T-Dub

They got an OT from Louisville but not a single IOL.. Hard for me to understand given the two starting guards are bad and marginal with no one capable of challenging them on the depth chart. How many sacks will it take before they admit Volson should be a serviceable backup at best? Why are they drafting a longshot 4th TE instead of a guard that could almost certainly challenge the starting lineup? How many seasons of JB's career are they going to waste playing him behind a subpar OL? Right now I'd have to put the O/U at "all of them". One of the worst-performing OL's in the NFL and they draft a single OT meant to replace a one-year FA that can't stay on the field & then a 7th round center (who may yet be better than Volson, if they gave him a chance). It's frustrating.

I wish him a speedy recover from his injury

Totally agree, "B" as in "basic". That was some fine corpo nothing-speak justification from Elizabeth though! Really leveraged their synergies moving forward.

Give him time to throw & JB's going to make a star out of any pass-catcher with a bit of talent. Everyone else is ultimately replaceable as far as I'm concerned. However.. If they're going to let these guys walk over money they need to be spending it wisely elsewhere. They've thrown a good bit of that money & now draft capital at fixing the OL. I'd like to think the pressure is on for Pollack - if he's on the last year of his contract as I've read? The Bengals don't really fire people. That aside, Higgins should've been traded and Henderson, too. I don't want players that are here only because they don't have a choice. If the strategy is build through the draft they have to turn players on their way out into more draft picks. Golden opportunity to do that but they chose to sit on their hands.

What other NFL team is the primary income for an entire family? You have to understand, every million they spend is one less prize-winning show pony for the great grandkids. That's no way to live. 🥷

Yeah he definitely wasn't a consensus first round pick that easily could've gone higher if not for the run on QB's & WR's... We're just copying the Stealers. The next generation of Bengals fans are going to need to huff a lot of spray paint if we're ever going to catch up to them.

Like I said.. Ol' Musty is not built for this league. He's a decent person in a business run by a bunch of callous, avaricious complete bastards. Can't fault the guy for having ethics but the National Football League has no place for all that. Then when his Juniors try to play hardball it usually seems to backfire.

Man who cares about the Falcons Rarely even been relevant since Michael Vick. Hell their sorry division only mattered when Brady took his victory lap. High water mark most years is an early out to some wildcard team after making the playoffs with a .500ish record. Of course the Falcons are failing. The NFC South is crabs in a bucket of fail.

86 the "wide zone scheme" in favor of something their OL can execute consistently. Half the time it looks more like a wide gap scheme - guys running free while try to decide who to block. Enough of them shuffling their feet playing pattycake with their own shadows. Hell, enough of these coaches who think they possess some unique & arcane knowledge no one else could possibly understand. That's great when your group isn't consistently one of the worst in the NFL. Put away the chessboard and pick up a hammer. Get a goddam hat on' em, as coach used to say. Better the wrong guy than nobody. Who knows, maybe Pitcher can come up with something any decent RB can pick up 2-3 yards behind. Supposed to be his thing, right? High hopes, but 'tis the season.

Oh I meant average pre-draft. It's been a rotation of guy-who-blocks-kinda-ok & a parade of one-year rentals that split for the bag elsewhere if they do well or, like last year, simply flop. Gesicki might be better than the last 3-4 guys they've rotated through but these draft picks are still a big increase in the overall talent level.

Figured it had to be something like that, thanks

Being drafted into a very average TE room should help those chances.

Good lord. Surely some statistical outlier, right? Right?! I'm gonna hope that's the result of "next gen stats" fuzzy math and not him getting winded making a 5th trip up to the buffet line.

Right, and I definitely do not know any of the players well enough to say if that was the case here. I'd like to give the team's experts the benefit of the doubt, but their recent drafting has been pretty hit & miss while some are "experts" by virtue of heredity. I don't have quite that much faith in them. Regardless, pick is in, Burton is a Bengal. Hopefully dude grows up & acts like a pro from here on out.

