Locked On Bengals - Daily Podcast On The Cincinnati Bengals - BENGALS SQUAD SHOW: Players to AVOID in the NFL DRAFT?

Episode Date: April 14, 2026

The conversation for every team, including the Bengals, when it comes to the NFL Draft is who and what they're looking for. But what about who and what to avoid? That's just as important. Which players should the Bengals avoid in the NFL Draft? What should the Bengals NOT be looking for?  Last year the Bengals took a gamble by drafting Shemar Stewart in the first round. It didn't necessarily work out. But are the Bengals still in position this year to take a "risky" prospect?  Dax Hill's future suddenly doesn't look as clear as it did just this past weekend. Could that bring cornerback to the forefront with the 10th pick in the NFL Draft? Alex Frank, Jake Liscow, and Coach Art Valero discuss a recent piece written about Hill's future and what it means for the Bengals' cornerback room.  Finally, Orlando Brown Jr. didn't just negotiate his own contract extension. He also did something that reveals a lot about him and the Bengals' organization.    Everydayer Club If you never miss an episode, it’s time to make it official. Join the Locked On Everydayer Club and get ad-free audio, access to our members-only Discord, and more — all built for our most loyal fans. Click here to learn more and join your team’s community: https://lockedonpodcasts.com/everydayerclub Join the Locked On Bengals Insider Community! https://joinsubtext.com/lockedonbengals Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!  TurboTax This year you’re getting a major upgrade — Intuit TurboTax now has in-person locations nationwide. Visit http://TurboTax.com/local to book your appointment today.  FanDuel Today's episode is brought to you by FanDuel. Right now new customers can bet just five dollars and get two-hundred and fifty dollars in bonus bets if your first bet wins. Visit https://FANDUEL.COM to get started — Play Your Game.  Indeed Listeners of this show get a $75 Sponsored Job Credit to help give your job the premium placement it deserves at http://Indeed.com/podcast.  Rugiet Get 15% off your treatment → https://rugiet.com/lockedonnhl Rugiet. Performance medicine for men.  Rocket Money Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join at http://RocketMoney.com/LOCKEDON  FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I'm Alex Frank. We always hear about the players the Bengals should draft at this point of the offseason. But Jake, let's go. Are there players the Bengals shouldn't be looking at? The draft is a risk management exercise, and that's what the Bengals will be doing at the 10th pick. And Coach, the Bengals future cornerback, suddenly a hot topic going into the draft. Well, I sure hope it's not. For DAC's sake, can't lose too many of them. No, you cannot. This is the Bengals squad show. on lockdown Bengals and the locked on podcast network today it's the bangles squad everything Cincinnati bangles every week breaking down all the big hits and game changing plays from the queen city

the way only the locked on podcast network can from the jungle to the playoffs the bengles squad show starts now it is Tuesday april 14th welcome to the bangle squad show we are live on lockdown bangles and the Lockdown Podcast Network, the number one sports podcast network in America and the world, your team every day with Jake Lisco and coach Art Valero. I'm Alex Frank. Coach, I'm going to turn to you first. When you guys are in the war room, the room where it happens, when you're going through the pre-draft process and then the lead-up to the draft, what are you saying, okay, we need to look for players that have this so we don't draft them?

Like what red flags are you looking for in terms of what to avoid in the draft? Well, you know what? I think everybody has a number system and they also have a grading system. So as you start to look at the player, you may really like him. Great example is like Rob Garnkowski. He had a back. He said he was too laid back. So all of a sudden, he might have got a red dot on his medical.

And so you said, well, okay, let's find the next one. We don't want to deal with and put that kind of investment forward on somebody who is already injured or has shown signs of that. There's also on character. They get a number or a dot, a different color dot. And you look at those guys, how bright they are, you know, how do they love? I know it was really big for John. Do they love football or do they like football? And as coaches, through the interview process, you kind of find that out.

And it's not necessarily, we ask them a lot of questions and different types of questions to find out, okay, what makes them tick? Who's close to? Who is when it gets tough? Who are you going to turn to? Your buddy? Your family? or one of your former coaches, we try to find all of that out and really do as thorough a job as you can, really after only meeting them once or twice, to do that.

And so there is a number of criteria that they have to fall under to say, okay, he's a lock. Is he system friendly? Is he, you know, there is a slew of those kinds of evaluations that, that coaches and scouts have already done. And we'll talk about some more factors, I'm sure, but before we do, Coach, I want to ask you because it's not every day you get to ask somebody who's been in the combine meetings of these sorts of things.

They do Zoom meetings now. They used to bring players in or you go out to pro days. What was your favorite question? Because you know how prospects get asked every now and then, like, what's the weirdest question that you've been asked in the process? What was your favorite question to ask guys that maybe isn't your standard? run-of-the-mill football question.

Well, you know what? And I know in the past, there's been rumor of guys asking really off-the-wall questions. All of a sudden, it hits the internet or it hits the newspaper and it's a question. You know what? The thing that I really wanted them to do

is I wanted them to not only tell me about themselves, because here's the one bad thing that I always thought happened when you're doing the interview. They have been coached up so well by their agents that they have this answer that they're waiting to give it to you. And you want, try to throw them a curve. Well, when you say, hey, have you ever gotten in trouble? Okay, that can go a long way.

