Do real people believe Cincinnati is full of troublemakers? And is Pacman the reason the Bengals keep getting muck-raked?

Hey, it’s easy click-bat. Just imagine the fun Thursday for players and coaches as the Falcons opened camp six months after blowing a 28-3 third-quarter lead in the Super Bowl!

But even with this template in mind, the absurdity of positing that Cincinnati is the league’s pit is so annoying as to be astonishing.

Consider this crazy headline: “NFL camp openings: Bengals bad boys fight for jobs.”

That mess appeared Thursday evening atop a post by Lindy’s that intimated that Cincinnati’s professional football team is populated by thugs.

Cincinnati fans have opinions.

Sifting through this mess is like trying to figure out what the president is Tweeting about.

Lindy’s, a magazine that has made its bones covering college football and the NFL (with seriously detailed preseason capsules about teams and leagues) went for simple, low-hanging fruit in search of clicks.

The bones of their project were built upon the travails of Adam “Pacman” Jones and Cincinnati having drafted running back Joe Mixon after his problems at Oklahoma University.

Yet looking back beyond the past few months, the volume of the Bengals’ recent track record for players who’ve  run afoul of the law is modest. It just so happens that news of such miscues happens to be fresh.

Jeez, this is the way these things work, but it’s disconcerting to think that people with pens, ink, and keyboards can push out to the public such scatter-brained thoughts so as to cast dark shadows.

Heck, even famed sports broadcaster Bob Costas of NBC fame is walking back derogatory comments about the Bengals just about now.

More opinions from the local support base: