These readers blame Bengals (and me)

Nobody seems to agree with the analysis I wrote for the Friday Enquirer about the trade of Shaun Rogers to the Bengals that was prohibited by the NFL.

I stand by the story.

A sampling of the e-mails that came directly to me:

-- You need to get off your Bengals cheerleading route for once and get to the bottom of a Bengals story with the analysis. If we're just gonna go ahead and keep letting some of that bengals management mess up all of this teams chances (like the recent Detroit trade deal) then nothing's ever gonna change. All I'm saying is that blaming the NFL for our (the bengals) mistakes isn't very insightful. -- Greg

-- What I want to know about this Shaun Rogers to Bengals trade botchment is why the Bengals could just let it all play out the way it did. I mean for one we should have had a contingency plan built into the agreement so we wouldn't get screwed the way we did and for two why couldn't we have just postponed the roster bonus payment and avoided all of the crap we got from the NFL? Seems like the Browns have got a bit of an edge on us in terms of management and player personnel because look at how easily they managed to capitilize on our botch. And yes, the Bengals did in fact botch this deal, Mark. -- Anthony

-- The only thing I don’t understand is how did the Browns manage to do the trade but the Bengals couldn’t? the only explanation I can see is that the Browns know what they’re doing and the Bengals are not only inept and don’t really care about winning. But they will make a tremendous profit this year. -- Barry

-- I just read the "Bonus made trade tricky" bengals analysis by Mark Curnutte and I've got to see it sounds like Mark has got a bit of an agenda here. I mean I can understand he wants to keep the Bengals overall in a good light, but when they mess up a huge deal like this there has got to be someone held accountable for the mess that ensues. I mean a lot of people are pretty ticked off about this whole Sean Rogers deal going bad and this article does nothing more than take the Bengals from fault at any means necessary when there really might be more to the story. Guess Mark might be dreaming of a career at the Bengals someday if you know what I mean. -- Paul

-- So it seems that you guys are just going to let the Bengals management right off the hook with this Rogers deal. I for one find it pretty ridiculous to start out an article with "the Bengals did not botch the almost-trade" when that is just about exactly what happened. If the Bengals were more prepared and aware that the leagues "language involving the roster bonus had no precedent in league salary-cap rules", then why wouldn't they cover their bases before proceeding with the attempted trade agreement? These Brown family members don't know their football and it is showing now more than ever. So why not bring the issues with Bengals management to the attention of your readers rather than just let the Bengals management off the hook from the get go? Let's keep the special interests of your writer and subjective reporting out of your newspaper. -- Rich

-- How are you going to say the bengals didn't botch up that shaun rogers trade? Now he's on his way to cleveland and our team got shafted! But instead of putting some much needed pressure on some bengals player personnel advisors we're just going to give them a free pass. I see. Well I just feel that someone messed this up on our end and they need to be held accountable, not the NFL. Those rules are set already and we need people at the bengals that know them like the back of their hand if we want to be successful both on and off the field in the NFL. -- John