And you'll see whether they're hiding that drug bust or that drinking issue they had as a sophomore in high school. Have you ever posted anything that could end up coming back to embarrass the team? So, and you say, hey, you know what, have you ever been in any kind of trouble? Have you ever posted anything that would be derogatory towards anybody or anything? You already know, you know, one of the classic one was Maurice Claret. We all knew. everybody knew, you know, his antics. And we asked him, you know, asked him a question, have you ever been a disciplinary?

We started it with disciplinary problem on the team. Oh, no. Oh, well, shoot. Urban was all kinds of things, you know. So you can't hide it. And you just want to see how truthful they are. So it sounds like, Coach, from what you're saying, you want to avoid players that have had those kinds of issues or that you know of those kinds of issues that they had in college.

And when I think, when you think about this draft, and we're not trying to look at players disciplinary issues, but like aside from that, when it comes to on the field, is there a player? And this question is also, Jake, for both of you, is there a player in this draft where you go, I think that Bengals should stay away from him. Let's somebody, let's some other team deal with him and his flaws. The Bengals should stay away from him with all that they need. I think, well, you know what, I'm not that in tune with what the, I mean, I haven't interviewed

anybody. I haven't seen and had a chance to talk to them. I haven't seen the reports that the scouts are in up. So it would be hard for me to say, come out and say, you know, at X and Z, I'd stay away from that. You know, because what they put on film is really what you're grading as a position coach, what you're grading off of. When you have an opportunity to meet with them, now you want to find out what makes them

tick, you know, do you love football or do you like football? And if you like football, do you like what football gives you or are you all in? And when you're all in, you're all, you need to be all in and you can constantly bring that nugget back out to them as we go. Hey, you're a different cat than what I saw. So you kind of use all of that. That's that's why I'm very, very, very, stern on if you said it you said it now how whatever context you better explain that context to me because i don't want to go south on something when you just say a word and you know that that doesn't matter to me i want you to explain what you mean by that uh just so i know that there's trust because i have to trust that guy that he's going to be on time that he's not given his money back to the back to

ownership in terms of fines. I have to know, hey, can he learn? Can he be there? Can he be responsible? Can I trust him on fourth and one? Can I trust him on third and ten? Can I trust you to be where you're supposed to be? And that's the key. Now, each dog has a longer leash. You know, there's some really good ones that got a long leash. And there's some other ones. You've got to keep that thing. You've got to keep him at your side and you're not going to give them any leashes. It just depends on their ability. I think a lot of it comes down to things that we don't know before the draft as well. Dame Bruegler does a great job of getting some of the background on these guys, but typically where there are character issues, we don't necessarily hear a ton about them

until after the draft. Same for medical issues. You'll maybe hear about some things, but the majority of the details that teams dig up on players don't actually make it into the public sphere. And Ruben Bain's report this week is a great example of that, where Ali Connolly digs up this report, the couple of police reports on some reckless driving incidents for Ruben Bain, nothing seemed to come of it in the legal system. But when that was reported, the insider reaction, the guys that talk to teams regularly, or like, oh, yeah, teams have known about this. And they kind of made it seem like it wasn't a big deal. And that's probably true.

Teams probably have known about it, but the public didn't. And that's generally true for many, many character flags or medical flags or other flags. Football character is the other category. This coach is talking about do they love football or do they love what the football does for them? These are all things that teams have assessments on to a much higher, degree than we know publicly. So when you ask about, like, are there players out there that we should say the Bengals should avoid, it's not like there's, the most prominent recent example is probably

Jermaine Burton, right? Where there were known character questions for Jermaine Burton going into the draft. Nick Sabin was on the broadcast at the time and was discussing Jermaine Burton's need to get it together and stay focused in all the things. and then he had the issues that he had in Cincinnati that led to his release. And so sometimes you do hear about glaring things like that. There was another player last year who had an incident going off the field where he ended up getting into an altercation with some fans in the stands and things like that.

So like when it's on camera, when it's on TV, you see it. And when it's widely reported, you see it. But for the most part, you don't. And so a lot of the times that the very public stuff ends up really pushing players down. When it's severe in public, it leads to a guy like Jermaine Burton getting drafted in the third round instead of in the second round or maybe even late first round based on this pure football talent because there's the stuff that's public and then there's everything behind it too that the Bengals Scouts and front

office or coaches are gathering from their information network of college coaches and talking to Nick Saban about what's going on with Jermaine Burton, for example. They're talking to Ruben Bain's coach. in Miami about what what his football character is. So the way that the Bengals are going to do, I can't sit here and say, you shouldn't draft X, Y, Z player. We don't have that information that teams have right now.

