Well, second semester of school has just ended, so over the past 48 hours I’ve had nothing better to do than watch highlight videos of the Bengals’s draft picks and prognosticate about what the roster is going to look like next season.  Anyway, here are my predictions…only a couple of surprises here and there…and of course, this is not counting any possible free agent acquisitions later in the off-season, so the actual final roster could differ just a bit.

Offense (25 players):

QB:  Carson Palmer, J.T. O’Sullivan, Jordan Palmer

RB:  Cedric Benson, Bernard Scott, Brian Leonard

FB:  Fui Vakapuna

WR:  Chad Ochocinco, Antonio Bryant, Jordan Shipley, Andre Caldwell, Jerome Simpson, Dezmond Briscoe

TE:  Jermaine Gresham, Chase Coffman, Daniel Coats

LT:  Andrew Whitworth, Anthony Collins

LG:  Evan Mathis, Nate Livings

C:  Kyle Cook, Dan Santucci

RG:  Bobbie Williams

RT:  Andre Smith, Dennis Roland

Defense (25):

LE:  Antwan Odom, Jonathan Fanene, Carlos Dunlap

RE:  Robert Geathers, Michael Johnson

LDT:  Tank Johnson, Geno Atkins

RDT:  Domata Peko, Pat Sims

SLB:  Rey Maualuga, Rashad Jeanty

MLB:  Dhani Jones, Abdul Hodge

WLB:  Keith Rivers, Brandon Johnson, Roddrick Muckelroy

CB:  Leon Hall, Johnathan Joseph, Morgan Trent, Brandon Ghee, David Jones

FS:  Chris Crocker, Bryan Evans

SS:  Roy Williams, Chinedum Ndukwe

Special Teams (3):

K:  Mike Nugent

P:  Kevin Huber

LS:  Clark Harris

For those keeping track at home, the hardest position to predict on offense was definitely wide receiver.  The additions of Jordan Shipley and Dezmond Briscoe through the draft certainly shook things up.  There are essentially four locks at wide receiver as I see it:  Ochocinco, Bryant, Shipley, and Caldwell.  This means that guys like Matt Jones, Dezmond Briscoe, Quan Cosby, and Jerome Simpson will be fighting it out for the last two spots.  I give the edge to Dezmond Briscoe because the Bengals had him rated very highly going into the draft and I don’t think he would last very long on the practice squad.  Also, I’m giving a spot to Jerome Simpson, whose unreached potential outweighs Matt Jones’s wasted potential.  Also, I think Quan Cosby may be a goner because his former Texas teammate is essentially the same player (slot receiver, kick returner), only more talented.

Predicting some of the positions on defense was even harder because of the immense level of talent on that side of the ball, forcing the team to cut some quality players.  The biggest mystery on defense may be at safety.  There are 3 locks:  Roy Williams, Chris Crocker, and Chinedum Ndukwe.  This means, assuming that the Bengals carry 7 linebackers (as I have predicted), they will only have room for 4 safeties.  So, you will see guys like Tom Nelson and Kyries Hebert battling it out with some of the undrafted free agents (and possibly another team’s training camp cut).  I personally went with the surprise here and picked Bryan Evans, one of the undrafted free agents.  Not only is Bryan young, he also used to play corner back, so he has a lot of speed and pretty good cover skills.  Mike Zimmer has already said that the Bengals don’t play a strict cover 2 scheme and that he wants his free safety to be able to play more like another corner back, so Evans seems to fit this bill pretty well…at least better than Nelson and Hebert.