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On 1/22/2022 at 8:46 PM, spicoli said:

32nd overall is a good place to trade out of, no?

 

trading up to get a player  that slid down you want but didnt expect to get.  , yes  good spot 

trading down to get out of the 1st round,  maybe. you get the extra year option for 1st round picks.  

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6 hours ago, Jungletiger said:

PFF got us picking at 31, and it's the main dude I been eyeing, unless we trade down.  Zion Johnson

Time stamped.

 

 


 

Zion’s “PFF big board” rank is 46th, so obviously not BPA…but could be seen as “close enough to BPA that fits a need.”
 

Much will depend upon what we accomplish in free-agency…and if there is a non-QB player that has unexpectedly dropped to 32 in the draft.  
 

🦗

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Good article in the Althletic today on the scouting staff:

 

 

How the NFL’s tiniest scouting staff built the Bengals into the next big thing

Paul Dehner Jr. 3h agocomment-icon.png 30 save-icon.png

In early 2012, Duke Tobin and Steven Radicevic sat in the seats of UCLA’s Drake Stadium. Tobin, the Bengals’ director of player personnel since 1999, asked a loaded question to the then director of football operations for the Bruins: What do you want to do with your life?

Radicevic’s answer revolved professionally around building an NFL team that can win the Super Bowl. Almost 10 years to the day, Tobin and Radicevic, now Cincinnati’s director of pro scouting, will be at that same field as their Bengals practice, seeking the first Super Bowl victory in Cincinnati history.

Over the course of the intervening decade, Radicevic, Tobin and their team have heard the same criticism on repeat: There go the Bengals, the smallest personnel staff in the league. They don’t care about winning, they barely have any scouts.

It gets old, Radicevic said. It stays grating. “I’ve heard it for 10 years.”

The basics aren’t wrong. Cincinnati does have the smallest staff. Eight people are listed in the player personnel department but only six are fully entrenched scouts: Tobin, Radicevic, director of college scouting Mike Potts and scouts Andrew Johnson, Christian Sarkisian and Trey Brown. Tobin’s father, Bill, a former Colts and Bears GM, helps in an executive role and Debbie LaRocco is an assistant.

 
 
Director of player personnel Duke Tobin has been with the Bengals organization since 1999. (Aaron Doster / Associated Press)

The Rams, the Bengals’ opponent on Sunday, have 26 people in player personnel: scouts, regional scouts, pro scouts, national scouts, directors, assistant directors, scouting strategy directors, consultants, general manager, two special assistants to the general manager. That doesn’t even touch the cadre of operations analysts and managers.

The Rams aren’t rare. Theirs is a conventional approach in the modern NFL. The league average for player personnel people is 21. The second-fewest listed on any team website is 15.

The Bengals defy convention on purpose. The group takes pride in the conscious choice for extra work. They see the benefit in the versatility of spreading across departments instead of extreme specialization. They think, contrary to popular belief, that the family dynamic and collaborative philosophy of involving coaches more — following a blueprint set by Paul Brown — creates a significant advantage.

“It’s never been and never will be about how many voices you have or how many opinions,” Tobin said. “It’s about having the right opinions and trusting in the guys you have entrusted to come up with the right opinions.”

So when rookie fifth-round pick Evan McPherson kicked the ball through the uprights at Arrowhead Stadium last Sunday to send the Bengals to the Super Bowl, back-pounding hugs, flowing tears and muffled cheers came from this handful of scouts in a small section of the second row of the vast Kansas City press box.

“Indescribable, brought to tears,” Johnson said. “They are emotions I have never felt before — not in my high school playing days, not in my college playing days, not since I’ve been here.”

It was about more than punching a ticket back to the old UCLA practice grounds or an AFC Championship symbolizing one of the most impressive turnarounds and roster rebuilds this century. It was about vindication.

“One hundred percent,” Sarkisian said. “It definitely is a vindication of how we do what we do.”