But the way that the Bengals do it, I believe, is they'll have multiple grades. You'll have a football grade. You'll have a film grade. And then you'll have a medical grade. You'll have a character grade. And I think they might also have like a football character grade. I can't quite remember how exactly they break it down,

but they have grades on players, both for like on-field stuff, athletic stuff, and mental stuff. And then these other factors as well that will go into their final ranking of players. And so that's how the Bengals are going to approach it. Other teams will use other things as well. So when you talk about risk, maybe you're talking about, to say on Ruben Bain, for example,

you're talking about arm length. And some team might see arm length that say, you know what, sub 31 inch. charms, that means that we can't draft that player. We think that that is a recipe for failure in the NFL. Some teams might be very strict about something like that. Other teams might look at something like a wide receiver breakout age, which is what was the age of the player when he first accounted for X percent of his team's production

in college? And they might say, you know what, if that player didn't start dominating college level competition until he was 21 years old or 22 years old in the case of some of these six, I mean, there's 25-year-old players in this draft, right? So when the player, like, say, Akeem Mesidor, who had injuries and then wasn't really dominant at the college level until he was 24, 25 years old, 23, 24 years old, some teams might see that and say, you know what, he's a grown man going out there against 18-year-olds, and we're going to dock his draft score for that.

So every team's going to do it a little bit differently. There's going to be different analytics that teams use in different ways, different thresholds for tolerance for character concerns and different levels of background checks that all teams are going to do. And so from the outside looking in, really hard for us to say on character reasons or whatever you're talking about, like, why a player shouldn't be drafted, but teams are doing a ton of research on this stuff. That's a lot of what the pre-draft process is for teams. Coach, you know what? I tell you what, there's years ago, just like Jake was saying, the Raiders, when Mr. Davis was in charge, they always drafted

the Raider body? Did he have the physical stature and the intangibles in terms of the measurables? And that's who they drafted. Now, did they all turn out? I mean, the quarterback was a great example. The kid from LSU. Jamarcus.

They took a lot of those kinds of guys. Now, you look at it on the other hand, and the Bengals took some guys that were questionable, but Marvin thought he could. keep the rails in between the rails and they perform very, very well. So it just depends on the atmosphere, what you're willing to deal with, and how you think you can handle those players. One example real quick from this year's class. I'm just perusing the beast because Dane has this stuff.

And one of the players of Bengals did talk to, had pre-draft contact with. Chris Brosell, wide receiver from Tennessee, who Dane Brugler has a third to fourth round grade on 96th on his overall big board wide receiver 17 for him. And one of the notes from Dane is that he had an arrest for speeding in 2025 and driving with a suspended license. The charges were dismissed. But if the Bengals are having contact with a player, well, maybe they're asking about that incident if they feel like they need to get more information. And they have their own ways of gathering information around these things for sure. But if they want to talk directly to a player about it, that can be the reason for some of the business you see as well.

Yeah, I like how Dan Bruegler goes into, he does the background on the player in the beast, and then he goes into strengths and weaknesses and then gives his overall statement about that player. Jake, you mentioned Jermaine Burton two years ago with all the questions that he had. Obviously, the name that I go to was 2017 with Joe Mixing. We all knew about the off-the-field issues and the big incident that happened, obviously well-known in Oklahoma. The Bengals still took him in the second round. I'm not condoning at all what he did at Oklahoma.

To Mixon's credit, he was, for the most part, very, very good off the field here in Cincinnati for the seven years that he was here. So it turned out okay for the Bengals, but still, you think about those kinds of players and maybe stay away from them. Again, it's not just about their flaws on the field. It's also about their mental makeup coach, as you alluded to a lot in this segment, and their character that speaks maybe even more so than it does to their play on. on the field. Well, what coaches are trying to do is, and teams are trying to do is figure out

who's going to be set up for the most success at the NFL level, right? And if something like that is going to put a guy in jail, you know, you have a Henry Ruggs incident where you lose the player entirely to something tragic that happens in a bad mistake, I mean, that's worst case scenario, right? But maybe there's just distractions that prevent a player from reaching his full potential, or maybe there's that love of the game issue where, again, the assessment is, and this is very much an art and not a science for teams, that they think a player, because of football character, off the field character, or relationships or whatever it is, might end up with distractions or might not develop into the leader that you need him to be,

or whatever it is. And so, yeah, when I say that the draft is an exercise in risk management, that is definitely a big factor that teams are talking about, where we on the outside, the project that I do with Joe Goodberry and some other great folks who put together the draft spreadsheet every year is, you know, we're looking at it from an analytical lens. And some teams are using that to a greater or lesser degree and then definitely looking at all these other factors in the background of the players.

You know, it used to be a time when you were, you would also dig into their background as far as, because here you're giving a 22-year-old man, a kid, is he kid or is he a man? And now all of a sudden he comes in all this money. You know, they didn't have anything before. Now it's balanced itself out. Some six or seventh round picks are going to take a pay cut to come into the NFL. And they're looking for that second contract. So it's different now than it used to be.

Coach, was there one thing that when you were with Tampa Bay and when you were with Seattle, was there one big thing character-wise, mental makeup-wise, that you and your scouts and your staff really focused on and emphasized during the pre-draft process? You know what? In both of those situations, it was really, it was character more than anything. And that was a... Wow. That was an inherited thing from Rich McKay and from Tony Dungey.

