THE BROO VIEW with Ken Broo

Good Monday Morning!

Wondering today just how low the Bengals will be seeded in the upcoming playoffs. It went from best case scenario of #2 at 4p Sunday to worst case scenario of #4 today. No bye week and maybe the Broncos or Ravens in round one. Too early to determine who it'll be. Look at all those 7-7 teams in the AFC right now.

The Bengals are struggling. Their offense is stagnant, both in production and creativity. They can’t score points. To beat the Chargers today, they’ll have to score a lot of points, a lot more than the 17 or so they’ve been averaging over the course of the last two months.

And then, you mix in the death of Chris Henry this week. I don’t know whether or not you follow Ochocino on twitter. I do. He’s been a mess since Henry was injured in that truck accident on Wednesday and his subsequent death Thursday. It’s genuine, real grief.

Carson Palmer, who rarely shows his emotions, was shaken Thursday when he met the media. Palmer didn’t take questions, just made a 45 second statement. Palmer took a real interest in Henry this past off season. He truly believed that Henry was a life and a career that was salvageable. They worked out together this past spring at Palmers home in Southern California. They had a real bond.

Dealing with the death of a friend and channel grief is no small trick. You’ve done it. I’ve done it. You want to move on with your life, but not soon and not until the myriad of emotions have been dealt with, understood. The Bengals are far from that today.

The news of Henry’s accident came after the team had left practice on Wednesday. It was a series of cell calls and text messages that delivered that news. Then Thursday, Henry’s death was delivered to the team at 10am. Friday, the team boarded a flight to the west coast, where the team has historically played poorly.

Still ahead is Henry’s funeral on Tuesday in New Orleans. The cocoon of football, the focus on one of the most important games of the season will tough for this team to wrap itself around. Everywhere it goes this weekend, it’s reminded of Henry, right down to the sticker the Bengals players wore on their helmets Sunday.

Some thought that Henry’s death at an early age was inevitable. You’re reading and hearing a lot about that from national writers and broadcasters this weekend. Full disclosure, I thought the guy was a train wreck who only recently got his cars back on the track. I was happy for him, for that. But I wasn’t ready to canonize him lot a like of people around here have been doing this week. Henry was flawed, like a lot of us. He made some bad mistakes, like a lot of us. He cost himself some serious money by his bad choices. But like all of us, he was human. And sometimes, that what human being do. The ‘light bulb’ goes on for all of us at a different time in our lives. Maybe it went on for you at 17 or 18. For others, it’s in their 30’s. Some of us never have that moment, that ‘light bulb goes on’ moment when we finally ‘get it’. I think Henry had his ‘light bulb’ moment in the summer of 2008, when the Bengals cut him loose and no other NFL team wanted him. I think he finally figured out that the one thing he could do better than anything else had been taken from him, by his own doing.

Say what you want about Mike Brown, and most of us have. The guy probably saved Chris Henry’s life, extended for a year and a half by taking him back in August of 2008. Without football, a lost soul like Henry would have been long gone before now. Brown realized that, when most of us, me included, thought he was playing a fools game. But Brown helped Henry find his ‘light bulb moment’. It was in Brown’s DNA to do that. His father did the same thing with Stanley Wilson. Until last week, Henry appeared to be Stanley Wilson 180, someone who finally got it.

I don’t know what happened in those final few minutes of Chris Henry’s life. And you don’t’ either. I don’t’ know if his fiancée was at fault, or it Henry was to blame for his own death. And you don’t either.

But I know this: nobody should die at the age of 26. And because Chris Henry his team mates mourn.