The Bengals went from 2-14 under a first-year head coach to the Super Bowl in two years, and different whispers now follow them around the scouting circuit: How did they do what they just did?


‘There’s a lot of overkill in scouting’

The all-hands-on-deck mentality so rare in the NFL has always been viewed by the Bengals as a feature, not a malfunction.

“We don’t like our guys to be just specialists in one area,” Tobin said.

During games, scouts and Tobin will periodically go in the booth and put on coach communication headsets as an extra hand and way to keep a pulse on the team’s needs. When the season ends and the path to the draft begins, coaches plot pro-day road trips and flip on hours of tape to take a closer look at prospects. Last year, coaches stayed in pursuit of prospects and potential free agents through Zooms and calls like college recruiters.

The lines between coaches, personnel and even ownership blur. President Mike Brown is still making the final calls and is considered the general manager despite a background role in the day-to-day decisions. Daughter Katie Blackburn, son-in-law Troy Blackburn and son Paul Brown are involved in every aspect of football operations. Scouts live in Cincinnati and have an office at the team facility.

“When we are not out traveling, we are around Duke and the owners,” said Johnson, 28, in his sixth year as a scout with the club. “Out on the road it can be lonely, and you can get disconnected from the building. There are some guys that scout for other teams that they circle their little area for 35 weeks in a year, they live in a different part of the country as their team.

“There’s a lot of overkill in scouting across the league — and a lack of efficiency. I think that’s the biggest thing we harp on, is being efficient and working smart and being results-driven, and it’s starting to pay off.”

NFL player personnel staff sizes

In June 2018, Tobin viewed Potts and Radicevic as ready to grow themselves and the department. He placed Potts in charge of shaping the college side, Radicevic the pro side. In some ways, it controlled the chaos.

“There was a lot more gray area before that,” Potts said. “We still do a ton of pro and college, all five of our scouts scout pro, college, trade options, cutdown guys, undrafted free agents — every aspect of the scouting process. That just made our process a lot more efficient and it was a lot more organized and detailed look back on the way we put the roster together, from a personnel standpoint that was the turning point.”

The timing was perfect. Six months later, a new coaching staff led by Zac Taylor replaced Marvin Lewis after 16 years, and a new model for the modern roster needed to be imagined.

 
 
Bengals offensive coordinator Brian Callahan (right) chats with scout Steven Radicevic during the 2020 Senior Bowl. The Bengals staff coached a team in the game. (Jay Morrison / The Athletic)

When it came to trying to strip down and rebuild a from scratch, the necessary collaboration the Bengals lean on came to the forefront. In ongoing conversations, the team pinpointed exactly what Taylor and his staff wanted, specifically an emphasis on character and a desperate desire to change locker room chemistry after decades without a playoff victory.

Said Tobin: “The No. 1 trait Zac is looking for — and I’m looking for — are guys who enjoy the process and enjoy the game, a team that plays unselfishly and for each other and really enjoys the process and the grind normally makes its own breaks.”


‘Another team couldn’t just go copy us’

For every major debate waged about a decision surrounding the Bengals this offseason — and there were many — Tobin and his staff came out on the right side of history.

Yes, all this starts with Joe Burrow. He changed everything. The Bengals picked No. 1 overall in 2020 and landed the most prized possession in football. Nurturing his skills, putting the rest of the pieces around him and growing a young offense together would be the charge. After drafting Tee Higgins two rounds after Burrow and extending Tyler Boyd and Joe Mixon in 2019 and 2020, respectively, Cincinnati arrived at a crossroads with the fifth pick of the 2021 draft.

No debate captured the NFL’s draft news cycle like Ja’Marr Chase versus Penei Sewell. Talking heads said the Bengals should be booted from the NFL if they passed on protection for Burrow. Doing so would be ruining Burrow and the Bengals forever.