You know, Tony knew that he could, if he took Warren, that whatever Warren's issue was before, he could make sure that it was right. Because it was very structured environment. And so they took a chance on him, and shoot he ended up being, he's a gold jacket wear. Yeah. You know, you look at Derek on the other side, and Derek was very, you know, Matter of fact, very business-like, you put those two together and now it's dynamic. And same thing with Seattle. Seattle, you know, he had known all of these people, all of the players that were coming up in the draft because he had recruited him prior.

So even the free agents, he had history with them and knew their background and knew how hungry they were. And so he went that way. Now, when I was with Tennessee and the Rams, they were different because you had very different guys where they looked at more numbers than they did actual character issues. Interesting. Interesting how teams kind of do it differently with Tampa Bay and Seattle, which you did in Tennessee and the Rams. And maybe that does separate some organizations from others. But again, what we talked about it, you just really do.

never know what you're ultimately getting when it comes to players that you draft in the NFL draft. Speaking of which, the Bengals took a gamble last year by drafting Shamar Stewart. I pick number 17. So could they again this year take a quote, risky prospect at number 10? We'll get into that conversation. And three players I'm deeming as high risk going into this year's NFL draft. That conversation next right here on the Bengals Squad show. Today's edition of the Bengals squad show is brought to you by TurboTax. It's tax time. Tax day is tomorrow. But for a lot of us, the old way of doing taxes is, well, a lot trying to book an appointment that's not the most convenient, sitting in a waiting room with a stack of papers, emailing back and forth, wondering if they really get your situation. Well, this year, you're getting a major upgrade with into a TurboTax. Now they have in-person locations nationwide. You can be face-to-face with a real tax expert and get your documents up.

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com. Bangles Squad, the twice a week long-in-form conversational supplement to the daily lockdown Bengals podcast with Jake Lisco and Coach Arfellero today. I'm Alex Frank. So I'm going to give you guys three players that I believe are high risk going into this year's NFL draft but the Bengals at number 10. And these three players could be picked in number 10. Two of them definitely could be one.

Maybe not. So those three players for me are Keldrick Falk, the edge rusher out of Auburn, Jamad McCoy, the corner from Tennessee, and Peter Woods, the Interior defensive lineman from Clemson. when I say those three names and associating them with high risk, do you guys agree with that? I think if you were to pick them at 10, yes. I think that realistically, as of today, only one of those guys is really in play for the Bengals at 10,

and that would be Drummond McCoy. I don't think that they're considering Peter Woods a 10. I don't think that they would pick Keldrick Falk at 10. Of course, could be wrong about that. it's still a week and a half away from the draft and we'll learn a little bit more probably in the next week or so and we'll set what we think the Bengals draft board is next week. I would be surprised if Kelchrick Folk was in play at 10,

maybe in a tradeback in the first round. I'd be surprised if Peter Woods is in play at 10. I think it would be a trade back into the 20s that would see the Bengals consider Peter Woods in the first round. But I do think Jermann McCoy in his ACL tear that he had last year is in play. in the top 10 and pick number 10. And certainly in the top 12, 15, if it's not the Bengals, and teams are going to have to figure out with reports from Todd McShay

that his agent is very annoying to deal with and the comparison to Shamar Stewart's agent last year and the holdout that they had there, that'll be a factor, I think, for teams in this process. And there's some speculation that he could have tested at the combine and chose not to and all of these things, but that he did manage to get through a workout at his pro day, I think is significant, but teams are going to have to do their homework on that ACL.

It's not the career altering procedure that it used to be, obviously. ACL reconstruction in the last 15 to 25 years has come an extremely long way, but sometimes you have cases like Eric Hall where the surgery in college wasn't done at the level it needed to be done. that did increase the risk for Eric Hall suffering another ACL injury and did lead to a protracted recovery time for him. And we hope he's okay this year. But that's up for teams to decide, right, what's going on with that ACL for McCoy? And I focus on him because I think that that is the one that will be in play at 10.

I simply think that Peter Woods both for production and for the way that he went about the draft process, I don't think that the Bengals are considering him at 10. I think he would be a great pick in the second round. And Keldrick Falk, because of the productivity comparisons to Shemar Stewart, I know that that's one that lives large in Bengals fans' heads. I think that he's simply just behind too many other guys, including probably both corners that could be picked 10th, for the Bengals to get to a scenario where realistically they're picking him 10

unless things go really off the rails and they feel that they're forced to and can't find a tradeback partner. And Shemamai, for me, I feel like it's a name that's emerging, as a potential landing spot for the Bengals at number 10. But coach, when you think about that he did not play last year with that ACL, how concerned does that make you about him if he's the Bengals number 10 pick on a defense that needs an instant jolt in a rebuild? You know what?

And Jake hit it. I would not consider those guys at this point at 10 because I think they need to hit 10 out of the park. however they do it. They need to hit it. And that will, one, it'll help their defense out. And two, it's going to make everybody in town the fan base feel warm and fuzzy about, okay, we waited an off season.

We didn't get maybe perhaps the free agency that we wanted. Now, there's somebody that we can root for for a long time. The injury, you know what? The one thing in the last segment I was thinking about, I would like to see, because I know it's not necessarily public, is the callback medicals from the combine and how they determine they would. Because there's that group of players that always get called back to Andy, excuse me, to get re-evaluated by different doctors. So, and then you're going to bring them in, and you're going to reevaluate them again. So I don't see any one of those three being at 10, but I do see them down the road. They can't trade back.

