Though Pacman Jones has yet to make it rain on the dotted line of a contract with the Bengals, all evidence is consistent with our report from Tuesday that he will.
Defensive coordinator Mike Zimmer says of Pacman, “I’ll be on him at all times.” (That quote prompted at least one of you to observe in the comments, “That’s what she said?”)
Defensive tackle Tank Johnson, who knows a thing or two about being cut by the team that drafted him for getting in too much trouble, has spoken to Pacman, and Johnson says that Jones is “ecstatic” about joining the team.
Johnson and Jones were teammates two seasons ago in Dallas. “I know he’s settled down,” Johnson told Geoff Hobson of Bengals.com. “I think you have to settle down. I think he would have been dead by now if he didn’t settle down. That’s the honest to God truth.”
Johnson also thinks that Cincinnati will be better than Dallas for Jones because, well, Cincinnati isn’t Dallas. “I think coming into this Bengals family with Coach [Marvin] Lewis and Coach Zim and the Brown family, that is going to be great for him,” Johnson said. “I think Dallas was too much glitz, too much of a wild situation to go into, but this is definitely a more tame situation.”
Then again, it was tame in Tennessee but Pacman still found trouble. Multiple times. The good news is that, even without an NFL job to keep him in the general direction of the straight and narrow, Pacman has managed to stay out of trouble for well over a year.
So maybe he’ll finally turn things around. One thing we know is that the Bengals are more than willing to take the heat if the experiment turns out worse than Peter Brady’s volcano, which definitely made it rain.