I don't think he's some violent criminal or anything like that. I mean shit if Cleveland can have a serial rapist as their QB this guy should be golden. It's not the TN fan incident in itself either, more that all of this taken as a whole demonstrates a pattern of behavior. Like Pacman, there may be an inability to control his temper. After all that time & trouble, Pac was still spitting at cops while getting dragged out of casinos drunk off his ass. Sure, people were testing him because of his rep, but he consistently failed that test over and over again. That immaturity made him a liability on & off the field. Great talent, probably not a bad person, but still prone to flying off the handle & hurting the team at the worst possible moment. So, if I'm looking at a draft board and trying to decide between one prospect or the next, I'm going with the guy that didn't do all the dumb shit. Doesn't mean the dumb shit was all that terrible or even remarkable. It means that I have the choice to avoid a player with these problems entirely. No different than drafting a guy that didn't have recent back surgery instead of the one that did. Is his back fully healed? Maybe, IDK, but I'm trying to build a championship football team, not provide health care or correct someone's emotional issues. Certainly those are noble things, and if I had millions of dollars to my name I could go out today and create a charity organization to do nothing but mentor troubled young men. However, we're talking about making NFL draft picks to help the Cincinnati Bengals win football game. With that in mind, why would I choose a player with these red flags over one without them?

Have to think they can upgrade at least one of those between now & September

It'll be a race to get him healthy & up to speed before Trent Brown gets hurt

Mixed. Neither OL pick expected to contribute early. More risk than really necessary. On the plus side they probably got long-term starters at DT & TE. Some of the riskier picks will work out but we'll all be taking a hard look at who else was available for the ones that don't. Mims should elevate the OL play whenever he makes it on the field.

Suppose every draft pick is a gamble. I like what Housh had to say as well but I'm a little skeptical of the endorsements of former Bengals. Seem to recall Willie Anderson blowing smoke up everyone's ass about a couple of OL busts? Guys pay to train with them and it looks good if it improves their draft position. JS they have might be motivated by something other than what makes the Bengals a better team when hyping up their clients. Refusing to trade Higgins so they can take a flyer on this guy without counting on him to start is indeed a gamble. Remains to be seen when & how Tee shows up but I still think I'd have preferred the $25M & an extra draft pick with which to secure a more stable & reliable future WR2 plus another player or two. A lot of these picks seem... hopeful. Maybe even charitable? They're really laying it on thick with the human interest family drama, personal hardships and team captain stuff. They should be good for DTs and TEs. Otherwise they haven't settled anything which seems like a missed opportunity after making 10 draft picks.

It's about the opportunity cost isnt it... This dude may become a model citizen, the injured guys may never miss a game. The point is that there were prospects available to them that were healthy, that didn't act like complete jackasses while hopping from one school to the next. Were these questionable picks so much better than everyone else still on the board when they made them, enough so to justify ignoring the red flags? Doubtful.

Still feel like they only drafted an OT because they just about had to, given Brown's injury history. They waited until the very bottom of the draft to add anything else to the OL. For a team with a couple of marginal starters and no depth to speak of anywhere on the line I don't think they did nearly enough to improve. It's clearly been their weakest area foe a very long time and Mims alone won't fix that.

Watching some clips he moves well & has quick feet. Measurements look pretty close to Karras. Does look a beat slow & kinda stiff with the hand placement etc. All that aside, he was about 20 picks away from not being drafted at all. It would probably be wise to temper our expectations. If he settles in as a backup anywhere on the line I'd call that a good pick.

This plus some LBs

Have to think they got tired of renting. Irv was a disappointment & Gesicki is on another (slightly better) one year deal. The other vets are what they are, backups. Does seem like they may have drafted players to fit a scheme though.

Even as the last pick of our draft he'll probably make the roster. That's not necessarily a good thing, but it's what we've got. Same for any free agent they might scoop up any time between now and that first whistle. Again, probably not going to be a game changer but they wouldn't have to do much more than show up every day to make the team. Mims is a great add but he's one guy & looking at the depth chart.. Let's say, there's still room.