They can if they're still available because if they're your concern, there's somebody else's concern. So they may be there in round two or round three. The counter to not draft injurembergoy. Now, personally, I'm staying away from him. And when we talk about players to avoid, I'm personally staying away from Jermont McCoy. I'm not saying I don't think he's a great player from what we have seen from the tape that we have. He is. I mean, he was second team all SEC and All-American in 2024, led the team

in interceptions before, although, of course, the play I remember, and I was at this game, was when Jeremiah Smith burned him for a touchdown on the first possession in the playoff game in Columbus. So the counter to staying away from McCoy, though, is maybe because your defense was so bad last year, because you bottomed out defensively and really overall as a team, maybe you do need to take a player with some risk to kind of take to kind of take a big swing. Coach, I know you mentioned you got to hit it out of the park, but sometimes maybe there's a belief where you have to swing big and maybe kind of take a guy with some risk.

And if it pays off for you, we look back on it and say, wow, they took a gamble, but they took a proven player from what we have seen. And I was thinking about this this morning, five years ago, when they drafted Jamar Chase, the Bengals. He didn't even play football in 2020. He hadn't played football in about two years. And Jamar Chase is now arguably the best wide receiver in the NFL. So there is some justification to be made to drafting Jeremiah McCoy. But again, do you want to take a player who's coming off an ACL injury, some very serious injury?

That's where I kind of, you know, have some trepidation. if I'm Duke Tobin or anybody in the room where it happens, ultimately making the pick. Well, you know what you'd like, I mean, if you were a fly on the wall, did they give him or have they given him a D-grade as far as the medical is concerned? Everything else may be A or A or B. But if you get a de-grade, you're going to try to stay away from that kind of player. Now, in Jamar Chases, he wasn't a one-hit wonder. He had shown it over years that he was ascending as a football player, and that's why you go out and get him in the first round. You know, there's been some other guys that have had injury in the past, but you lose a lot because the game has to slow down for you again.

So you're work in progress as you go through camp and you continue to wait on when that player is going to show up. And if he's not a splashmaker right away, you know, you really start to question. And I don't think the Bengals can afford at this point in time. I mean, even with the DAC question that's coming up, he's a one. and you're ready to get rid of him? Wow. I mean, how many ones can you get rid of that didn't, that tells me he should have been a two or a three.

You wasted, or you didn't waste, but you invested a first round draft choice on him. Yeah. And, you know, some four years later, you're ready to depart from him after him bouncing all over the place, you know, in the secondary. So, you know, I think you need a proven, that's not a one-hit wonder and has played recently and you have seen film to make that choice in the first because you've got to nail it.

And, you know, there's more threes and fours playing in the National Football League than there are ones and twos. And as crazy as that sounds, some guys want it a little bit more. I mean, there's only 32 first round picks. And then there's double that for rounds, sometimes more than that, rounds three through four. Now, Jake, I go back to Jermann McCoy and something you brought up earlier. Keldrick Falk, there are, I mean, Dame Bruegler personally, he has three edge rushers ranked ahead of him. And guys that you're probably going to see get picked very, very high. Ruben Bain at three, he's the third rank.

David Bailey, number two ranked, and then Arvill Reese, who's probably going to be like the number two pick or something. So are the Bengals going to, are the Bengals going to be the position where they can draft Keltrick Falk? Maybe because he's still going to be there. Do I think they will? No, hopefully not at least. But when it comes to a guy like Jermann McCoy, the Bengals do draft him, how would you feel about it? I'd be okay with that. I think that's one of the picks that I'm relatively comfortable with at 10.

I think that I'm kind of going off of the idea that his knee is going to be okay. And there's risk there, but he got through the pro day workout and got through the pro day workout really well. He scores really, really well for all the analytical data that we track in the sheet that we we prepare every year. He has the sixth highest tied with Mansour Delane, incidentally, sixth highest film grade for any player that we have evaluations on this year. So our film guys love him. The athleticism is there. The analytic data is there. Really checks every box outside of, well, what about the health? And so where I'm doing some forecasting is certainly saying, well, he got through his pro day and he was really athletic at his pro day and maybe could have

tested at the combine. Maybe the injury flags aren't as glaring as they might be, but there's a lot of projection there. There's a lot of assumption there. But if you do assume that, then he's one of the outcomes that I think, if he lives up to what he showed on tape, I know that Jeremiah Smith game aside, he kind of gets everybody. So that's going to happen, I think. He's just nails against everybody else that year and has the ball production, has the physicality, has the size. And really like I said checks every other box and so he's a player that's number two on our board right now and so would he be the second guy on my board personally no but what that tells you is that medical's aside this is a player that checks boxes that has a very high chance of success in the

NFL because that's what our process does right this is something that I've been working on with Joe Gibberry since 2019 we take all of these factors that are correlated with NFL success and we use those as guardrails for the film. So the film is still at the heart of it. And then we say, okay, well, maybe we love a guy's film, but he never produced at a high enough level. Or he's not actually, he didn't actually test like a good athlete. And maybe he's actually a worse athlete than we thought,

or those sorts of things. And we use those guardrails, and they go in the other way too. Maybe you should be paying more attention to, you know, who's a player that's really low on consensus that we have high? like DeAngelo Pons is our 11th player. Dylan Theeman is actually the top player because all the profile is so strong. And again, I'm not saying I would take Dylan Thineman ahead of Caleb Downs. I would probably draft Caleb Downs first.

