Hype. For what?

So every offseason we see NFL players get a lot of hype from fans, coaches, and the media. Usually it's about top rookies, players returning from injury, and players on new teams. Then there's one kind of player that gets a lot of hype that leaves you scratching your head. The undrafted college free agent. Every year our beloved Bengals sign a guy who has more hype than any other signing. This year's player might be the most hyped that I've ever seen on this team since I became a fan in 98.

This year's player is Jeromy Miles, a safety from Massachusetts.


Plenty of Bengal fans were hoping for our team to draft a safety, but it didn't happen. It led to the usual message board MTV fights. Then it was reported that we signed Miles and one guy pimped him and then it swept over the boards like a brush fire. I've seen people say that he'll be our starting FS for the first game. I've even seen a comparison to Ed Reed. This is a reason to love Bengals fans. People will seriously believe than an unproven undrafted rookie is on the same level as a Hall of Famer. One of my favorite aspects is that people keep talking about how awesome he's going to be at free safety despite playing strong safety at UMass, at least that's what I found at NFLDraftScout.

Now I know it's the job of fans to hype players, but I've never seen hype go this far. I thought last year's undrafted star, Quan Cosby, was overhyped, but the only talk of him was competing for the punt return job, which he showed that he could do. The situation that this reminds me of, a little, is our 2008 "star signing" Simeon Castille. He was the most hyped guy we had and I saw the same thing that I'm seeing now. I'm actually seeing the whole "he was projected to be a 3rd round pick" argument, which was also used for Castille. According to DS, Miles was projected as a 6th-7th rounder. Obviously not every site is the same and DS isn't the #1 draft site. Now Castille was projected as a 4th-5th rounder, but that was a safety and we used him at corner. We also can't forget that Chinedum Ndukwe said that he was given the grade of 3rd round to Free Agent from a draft site. What a projection. That very well could be what Miles had.

Castille lasted all of one season and was gone to San Diego.

Bottom line, we're all hoping that Miles succeeds, but it seems people are starting to have higher expectations for an undrafted rookie over our 2nd rounder. We're all rooting for Miles and would love to see him become awesome, but could we at least wait until we see him in a game? Generally, the most hyped rookie isn't the one that looks the best for us. DeDe Dorsey and Tom Nelson come to mind.