In the only pick of the NFL’s supplemental draft, the Bengals made a bit of a surprise move and picked up Virginia linebacker Ahmad Brooks. He’s a talented player, but he’s got some issues. He started for three seasons at Virginia, but he got hurt, and played only six games last year, before being kicked off the team completely. Virginia coach Al Groh never did specify the reasons for his dismissal. And then, with some time on his hands, Brooks let himself go a bit and was tipping the scaled at 290, before getting back into decent shape for some NFL workouts.

Hard to figure out what the Bengals are doing here. It’s like they’re thinking, “Okay, everything’s fixed now, so we’ll just sign all these guys, and it will work out perfectly, because everything’s all better.” They’ve finally finally got things on track. And now Chris Henry is getting arrested every week, draft pick A.J. Nicholson is arrested for all kinds of craziness, another draft pick named Frostee Rucker is charged with beating his wife, and now, they’re rolling the dice on another guy with character issues. This is not the California Penal League, Vaughn.

Now, I’m not making any judgements about Ahmad Brooks here. To my knowledge, he’s never been arrested, and I’m not saying he’s the next O.J. or something. I have no idea about his actual character, but… the red flags are in place. There are questions about him. And for the Bengals, it just seems like an odd direction to go. Why, when things are finally going your way, when you’re finally earning some respect around the league, roll the dice on so many character cases?

Update: Bengals LB O’Dell Thurman will be suspended for the first four games of the season for a failed or missed drug test.