But the data that we gather that suggests what will happen to these players when they get to the NFL, it's not flawless, but has a pretty good track record, says Athenman probably will be pretty good in the NFL. Also says that about Caleb Downs, who's number five. So it's not like there's a big gap there, right? But the point I'm trying to make about McCoy is all the data that we've been tracking and that we pay attention to that we found is predictive in some way, shape, or form says that this guy's probably going to be pretty darn good in the NFL and has a pretty good chance of reaching his potential that he showed on film. And what he showed on film, again, Jeremiah Smith aside, is really, really good.

So there are a lot of scenarios where that one's okay with me, but it doesn't mean he's my first pick. It just means that's like, yeah, I can see that. being a player that I would consider and feel okay drafting at 10. I'd be excited about him. But again, and this is the ultimate risk management practice. If you take a guy like your mom, McCoy, like, yes, Jake, as you're saying, he might be very good. If the Bengals have him, they might really benefit from him.

But again, you just worry, is he going to be able to stay healthy? By the way, those measurements at his pro day, according to Dan Bruegler, 4-4 in the 40-yard dash, a 38 vertical jump and a 10-7 abroad jump. pretty good. You like seeing that. Again, it's just a matter of if he's going to be able to stay healthy. Up next, so there's a debate, and we've talked about it on this show between Rubin Bain and Caleb Downs. But it's overshadowing something that absolutely cannot linger, preferably past draft day. We'll get into what that exactly is coming up next right here on the Bengals Squad Show. This episode of the Bengals Squad Show is brought to you by Indeed. Workplace chaos,

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candidates who check all your boxes, less stress, less time, and more results. When you need the right person to cut through the chaos, this is a job for Indeed sponsor jobs. And listeners of the Bengals Squad show will get a $75 sponsor job credit to help you get your job the premium status it deserves at Indeed.com slash podcast. Just go to Indeed.com slash podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash podcast terms and conditions apply. Need to hire this is a job for indeed sponsored jobs. With Jake Liska and coach Arfallara Alex Frank back here on the Bengals Squad show. So there was a story that came out yesterday written by ESPN.com Bengals beatwriter Ben Baby.

And my big takeaway from it is Dax Hills future suddenly seems a little more mercantial. than we thought it was going to be coming into this off season. The big thing that I took away, well, I already said that. Another big thing is, so, Jay, correct me if I'm wrong, but he said Ben Baby reported that DJ Turner and Dax Hill, they're going to try to get contract extensions next off season, not this off season. Is that accurate?

I don't know that we know that. I think that the Bengals are going to be working on those extensions between now and training camp. That's typically the window where these get done would be late July, early August. I would be a little surprised if they just kind of punt on both. That would be surprising. But what wouldn't be surprising is the Bengals paying only one of the two players. They have a long history of having two good players at a position and paying one of them and letting the other depart and trying to backfill in the draft. And so it fits right in with the Dremont McCormon, discussion, any Mansour Delane discussion, if they draft one of those corners 10, I would

expect they would only get a deal done with one of those two corners. Even if they don't draft one of those corners at the 10th pick in the draft, wouldn't surprise me if they only get a deal done with one of the corners. I think they would like to keep both if the price is something that they're happy to pay for both, but could very well be a situation like we saw with Jonathan Joseph and Leon Hall and Mike Johnson and Carlos Dunlap, where they pay one. of the players and the other one departs. So you're saying it could happen for one of them this offseason,

that it's not automatically just going to be punted to next offseason. And I think especially. Yeah, I guess I need to read the report maybe and see what exactly Ben had to say. But my impression has been throughout this offseason that the Bengals were going to try to get some conversations at least happening on these deals this year. Good. Okay. But that aside, the one thing that the story that Ben Baby wrote,

really kind of got my wheels turning as, okay, if they're not going to sign Dax Hill, and especially if they don't sign DJ Turner, gosh forbid they let him go, which, again, I don't think it's going to happen. But when it comes to Dax Hill, here's a guy, and you brought it up in the last segment. They drafted him in the first round of 2022, the very first pick they made after they went to the Super Bowl, because they knew they were going to have to replace Jesse Bates because they themselves decided we're going to let him walk. They didn't have to, by the way. So they drafted Dax Hill, and they have not been able to permanently establish him as Jesse Bates' replacement.

So this Wheel of Fortune has kept spinning and spinning at safety and corner. Coach, why are we going to do that again? Why are we going to do that again, especially if they don't go corner in number 10? I feel like this could be where this is going, and I don't like it. I hate to say it, but it's because we've done it before. Oh, great. That's a comeback. quote, but no, you know what?