But offensive coordinator Brian Callahan reverted back to championship teams he was part of in Denver with Peyton Manning, when game-changing receivers made the truly differentiating plays in the biggest games playing behind solid, but generally star-deficient offensive lines. Potts gave Chase the highest grade he’d given a receiver in 10 years, and reuniting with Burrow offered an opportunity to replicate unprecedented college success. The decision was far from unanimous internally, as few are, but symmetry between the coaches’ vision and personnel opinion pointed to Chase.

Epilogue: Chase will be the Offensive Rookie of the Year. He already owns the franchise record for receiving yards in a season and has posted an NFL record for most receiving yards in the postseason by a rookie.

 
 
Ja’Marr Chase has left no doubt that he was the correct choice in the Chase vs. Sewell debate. (Katie Stratman / USA Today)

Four years after drafting kicker Jake Elliott in the fifth round and then cutting him, the Bengals stayed true to their philosophy by picking McPherson. This time they kept him. He’s now buried five game-winners, all 12 postseason field goals and 11 from 50-plus yards over the course of the season while becoming the confident, unlikely, baby-faced star of the Super Bowl run.

With an eye on culture, nearly the entire 2020 draft was comprised of college captains, headed by the master of all things leadership in Burrow. The roster is littered with Pro Bowl-level Day 2 steals in Higgins, Mixon, Boyd, Sam Hubbard and Jessie Bates. Two third-round linebackers, Logan Wilson (2020) and Germaine Pratt (2019), emerged as play-making starters after repeated fails with third-round linebackers — three busts in a four-year span, to be exact. Persistence to the point of stubbornness finally paid off.

Each one of these pieces has proven integral to getting the Bengals to the Super Bowl and form the core of a foundation entering a wide-open Super Bowl window.

“It is vindicating and it is satisfying. It does make a lot of those rough times we went through feel that they were worth it,” Potts said. “The hard work we were putting in, we are seeing a lot of the fruits of our labor now. We embrace the extra work and experiences we get. I’m just really proud of our staff. Another team couldn’t just go copy us and say, we are going to go to a five-or-six man staff. You got to have the right guys. Hungry guys that are intelligent and driven and really work their tails off, and I think that’s what we have.”

But even with the team’s recent draft success, the Bengals wouldn’t be in the Super Bowl without the team opening the bag in free agency at levels never before seen.


‘We aren’t after any beauty contests’

Once the scouts made their way from the Arrowhead press box to join in the AFC Championship celebration on the field, they scattered into the mass of hugs and smiles, shirts and hats.

Radicevic came upon D.J. Reader.

The gritty defensive tackle remembers being surprised the Bengals would offer $14 million per year two years ago, but he felt humbled and inspired by the idea of being wanted. Radicevic, Tobin, Taylor and defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo were in agreement, this man was target No. 1 to change their fortunes and kickstart the rebuild.

“That was the first big free-agent signing,” Radicevic said.

Two weeks after Reader tweeted, “Really love this place,” here they were, going to the Super Bowl in a large part because of his broad shoulders. In the divisional round, his presence in the middle stymied Derrick Henry and Tennessee with one of the great games you’ll see from a defensive tackle. In Kansas City, all 325 pounds of Reader chased Patrick Mahomes around the yard.

“D.J. was probably the first guy I went up to after the game and gave him a huge hug,” Radicevic said. “He was so appreciative in the moment. … That is something I will probably remember the rest of my career.”

It’s hard to forget the moment that started one of the great free agency runs the league has seen — and the centerpiece of the cultural turnaround.

 
 
D.J. Reader has become the disruptive force the Bengals hoped he’d be when they signed him in free agency. (Joseph Maiorana / USA Today)

Tobin and Taylor felt the team needed to be altered in terms of both culture and talent last offseason. That meant doing something they had never done before: opening the pockets in free agency.

