Looking For a New Home

Shaun Alexander is coming home for a visit. Three years removed from winning the league’s MVP Alexander will be in Cincinnati this Sunday and Monday to visit with the Bengals as he begins searching for a new team to play for this season. But just because Alexander is a local from across the Ohio River in Florence, Ky., doesn’t mean he’s necessarily a good fit for the Bengals.

Seattle released Alexander last month after eight seasons in which he affixed his name to the top of the Seahawks record book in category after category. No non-kicker scored more points for the Seahawks than Alexander, no one scored more touchdowns and no one has ever rushed for more yards in the Pacific Northwest than Alexander.

Bengals head coach Marvin Lewis declined to comment Friday on agent Jim Steiner’s confirmation that Alexander would be visiting. Steiner told JungleInsider.com in an e-mail that the visit is a very preliminary one.

“You can ask Jim Steiner about that,” said Lewis. “We don’t comment on those kinds of things.”

Last year the Bengals ran for less than 100 yards per game as a team for the first time since 1995. Rudi Johnson was nagged by a hamstring injury and finished with 497 yards rushing and just three touchdowns after averaging 1,407 yards and 12 touchdowns in the three seasons from 2004-06. His 1,039 rushing attempts in those three seasons were more than any other running back in the league during that time span.

Johnson averaged just 2.9 yards per carry in 2007. Kenny Watson was the team’s leading rusher with 763 yards and seven touchdowns. He had 130-yard rushing games in wins against the New York Jets and Cleveland and showed the kind of quickness and aggressive runs through the hole that typified Johnson’s first few seasons in the league.

Chris Perry, Kenny Irons and DeDe Dorsey are also on the incumbent list of running backs, as well as fullback Jeremi Johnson. Perry and Irons both missed all of last season with injuries; Irons is not expected to be ready for the start of training camp as he continues to recover from tearing his ACL last preseason but Lewis is hopeful Perry can be on the field when OTAs start up in two weeks.

Lewis is committed to an improved run game this season and at this point it appears he is ready to go with what the team has on the current roster. No running backs were selected in last week’s draft and they signed just two tailbacks as undrafted free agents.

Alexander, who will be 31-years-old by the time the regular season begins, is coming off of back-to-back seasons in which his yards-per-carry average dropped below 4.0 for the first time in his career. He has nearly 2,200 carries for his career in 119 games (not including postseason) and has 9,429 career yards.

Johnson is two years younger than Alexander and has much less wear and tear on his body. He has carried the ball 1,441 times for 5,742 yards and 48 touchdowns since the Bengals drafted him in the fourth round in 2001. Johnson played sparingly behind Corey Dillon the first two seasons of his career. Last season was the first time he suffered from any significant injuries. The albatross concerning Johnson is that he is due to make base salaries of $3.2 million this season and $3.6 million in 2009, the final two seasons of a contract he signed in 2005. Those are large salaries for a player who may be passed his prime.

Alexander is likely to seek a one-year agreement with whichever team he settles on so that he can prove his worth and return to the free agent market next years. Unless Johnson shows during the OTAs that he isn’t ready to go – and Lewis has spoken openly about his belief that Johnson has a chip on his shoulder and is on course to return to his form of pre-2007 – it seems improbable that Alexander winds up with the Bengals.