They don't want to keep, they don't want, they want continuity. And those two corners are pretty good. Now, if there's a great one sitting there at 10, right? Now you've got your answer, you can put Dax or JT in the slot. You can never have enough

good corners. And I think they're very, very versatile as that. In order to have a good team, you need to be able to pay those. And I can see them both and then moving him, moving one of them into the slot, and while the other one, the current draft pick, learns it,

learns the position, learns everything, because you can always have a backup. You know, you always got a contingency plan for if that guy does not prove out to be what you wanted him to be. And I think that, you know, I'm sure last year they probably did that with Stewart because they still had

Trey in the books. They didn't know it was going to go totally south, and then all of a sudden they both went south, and now you were left with nobody. I mean, not nobody, but not the quality of player you thought they were, and it takes a while for

young players to learn. So, you know what, I don't, I would think that, you know what, you can't keep them both because of what they're going to demand and what they're going to want. But that's when it goes back into, do you want to depart from one or both, then you're going to have to find creative ways to pay everybody. And if that's the paying other guys up front and restructure them,

then that's what they're going to have to, even though they haven't done it in the past, they're going to have to if they want to put together a well-rounded defense. And I think, you know, it starts with corner. Then it goes to the edges. Yeah. And I think that that's the important thing that from a defensive standpoint, you really look at, especially with the league being so pass-happy these days. And I think you need those guys on your football team.

Yeah. Why keep spinning the wheel of fortune and trying to get creative to replace guys who you're just going to let go when instead, oh, let's get creative. Let's spend some money. It may be going back to where we've used on this show a lot today, risk. But darn it if he's good, he deserves to be paid. You know what you have in him. It's like you always say, coach, you don't want to let a player out of the building. Because when you do that, he's going to go cash in somewhere else and your loss is another team's game.

So when it comes to DJ Turner, I have confidence eventually he's going to get extended. I hope it's this off season because that price tag is going to go up, up, up, up if the cornerback market gets reset. If Daxill ends up being a casualty, and this was our conversation on Friday with Joe Danim and a Fox 19, if Dax sales a casualty of not being able to pay everybody, okay, that's fine. And especially if you take a guy like Monsor Delane or Jemann McCoy at number two, or I'm sorry, at number 10 at corner, then okay, you got something to,

work with there. If you pair them with DJ Turner, then you're good. But just have a plan, know what you want to do and reward talent, make your job easier when it comes to free agency, when it comes to extending guys, when it comes to the draft. I mean, again, there are so many needs where maybe you do need to take a risk, but at the same time, if you have somebody in your building, pay him. Absolutely. Well, you know what this. Say you get DJ paid this off season. That tells Dax that you know what, you're not paying for the Bengals contract. You're paying for somebody else's contract. And there's a good chance you're going to make more money. And that's what you're paying. That's what you're playing for. So you're going to get better play

out of him only because of through attrition. You know, he's trying to put it on tape for for the other 31 teams, especially and everybody needs good corners or good secondary players. And so that's what he's playing for. Is he going to be upset? Yeah. But he knows it's now in his hands and not management's hands. So I just feel like the more I read about what the Bengals could do at corner, it makes me think, yeah, they're going to prioritize that position, which at first when I heard about that. that in the lead up to the draft, I was kind of puzzled.

Like, okay, you got DJ Turner, you have Dax Hill, even though maybe you don't. Jalen Davis was re-signed. You still have Josh Newton. I don't know what he is yet. He's been in the league for two years, though. It just makes me wonder, Jake, if Dax Hill, if this could be coming up, his final season with the fangles. And yet here's a guy who was drafted to be Jesse Bance's replacement. And now we're talking about him,

a corner. Like this is, this just speaks to the, the atrocity that has been at safety for this team since Jesse Bates has left. Yeah, I mean, they've struggled to replace Jesse Bates, no doubt.

I think they've, they've had plans. The plans have failed. Sometimes that happens. And maybe they need to go look at what their process is, because we've seen that happen in the past, where they do what seems smart on paper.

They anticipate aging and more expensive. veterans that they need to replace because part of being a successful team in the NFL is you have to have cost-controlled talent on your team. The Seattle Seahawks, the Los Angeles Rams, two teams that have a ton of cheap rookie contract success right now. And that pushed them forward in the NFC last year. And so you can't just do it by paying guys. You have to be able to draft well. You have to sometimes anticipate players that you won't be able to pay and players that might walk. And so the Bengals have done this many times in the past where, you know, they drafted Cedricobwey and Jake Fisher, Andrew Whitworth eventually departs.

They tried with Jesse Bates. They've done this many, many times where that's a smart thing to do if you can do it. If you can draft players at positions where you're going to have a need in the future, maybe you can get cheaper, maybe even better there. with a prospect that you're picking 10th overall. You would expect that player to be better than a guy picked at the end of the first round or in the second round. Well, then sometimes that's a move that really ends up working out.