  • They allowed Carl Lawson to walk in free agency in favor of Trey Hendrickson for $15 million a year, their richest free-agent contract ever. Hendrickson made the Pro Bowl with 17.5 sacks thus far.
  • They allowed cornerback William Jackson III to leave for Washington and used the money saved to sign both Chidobe Awuzie and Mike Hilton. Awuzie was Pro Football Focus’ second-highest-graded cornerback in the regular season. Hilton ranked 17th and single-handedly altered the momentum of the playoff win in Tennessee with an interception.
  • They plucked Larry Ogunjobi from Cleveland to fill a void at defensive tackle on a one-year, prove-it deal. He contributed career highs in sacks (seven) and pressures (41) before being injured and lost for the year in the playoff game against Las Vegas.
  • And they landed Riley Reiff, who settled the right tackle position before a late-season injury, for just $7.5 million.

This came on the heels of a 2020 free-agent period that featured Reader and Vonn Bell, true culture-changers at the center of a locker room chemistry universally lauded as one of the best in franchise history. The common target was players who’d won before. Been in the playoffs. Expected to compete for championships in a place that historically had not.

The Bengals weren’t perfect — injuries meant the three-year, $42 million contract for Trae Waynes in 2020 yielded almost no return on investment — but in an NFL world where free agency can be a coin flip, nearly every move kept coming up Bengals.

Those additions were given the runway to lead when veterans from the previous regime like Dunlap, A.J. Green, Geno Atkins, Giovani Bernard and Andy Dalton all moved on. Those players were respected, but the new acquisitions needed to understand it was their team now and not to defer to those who had been around for 10 years.

The culture Taylor, Tobin and their staffs envisioned suddenly began to emerge.

They found significant change-of-scenery bargains with Eli Apple and Tre Flowers solidifying pass coverage, with Apple creating the game-clinching interception against the Titans and game-altering tackle of Tyreek Hill before halftime against Kansas City. They traded struggling backup center Billy Price for B.J. Hill, who contributed seven sacks and a pick of Mahomes in the AFC Championship. Midseason adds like Vernon Hargreaves or Clay Johnston made a difference. And in the postseason they plucked defensive linemen Zack Kerr (Arizona) and Damion Square (Las Vegas) off the practice squads of eliminated teams.

 
 
B.J. Hill has been one of the lower-profile additions who have made a significant impact for the Bengals this season (Vincent Carchietta / USA Today)

They now possess a quarterback of the future who changes everything, a young core growing together and a quintet of weapons all under contract through 2023. They have more cap space next year than any playoff team — and are in the top five overall — to buoy a championship culture getting the most out of everyone walking through the door.

And Sunday they play in the Super Bowl.

They do not believe they’ve arrived and will be the first to admit there are holes to fill (offensive line, pass rush) and one massive game to win. But this roster that was rebuilt in two years by Taylor, Tobin and the quality-over-quantity staff is the envy of the league — at least this year.

“I no longer have a vote for Executive Of The Year because I am not a working executive, if I did, I would vote for Duke,” said Bill Polian, architect of the ’90s Bills, Peyton Manning’s Colts and author of the book Super Bowl Blueprints. “There’s absolutely no question about that.”

The Pro Football Writers of America gave their Executive of the Year Award to New England’s Bill Belichick. Like with most outside noise, the Bengals weren’t listening.

“We aren’t after any beauty contests,” Tobin said. “We are after the earned prize, and that’s the Super Bowl.”


‘As long as I feel like I’m involved in the process’

Polian recalls standing outside a team bus during Manning’s final season with the Colts, one in which he had a neck injury and the team went 2-14 after more than a decade of 10-plus win seasons. An assistant coach stopped him.

“He says, the last 13 years we’ve gotten on this bus knowing we got a 50 percent chance of winning no matter what, no matter who is playing, as long as 18 is playing we got a chance to win,” Polian said. “We don’t have the feeling anymore. That’s a lousy feeling. That’s what that guy does for your team.”

