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CINCINNATI – Rookie receiver Jerome Simpson walked into the Cincinnati Bengals’ football-shaped locker room and started reading the name cards. Didn’t take him long to find Chad Johnson’s.
“That was the first thing that I did,” Simpson said Friday, after his first rookie minicamp workout. “I went over there and looked at Chad’s locker.”
To a second-round draft pick from Coastal Carolina, the locker was akin to a shrine. Next to it was T.J. Houshmandzadeh’s locker.
Deeply impressed, Simpson wandered over to his locker – a temporary metal one along rookie row in the middle of the room – and made himself a promise.
“Coming up soon, one of those is going to be my locker,” he said. “I’m going to come in here and work hard so I can have one of those lockers.”
He’ll have one, all right. Might have a position to go with it, too.
The Bengals showed they were serious about overhauling their receiving corps when they took Simpson with the 46th overall pick. Then, in the third round, they got receiver Andre Caldwell from Florida.
Finally, they completed their 10-player draft by taking receiver Mario Urrutia in the seventh round from Louisville. That’s an infusion of three players into a receiving corps that’s now in transition.
No. 3 receiver Chris Henry is gone, released last month after his fifth arrest. Johnson is threatening to hold out because the Bengals won’t trade him. And Houshmandzadeh is entering the final year on his contract.
“Got to reload,” said quarterback Carson Palmer, who stood on the sideline and watched the rookies catch passes from his brother, Jordan. “Chad and T.J. are both getting older, and it’s part of the deal. When a certain position gets older, you’ve got to restock for the years to come.”
They’re restocking to try to resolve a problem. If Johnson goes ahead with his threat to sit out, a starting job will open up. That’s even more reason for Palmer to take interest in the newcomers – one of them might be catching a lot of his passes this season.
