| 10 May 2010
Well, since it's baseball season, let's go with the vantage point that batting .500 is pretty damn good.
The Bengals went 1-for-2 in defensive back signings on Monday, landing safety Gibril Wilson (which makes sense) and cornerback Pacman Jones (which makes about as much sense as most of Mike Brown's moves during his tenure).
The 6-foot, 205-pound Wilson has a chance at being the Bengals' starting free safety this season. The incumbent is Chris Crocker, but he is recovering from offseason ankle surgery. Worst case, it looks like Wilson, 28, will be the backup FS. He was one of the most-overpaid players in the NFL the last two seasons (which is saying quite a bit) with the Raiders in 2008 and Dolphins in 2009. But the Bengals got him cheap -- reportedly a little more than the veteran minimum with incentives -- albeit only for one year.
Wilson was a fifth-round pick by the Giants in 2004 out of the University of Tennessee and started 13 games in 2007 when New York won the Super Bowl championship. As usual, most free agent starters from Super Bowl teams get paid exorbitant amounts of money when they hit the open market and Wilson was no different. The Raiders inked him to a 6-year, $39 million deal, including $16 million guaranteed. They cut him after one season.
The Dolphins then signed Wilson to a 5-year, $27.5 million contract with $8 million guaranteed last year. He played in all 16 games with 14 starts, finished second on the team with 91 tackles and had eight passed defensed. However, Miami also released him just one year after giving him big cash.
So, this looks like a great bargain for the Bengals and it comes at a position where they desperately needed depth. And Wilson is young enough where he still has some game left. In fact, he's two years younger than the 30-year-old Crocker. The Bengals didn't draft a free safety last month - which surprised a lot of people including me - but now we might know why. Or maybe landing a talent like Wilson on the cheap was just dumb luck. OK, you're right, probably the latter.
In addition to Crocker and Wilson, the only veteran free safety on the roster is second-year pro Tom Nelson who made the team last year as an undrafted free agent. Unless something changes, Crocker, Nelson and Wilson will battle for the two FS spots on the roster.
As for the signing of Pacman, I've already made it crystal clear where I stand on the issue. (See below.) Just not needed for a variety of reasons. (And by the way, the fact that he doesn't want to be called Pacman any longer means I am only going to refer to him as Pacman and never as Adam from this point forward. Sorry, Pacman.)
I know there is no financial risk in the signing because they can just cut him if he "like-ed da scrip clubs" a little too much or someone in his entourage paralyzes another man. However, just not a fan of the signing at all. The team has plenty of depth at corner and Pacman is not a good football player. Just a minor little detail there. He sucks at football. Check the game film from 2008 - his last year in the NFL with the Cowboys - to see what I mean. His level of suckitude on a scale of JaMarcus Russell to Joe Montana is a Russell. (Or using a cornerback reference, on a scale of Artrell Hawkins to Darrelle Revis, he's a Hawkins.)
Jones (5-10, 186) is only 26 years old and is a former first-round pick, so it's easy to see why Mike Brown thought it was a good idea to go bargain hunting here. "Not being a good football player" has never stood in the way of Brown's decisions. Or maybe one of his scouts (either one of them) thought this was a good idea. However, there is much talk that there was dissention in the room when the topic of Pacman was broached. In other words, most of the people in the room didn't want anything to do with his sorry ass, but Brown overruled them with his clueless fist.
Oh well, at least they signed Wilson and were batting .500 by the end of the day. For baseball players - and definitely the Bengals - that's a hell of an average.
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