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Cincinnati Bengals

Bengals' offensive centerpiece

By C. Trent Rosecrans, CNATI.com Posted December 22, 2009 5:07 PM ET

It should be noted, longtime Bengal offensive lineman and current broadcaster Dave Lapham said, that Paul Brown's first draft pick was a center.

Brown, one of the most influential coaches in football history, started the Bengals with Bob Johnson, the All-American center from Tennessee.

"You have to have a great center," said Lapham, who played all five positions on the offensive line for the Bengals from 1974-83. "They touch the ball as much as the quarterback does and they orchestrate everything."

The center may be the most aptly-named position in football. Each play revolves around him -- an offense begins when the center decides it begins and the defense reacts to his decision.

More than that, the center makes the calls for the offensive line, reacting to what he sees from the defense before the snap and makes adjustments.

"It's a very underrated position," said Bengals quarterback Carson Palmer. "A lot of teams really think you can just get away with a guy. You can't get away with a guy that's just OK, you have to have a leader, you have to have a guy that's vocal and a guy everyone trusts. You're only going to play as good as your offensive line and he puts you on the correct guys, he gives you the best chance to be successful."

It takes a special player to be a center and a special center to make a team complete. The 2005 AFC North champion Bengals had one of the most explosive offenses in recent memory with Carson Palmer throwing to the then-Chad Johnson, T.J. Houshmandzadeh and the running of Rudi Johnson and Chris Perry. But the heart of that team was at the center, Rich Braham.

Braham, who spent 13 seasons with the Bengals, was injured early in the 2006 season and the Bengals had been searching for his replacement since. Eric Ghiaciuc started most of the games since Braham's injury, but he was not retained when he became a free agent after the 2008 season.

"It's hard to be a good offensive line or offensive unit without a good center, we know, we tried that," guard and 10-year veteran Bobbie Williams said. "I'm not talking bad about anybody else, we've been there and done that. We had good ones, we had ones that couldn't get the gist of it. To have a guy that does get the gist makes a world of difference."

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Most mock drafts had the Bengals taking a center on the first day of the NFL Draft last April.

After letting Ghiaciuc go in free agency, the team had three centers on the roster, but only one -- Andrew Crummey -- had executed an NFL regular-season snap. Crummey's center experience consisted of all of one offensive series at center. Dan Santucci and Kyle Cook finished the 2008 season on injured reserve.

Because of the team's lack of experience, it was no surprise the team selected Arkansas' Jonathan Luigs, a former Rimington Award winner as the top center in college football, in the fourth round. Luigs was the fourth center taken in the draft.

"Everyone said we had to draft a center high and I didn't feel the urgency for that, because I knew we had a good player," offensive line coach Paul Alexander said.

That player was Kyle Cook.

In his third year out of Michigan State, Cook nearly got his chance last season, but a freak injury in warmups of the Cowboys game forced Cook to undergo season-ending surgery.

Cook was undrafted in 2007 and signed with the Vikings, but was cut in the preseason. When Minnesota let Cook go, Alexander got a phone call from Art Droski, Cook's high school line coach. Droski was an All-MAC center at Central Michigan under Alexander before becoming a college coach and then high school coach in Michigan.

Droski told Alexander that Cook was available and the Bengals signed him before Cook could even get back to his native Michigan. Instead, Droski called Alexander and the long-time Bengal head coach grabbed Cook.

After a year on the practice squad, six games on kickoff return and the rest of last season on injured reserve, the Bengals banked on Cook being ready. Heading into the season, Cook was told the job was his to lose.

"It was nice that they had the confidence in me, I guess, and I took it from there and ran with it," Cook said. "I made sure I was outspoken whether it was drills, when we got together as a team I made sure I made the calls and that guys knew what we were doing. I had to gain their trust. That was the biggest thing, gaining their trust."

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Kyle Cook hadn't played in a game before 2009, but because of Droski, it was as if he'd played for Alexander since he starting playing football.

"Effectively, he's been doing my technique since he was 14 years old and that's all he knows," Alexander said. "The transition has been easy."

The transition now seems easy, but the transition for Cook has never been quick.

"I had to argue with the head coach about him, he was only a sophomore and I told them he was the best lineman we had," Droski said of Cook's days at Dakota High School in Macomb, Mich., where he played left tackle.

Cook was a guard at Michigan State until his senior year when he made the transition to center. At center, Cook finally found his home, even if it would take several years for him to show that to anyone outside of Bengals practices.

What Cook found was he loved being the center - literally - of the offensive line. Every other offensive lineman lines up off the center - the left side of the line can't see what's happening on the right side and vice versa. That means it's up to the center to make adjustments.

Everyone sees Carson Palmer at the line pointing at the linebackers and defensive backs. Next time, look closer, you'll see Cook pointing, too.

"I like making sure everybody's on the same page," Cook said. "I've always been a leader, I guess you could say. I guess I'm not a very outspoken guy, I'm the more lead by example kind of guy, I was the captain of my high school football team, I was the captain of my college football team. Guys have always learned to trust me and know that I'm reliable, so I guess."

