On the surface, the recent influx of receivers in Cincinnati appears to be an effort to prepare for the possibility of life without Chad Johnson and, possibly in time, T.J. Houshmandzadeh.

But coach Marvin Lewis says that the devotion of three draft picks to wideouts is all about getting more wideouts on the field.

“It says we want to run the football,” coach Marvin Lewis said.  “We don’t want [enemy defenses] to cram up on us at the line of scrimmage with only two wide receivers.  You need to have some speed or that field gets pretty tight out there.

“I want to keep teams from tightening up on us.”

So the plan is, apparently, to put three or four receivers on the field, presumably at all times, in order to create a spread-style attack that draws defensive backs out of the box.

That very well might be true, but we think that the implicit message in this is that Lewis is planning for 2008 as if Johnson won’t be on the field, because Lewis wouldn’t need an extra receiver to draw defensive attention toward the passing game if one of the receivers on the field is Johnson.