The Bungles

Two days ago I made a "bold" prediction about the 2008 Presidential race. Today, since I'm apparently on a prophetic bent, I thought I'd make a decidedly less bold prediction about the 2008 NFL season:

The Bengals are going to be terrible.

Don't get me wrong. I'm a Bengals fan, and I hope against the odds that I'm wrong, but the off season and the pre-season had all of the ear markings of a disaster in the making. Here are the specifics, in my opinion, of this season:

1) The Bengals will go 5-11 this season.
2) Chad Johnson will miss 5 games due to injury. There will be plenty of speculation that he's not really injured.
3) Chris Henry will get suspended for some off the field misdemeanor sometime about week 11 and will be given a lifetime suspension.
4) Carson Palmer will have career highs in sacks and interceptions, and will miss a total of three games due to injury.
5) The defense will be the worst ranked defense in the NFL. Some of that ranking will be unfair and really be the fault of the offense as the offense will have been on the field for such a short amount of time that the defense just found itself exhausted by the end of the game.
6) This will be Marvin Lewis's last season with the Bengals. He will not be fired. He and Mike Brown will decide together that it is time for Lewis to leave, and he'll be glad as hell to get out of town.

That's what I think, anyway.

The good news for the Cincinnati Bengals, I guess, is that anything better than that will be a pleasant surprise.

But don't count on the pleasant surprise. Count on a long season.