Indeed, employing Burrow as franchise quarterback and culture-changer on a rookie contract is the ultimate equalizer and covers up any number of organizational warts. But the process wasn’t as simple as drafting Burrow, shoving him into the locker room and watching the magic happen. The front office needed to understand how to engage and embrace him, especially at a position that wields so much power to dictate organizational moves or — as the Bengals learned in 2010 with Carson Palmer — demand a trade and leave it without recourse.

The degree of difficulty this offseason was even higher with offensive line issues and Burrow coming off a gnarly ACL injury.

The Bengals reconstructed the team while Burrow reconstructed his knee, but he was part of the great free-agent recruiting dinner at Jeff Ruby’s famous steakhouse, The Precinct, where his presence helped sell Reiff on Cincinnati while Awuzie ate a steak named after the quarterback and Hilton and the coaching staff felt the juice of the franchise’s pied piper.

 
 
Joe Burrow’s impact on the Bengals’ turnaround has been crucial not only on the field but also off of it. (Dustin Bradford / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Then, with Burrow’s remarkable connection with Chase weighed against Sewell, the Bengals proved they truly cared about their quarterback’s view of the critical decision.

“I didn’t go in and say, ‘Hey, I’d love to have Ja’Marr,'” Burrow said. “I think the organization did a really good job of making me feel like I was at least kept in the loop about the process. I was in here doing my rehab, and Duke would come down and talk to me, like, ‘Hey, watch this guy. Tell me what you think. Hey, we’re meeting with this guy. I’ll let you know how the meeting goes.’

“As quarterbacks across the league, you see some guys getting frustrated. I think all we want is to have a line of communication in those processes. For me personally, I don’t need to feel like I made the decision. You could go with my opinion or go without my opinion. Doesn’t matter to me as long as I feel like I’m involved in the process, and I think the organization did a great job of that.”

In the same way, Sarkisian recalls talking to Higgins about his teammates at Clemson. And Johnson about Wake Forest products with Bates. Asking Hubbard to be part of the pitch to former Ohio State free agents. And on and on.

Tapping every resource isn’t unique to the Bengals. It is the fabric of an old-school franchise, run in an old-school way, with a focus on family atmosphere and family trust of ownership as the guiding light. “It’s like one big family,” said Trey Brown, who joined in 2021 and interviewed for the Raiders’ GM job last month, “You are constantly having great dialogue.”

There’s a reason the speeches on Saturday night before playoff wins sound like this they do: “Lean on your brother,” Bell said of before the win in Tennessee. “We are all that we got. Just really believe in that, and go in as a family.”


‘I think there is some jealousy around the league’

The 2021 Bengals, from players to ownership, have nearly all been cast aside and forgotten, counted out and criticized.

Condescension about the small player personnel staff blend right in.

“I think it definitely is something that motivates you when you are grinding through tape and you are on the ninth long night going into a 10th long night where you are at work for 14-plus hours, it’s just more motivation,” Sarkisian said. “You kind of need your chip on your shoulders, just like with these players, too. It’s just another chip on the shoulder.”

The Bengals didn’t need 25 scouts to find the players that will take the field Sunday in Super Bowl 56. It doesn’t make them right or better than the Rams, who are polar opposites in almost every way. It just makes it their way.

“Six opinions doesn’t beat two if the two are correct and in unison and the six are all over the board,” Tobin said. “You can have less if you trust in the quality of opinion. A lot of time that streamlines the process. If I thought we needed more coverage, another opinion, we would add another opinion.”

Win or lose on Sunday, the Bengals are built for a long run. Cap room, star draft picks and, of course, Burrow, demand it. On the party plane back from beating Kansas City filled with cigars, drinks and expected celebration, there were players on iPads already buried in the game film.

Playoff teams 2022 cap space
OVERALL TEAM 2022 CAP SPACE
3rd
58.0M
10th
31.3M
14th
21.5M
15th
20.5M
18th
14.5M
20th
8.2M
21st
3.1M
22nd
(800K)
23rd
(4.5M)
24th
(5.6M)
26th
(7.3M)
28th
(13.8M)
30th
(21.7M)
31st
(50.8M)

“We want to build this thing for sustained success for the next five-to-10 years and in the short term we want to win the Super Bowl this year,” Potts said. “I just keep saying we have one more game left.”

