Free agent wide receiver T.J. Houshmandzadeh has said that the Bengals have not contacted him about re-signing, which makes him skeptical about his return to Cincinnati.
“I really don’t know. I can’t speak for them but I haven’t heard from them which would lead me to assume that I’m out of there,” Houshmandzadeh said on Thursday.
“We got some wins at the end of the season but they were against some teams that were not very good. You can’t get any satisfaction out of that. The only satisfaction that I got was that we were still working hard every week,” Houshmandzadeh said.
When asked what the problems of the past couple seasons have been, Houshmandzadeh saw the problems more with execution than strategy.
“To me I don’t see the playbook as much of a problem as guys not getting the job done,” he said.
“Coach (Marvin) Lewis knows who to blame whether it is the players or a coach. The players go out and play but coaching is relating to the players. Most coaches know the X’s and O’s but they have to trust the players. Right now the trust and belief is not there. I can’t speak for everyone, but when you’re losing games there are going to be a lot of questions.”
“I believe the Bengals can still win, but a lot of changes have to occur,” Houshmandzadeh said.
If Houshmandzadeh is not tagged and does go into free agency, there are plenty of teams that will vie for his services. On Wednesday, he made an appearance on a radio talk show in Chicago, and followed that with a visit on the air in Philadelphia Thursday.
“You can’t talk to teams until the 27th, but I have some idea who might be interested. You have to take a look at a team and its situation and get a feel for things,” Houshmandzadeh said.
The Bengals are long overdue for a makeover and maybe Housh is one of the guys that the team parts with in order to start fresh. They’re definitely a better team with than without him, but at some point a dysfunctional team like the Bengals just has to throw its hands up and start over.
But one thing is for sure, if Cincy is going to part with such a valued piece of their offense, then they need to look at the entire roster and follow through with the cleansing process. It doesn’t make any sense to lose talent if you’re still going to be highly dysfunctional.
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“You can take a young Jets team that has a lot of talent across the board when you try to wiggle (No.) 52 into that equation somewhere or other than that team goes from just being OK to, let’s just win this,” Lewis said. “That scenario by itself is always attractive. That’s a great opportunity, reason being we (he and Ryan) have been together for years.