A center must be reliable for the offense to be able to move the ball its most effectively. Not only does the center have to make the calls, he needs ot make them quickly, with confidence and most importantly, correctly.

"Communication is the biggest key up front, making sure everyone is going to the right guys, especially in pass protection," Palmer said. "I have 100 percent confidence that he'll do it every time, whether it's a look we've seen in practice and prepared for or if there's something new that happens. Every week there's something that a team that does that's different. It's not something that needs to be talked about, it's not something we talk about, but he gets it right away."

Said Lapham, "Kyle sees concepts really well, he picked up the Pittsburgh and Baltimore stuff as quickly as I've seen, because he has that conceptual stuff, it's not just tunnel vision. He sees the big picture, he can adapt to their scheme by concept quickly. He's as quick as I've seen at that."

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The mental side of the offensive line is something that's overlooked. Veteran reporters always know to go to the offensive linemen, because they're usually among the smartest players and best at providing a good soundbite. Look at the next post-game wrap-up you see - you'll nearly always see an offensive lineman quoted. Following games, Williams and tackle Andrew Whitworth have long been go-to guys. This season, not a media availability goes by without a tape recorder or TV camera finding its way to Cook's locker.

And while the image of a big, dumb guy is so wrong for an offensive lineman - the stereotype of an offensive lineman as a tough, take-no-prisoners enforcer is accurate. It's absolutely critical for a center to not only be tough, but also nasty. And "nasty" is an adjective used over and over for Cook.

During training camp, Cook was front and center in one of the biggest fights of the camp, trading blows with veteran linebacker Dhani Jones. Cook, the first-year starter, got under the skin of the veteran team captain and refused to budge. As the first line of defense for the team's quarterback, the center must have a mean streak. That's something Cook has in spades, teammates say.

"When he was on the practice squad, it wasn't like he didn't have a name at that time, but he had a name with the coaches as a guy who wasn't going to get pushed around and that will push back if he gets pushed," said former Bengal offensive lineman Scott Kooistra. "He earned the reputation as a hard-nosed, practice guy. Guys saw that, so when he stepped into the starting role, we already know what kind of guy we've got next to you."

Whitworth said he noticed Cook's attitude in a preseason game in 2008.

"I think the first example was last year when he was one of the backups and we played in Green Bay in the preseason and he was cutting people on the back side of plays, it takes that extra effort that sometimes players don't play with, Whitworth said. "I noticed that."

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Nothing's really come easy for Cook. He wasn't drafted, he was cut by the Vikings, he was on the Bengals' practice squad and then he was injured just when he was going to get his chance last season.

All that was part of the process, Cook said. He's here not in spite of those things, but because of it.

"A lot of guys will come in you know, if they're not I guess, 'big time' per se talent, you know, they can come in and they can not do well and be out of the league, they might not get that second chance, but for guys like me and Nate (Livings) who can come in and be on the practice squad and see what's expected and know the right way to do it, we're obviously having such success with it," Cook said. "We weren't put in a position where we weren't ready and we were gonna fail."

The Bengals offensive line has Williams and Whitworth, two veterans that are building blocks of the Bengals' organization and first-round pick Andre Smith, who is getting more and more playing time after missing all of training camp and an injury stunted his growth as the team's right tackle of the future. However, the rest of the Bengals' offensive line comes from a background more like Cook's. Livings, a college teammate of Whitworth, was signed as an undrafted free agent in 2006, spent time on the Bengals practice squad. So did tackle Dennis Roland, spent time on the practice squads of the Bengals, Cowboys and Buccanneers, before making his debut for the Bengals last season. Anthony Collins was a fourth-round pick out of Kansas and has started at right tackle for the Bengals. Evan Mathis has played for the Panthers and Dolphins before coming to the Bengals in the middle of last season.

"Being on the practice squad, you figure out what's good for you, you find your niche and find out what you can and cannot do," Livings said. "I took practice squad as a redshirt to the NFL, finding out what you can and can't do. When you have to earn it that way, you appreciate it when the opportunity comes."

Cook's opportunity came this year and he's made the most of it. The team isn't searching for a center anymore, with Luigs on the roster, the team appears to be set at center for the foreseeable future. Cook may act like a veteran, but he's still young, 26, and has a lot of football ahead of him.

"I'd say he's done a good job. All I can say is he's doing a good job, physically and mentally," offensive coordinator Bob Bratkowski said. "He's got things he needs to work on and get better at, but not a whole lot of them."

Williams, a 10-year vet, was more succinct -- "I see a couple of Pro Bowls in his future," he said.

Once again, it appears the Bengals have the guy they want touching the ball first.

"To me, he's a mini-Richie," Lapham said. "Braham was so good at it, but it took Richie longer to pick it up than Kyle. But Kyle's just like Richie and he's on that track, and when you're on that track, you're on good tracks."

Categories: Cincinnati Bengals, Featured Stories, Features

Tags: Andrew Whitworth, Bengals, Bob Bratkowski, Bobbie Williams, Dave Lapham, Dennis Roland, Kyle Cook, Nate Livings, Paul Alexander, Rich Braham