"It can get to the point where you dwell on losing and start feeling sorry for yourself," said Anderson, who has won just 33 of 109 games with the Bengals. "Sometimes, I see it affecting other parts of my life with my friends and family members. I snap at everybody and have less patience."

Sports psychology is different from an employee-assistance program, a service the Bengals do offer their players.

Sports psychologists and consultants help athletes overcome the pressure of competition and improve their performance through mental exercises.

Joe Zieleniewski has worked with University of Cincinnati athletes, primarily men's basketball players, for the past 25 years.

Zieleniewski, a UC professor of psychology, also is a 30-year Bengals season-ticket holder who sees much more than just a losing football team at Paul Brown Stadium.

He sees players who don't know how to deal with losing because they rarely lost as high school or college athletes. He sees players working hard but getting very little emotionally in return. He sees people who are depressed and could be helped by a psychologist.

"What you've got is a team with a losing identity," he said of the Bengals. "It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."

The Bengals have a composite 54-135 record since Mike Brown assumed control in August 1991.

"When it began, (Brown) should have created places for players to vent, to externalize their feelings," Zieleniewski said. "If you keep that inside, it becomes a cancer. Self-doubt is a cancer that hurts performance. Learned helplessness creates depression. It's when your efforts don't bring the desired result. They put forth a good deal of effort, but they reach a point of, 'Why try? We'll fail.' It's taken over the whole team."

Many Bengals players never have played for another team. All they've known is losing. For example, star linebackers Takeo Spikes and Brian Simmons have endured an 18-59 record since joining the Bengals through the 1998 draft.

Kitna played for the Seattle Seahawks before signing a contract with the Bengals in March 2001.

"Guys really felt like this (was) it, this (was) the year," Kitna said of the team's preseason playoff hopes. "To start off like we did, and then everything spiraled downward, and then you have guys trying to do more than what they should do, and then you open up problems there. It's a natural human thing, but when you have guys who have been in this league and all they know is what's going on around here the last five or six years or whatever, that's tough on them."

In Jacksonville, through a series of video presentations and lectures, the psychological consultants helped players set individual and team goals. Then they went to work discussing how to achieve them.

Psychologist Kurt Jensen, of Solutions Psychological Consultants, of Cleveland, would suggest the same type of structure for the Bengals.

"One of the things we do with an organization that's in a downspin is help them reconsider the big picture," said Jensen, an Elder High School graduate and former staff member of the Good Samaritan and University hospital psychiatric units. "They need to take inventory. They need to look not at where they've been but to envision a future that's ripe with possibilities. They need to drop the baggage."

E-mail mcurnutte@enquirer.com

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