"Things are really slow when a simple little radio interview becomes a blog post, but I will take that over talking about the NFL Lockout. Bengals DT Tank Johnson appeared on Sirius NFL Radio's Late Hits with Bryan McGorvern and Solomon Wilcots Thursday night. Tank was asked a bunch of questions and he was pretty honest with his answers, as usual. The hosts started off by asking Tank about Carson Palmer's trade requests, can the Bengals D carry the team while the offense comes together, and why the 2010 team failed to live up to the hype.

Tank said he was surprised at Carson's trade request, but agreed with RB Cedric Benson, when he said that bringing Carson back isn't good for the team. Benson appeared on the same show a few weeks back and was the first player to say that the Bengals can't bring it's star QB back. Tank then said that the defense is up to the challenge of carrying the team while the offense finds its way. And then he was asked what went wrong in 2010.

One of the first things that came out of Tank's mouth was that the team lacked chemistry. That's not anything new, we all saw that last year. But Tank then went on to say that the whole "Chad and T.O. show" was too much for this "humble" team. He said that with the star WR's coming into the season, fresh off of their reality shows, it brought to much hype to a team that did things differently in 2009. He said in 2009, players played for each other, played for the coaches, and played for the owners. And in 2010 the team didn't have that. Tank went on to explain himself, which I thought was very important. Statements like these usually create a headline, and it seems like the player is calling out his teammates, which Tank didn't do.

Tank said that he didn't fault Chad and T.O. for their off season endeavors, because they were just taking advantage of the opportunities given to them. And players should do that. But other players weren't ready for the constant hype. He said that T.O. and Chad were ready for that pressure because they were used to it, but other players changed who they were. Tank explained how when he first played with T.O. in Dallas, that he was unsure of how to approach him as a teammate. So he can see why Bengals players would be uneasy around "superstar" type players. Players are sometimes in awe of a large personalities like that. Having a team of underdogs in 2009, and adding a Hollywood element to it in 2010 was a bad mix."