No. 6 pick Andre “I like twinkies because they taste good” Smith finally put down his double whopper with cheese (and extra mayo) to pick up a pen and sign a contract with the Bengals. This ends his 30 day hold out – that’s almost one day for each Basken Robbins flavor (that’s 3 weight jokes in two sentences… I admit it’s a bit overkill but if you saw the youtube video of him running the 40 with his shirt off, you’d understand… let’s just say he could block TWO defensive ends with his chest (gross!)). They say the deal could be worth $42 million over what I assume is a five year deal (ESPN doesn’t say and Geoff Hobson of Bengals.com didn’t say either). Supposedly the Bengals and Smith made some concessions with regards to his deal. The contract has lots of performance-based incentives.

It seems obvious now that Smith won’t be our starter for the first regular season game. Hobson suggested the Bengals may hold him out of the Thursday game and they might put him on the two-week roster exemption, which means that they don’t have to count him on the roster for another two weeks, which means the first game he could possibly play is at Green Bay. When will Smith become an effective starter? That’s the important question. And I don’t have a clue. I’ve blogged about this a couple times before, and I wrote how it shouldn’t be too tough to pick up the O-line’s duties. Still, it’s easier said than done.

Right now I’m just glad it’s over and done with. I think it’s just absurd that no other league but the NFL has their rookies hold out as much. There are three separate parties at fault with this.
#1: Mike Brown – because I hate him for being cheap. And I think he’s a douchebag.
#2: the NFL for allowing players association to let the rookies and their agents to bargain for a salary that they don’t deserve at all. They “deserve” to make some money, but not possibly $42 million over five years.
#3: Andre Smith and his agent, Alvin Keels. All Keels was trying to do was save face with this deal. He didn’t want to sign to a lower deal than the agent who got the no. 7 pick a good (stupid) deal. I blame Smith because if he really wanted to make an impact for this ballclub this year, he should’ve told his agent to accept the deal. He can still make an impact this year, but missing a month of practice can only hurt his chances at helping early on. And two of the first three games this year are against teams with very good defenses: Packers and Steelers (if you haven’t been paying attention, Green Bay has been looking ridiculously good on both sides of the ball).

A Sports Illustrated writer suggested that the Bengals were actually right in not signing Smith right away. He wrote that they shouldn’t over pay for someone who hasn’t proven anything. I agree completely with that assessment. The only thing is, the main party at fault for that is not the Bengals or Smith/agent. It’s the NFL. They need to come up with a better system like NBA or MLB to sign their rookies. Neither Mike Brown nor Smith could do anything about the system that they’re dealt with. Roger Goodell needs to fix this ridiculous slotting system because it’s hurting the teams that need their first-round rookies the most. Even though it’s a good business decision not to sign an unproven rookie for, it’s a bad football decision to allow your prized rookie offensive lineman – who’s going to protect your even more prized QB — to hold out for so long that his effectiveness has greatly diminished. I will never accuse Mike Brown of being a bad businessman. If he’s starting a business, count me in. A football team? No way. To be fair, if you overpay a rookie, that makes signing other members of the team to a “fair” and “competitive” contract very difficult.

So I can see why there was a hold out. Nevertheless, as Herman Edwards said, you play to win the game. You don’t play to win money. Yes, it’s a business, but that business is winning. Money comes with winning. Building a winning team does not mean you should keep your best players on the sideline, and that’s what Mike Brown has effectively done with Andre Smith. If Mike Brown has a problem with the rookie slotting system, he needs to take it up with the league and get them to change it. Right now, he seems to be content with bringing his knife to an NFL gun fight and hope that it all works out in the end. He’s used that same knife for the past 18 years. How many times has he won that fight? Once. Yep, he’s still a douchebag.