In a copycat league, what does the rest of the league think about how the Bengals built a roster and situation as good as any in football, primed to return to this spot in coming years, with a sliver of the staff?

“I think there is some jealousy around the league and maybe a little bit of panic,” Johnson said. “Some owners might see what we are doing with six guys and say, ‘Geez, we don’t need 20 guys.’ I think there’s a little bit of around-the-league admiration for what we do, especially now that we are winning. Being out at these all-star games, getting congrats every time you walk through with team-issue clothes on. It’s awesome. I think at least in the NFL circle there is a lot of respect for us.”

But as Bengals scouts make the rounds at the Combine, pro days and all-star games this year, will they still hear the comments about the league’s smallest small staff?

“Uh, I’m sure we will,” Radicevic said, bluntly.

Only one difference. The comment might now be followed with a job inquiry.

“I think a lot of guys are going to want to get on with this now,” Radicevic said. “It’s going to be a fun place for a while.”

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2 hours ago, Jungletiger said:

A couple of random observations from that list:

 

1) I count no less than 8 University of Cincinnati players in the top 200.  As a UC fan, that is both impressive and scary.  Lots of high end talent to replace next year.  I guess many top tier schools say that, but atypical for UC.

 

2) Amazing how Central Michigan continues to pump out high caliber linemen year after year after year.

 

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21 minutes ago, esjbh2 said:

A couple of random observations from that list:

 

1) I count no less than 8 University of Cincinnati players in the top 200.  As a UC fan, that is both impressive and scary.  Lots of high end talent to replace next year.  I guess many top tier schools say that, but atypical for UC.

 

2) Amazing how Central Michigan continues to pump out high caliber linemen year after year after year.

 

Yes they have..

My favorite being Eric Ghiaciuc..😎

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19 minutes ago, claptonrocks said:

Yes they have..

My favorite being Eric Ghiaciuc..😎


+1 for spelling it correctly.

 

I used an acrostic…for why the Bengals were going to be good…whatever that year was.

 

Ghiaciuc

Has

Improved

And

Carson

Is

Under

Center

 

…it didn’t happen.

 

 

 

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20 minutes ago, HavePityPlease said:

 

Don't forget Adam Kieft, an OT from CM we took in the same draft, a guy who Hobknob pumped HAARRDDD... but he was never anything but injured.

Many players get drafted out of the MAC..

If the Power 5 added another conference would it be them?

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33 minutes ago, HavePityPlease said:

 

Don't forget Adam Kieft, an OT from CM we took in the same draft, a guy who Hobknob pumped HAARRDDD... but he was never anything but injured.


His combine measurable were outstanding, with a vertical jump (I want to say it was like 33-34 inches) exceeding some notable players at more athletic positions, and his shuttle times were unreal for a guy his size.  It was a real shame that he got injured.


Edit: just found some data.  Yes, 33” vertical.

https://nflcombineresults.com/playerpage.php?i=7168

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46 minutes ago, Jungletiger said:

I vaguely remember this being brought up

 

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/10026112-mmqb-multiple-nfl-evaluators-say-theres-not-a-single-starting-qb-in-2022-nfl-draft

 

MMQB: Multiple NFL Evaluators Say There's Not a Single Starting QB in 2022 NFL Draft

Gee, that sucks for Pisspuke. I'm heartbroken! ;)

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22 minutes ago, BlackJesus said:

My favorite OL so far in the draft is Iowa center Tyler Linderbaum. I think he's a future Pro Bowler. But I fear he will go before pick 15 and the Bengals won't have a chance at him.  

 

That's why I've been about got Zion Johnson.... but he may not be there at 31 either.

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