And so it's always a balance between paying players that are now demanding, commanding, I should say, veteran, you know, starting level money in the NFL versus the cost-controlled rookie deal and balancing all of that to amass as much talent that is really the most cohesive talent that you can get onto your team. It's the constant challenge for NFL front offices, right? Because when you pay everybody and you do all the restructures, and I'm not asking the Bengals to be the Eagles, I'm asking them to be somewhere between the Bengals and the Eagles, right,

just to rehash that. But the Eagles do have players that have been quite good for them that end up hitting the market because they do end up feeling some cap crunch at times. And then it's a process of determining, as best you can, which are the best players for us, who are the players that we can replace, and how good are we doing

and identifying those replacements and drafting them. And that's why the draft is always going to be pivotal to success in the NFL, because when you have, go look at the Rams Pukukkahra draft, and they had like 20 picks or whatever it was, when you have all those picks,

and you end up getting 10 starter or better level players out of one draft class, that's pretty crazy. And a huge advantage to have when you have all that cheap labor in the NFL doing things at a much above market rate. And that's got to be part of the strategy for the Bengals here as well as figuring out where they can find those advantages. But in order to do that, you have to capitalize on the draft and really hit on draft picks and develop those players into roles that make sense for them.

And again, that's the challenge of the draft. That's a challenge at this time of year and all the risk management and roster management that you have to balance when you're in charge. of putting together a roster. You know, when the Bengals went to the Super Bowl in 21, so Jesse Bates and his contract negotiations and that saga, that started before Borough Chase and Higgins and that offense took off the way they did in 21. That was already an issue. The Bengals, to their credit, have done a good job of having tremendous continuity with elite

offensive talent on that side of the ball. Burrow, Chase, Higgins, all got kind of. contract extensions. The problem is, while that is their identity and it's a good identity, unfortunately, they have not been able to complement that side because of spinning their wheels on defense. And that unfortunately has cost them three years of the prime of Boroughed Jason Higgins. That cannot continue. So you better have a decision coach of what you're going to do with Daxil. Are you going to extend them as Jake said if the price is there? And if you're not, are you going to adequately address that position in the draft?

Do you go Delano McCoy in the first round? And then as our good friend Paul Dana Jr. and the athletic, he thinks the Bengals could also take Keontes Scott, the corner out in Miami, the slot corner from Miami in round two. Do you double up a corner to ensure, hey, we are anticipating extending Turner, maybe not so much to Axe Hill, but look at these guys we have waiting in the wings.

we're going to develop them this offseason while Dax is still in the building to help them. That's the other important note is a corner depth is tested every year. And when you talk about Kianti Scott or Dax or some of these other players, you're talking about different positions at times too. You've got Dax who's played outside, played inside, played safety, can play all over the place, played in that overhang role in Michigan, which is what Kianti Scott would probably be. And so both outside corner depth, you're going to have your,

corner four playing just about every year in meaningful snaps and needing that slot defender who can bring you a little bit more, not to stick anything away from Jalen Davis, great depth piece, great special teams player, but a guy that should be challenged as a starter. And that's one of the reasons that we're talking about corners, is both depth and the slot position. Because outside of Dax and DJ, there's okay like corner five and slot two on the roster, but you would like to do a little bit better behind those guys. Coach, I may go back to a reference that we talked about on this show.

You think of a chessboard, right? You got your outside pieces, your rooks. Like those are your receivers. Like, who do you want on the other side? Like, let's say this is the opponent's receivers. You've got to have something on your side to stop them from taking the top off your defense. That's where the Bengals, they have to prioritize corner. And the piece that I read yesterday, it shows that they have not really done that

to the degree that maybe Bengals fans have wanted this front office to, this draft could totally change that if they have a plan. Well, you know what, and you look at it because I know that in the past few programs that we've had, we started inside, right, defensive line-wise. Everything's on defense. We started inside. And then we went to, okay, linebacker, okay, Now we're in the secondary thinking about corners.

It'd be interesting to see where are they really paying attention to corner at this point in time? Because that's what they think will be available, the best available defender. Or are they still open for the other guys, the other positional players, they can really come in and make an impact to help? So you know what? None of us are in their room. I'm sure they have a plan. Do they have a contingency plan? And if that's the case, will it work itself out through the process of during the season when they settle on this plan? Because they're going to come out of the draft feeling like they've answered a lot of questions. Now it's a matter of them plan. And it's going to be very, very interesting, wherever they go to find out, hey, who is that splash player that they got at 10 or they got at 42 and that they know is going to come in there and help them out in significant ways to push them to be in that top 15 or above defensive unit that Joe Burrell, personally, he needs.

Yeah. Again, with all the needs that you have, you really can't miss in this draft. But you better hit it out of the park, as you said, coach, because this is a pivotal year for the organization. Up next, Orlando Brown Jr. We're going to the offensive side of the box. We've been talking defense, defense, defense on the show. But Orlando Brown Jr. did something really cool at the end of the season. And you know what?

It's worth talking about on this show. We'll get into that conversation next right here on the Bengals Squad Show. This episode of the Bengals Squad Show is brought to you by a fan duel. The NBA playoffs are here. They start Saturday. The SOFI NBA playing tournament starts tonight on Prime Video. Every possession is going to matter. Every matchup is magnified.

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It just makes the entire playoff experience more engaging from start to finish. So head to fanduel.com to get started. Fandull, play your game. Yesterday on the Up and Adams show, which speaking to Van Duel is part of it, Kay Adams, who is beloved amongst Houday Nation, was talking with Orlando Brown Jr., who not only did he negotiate his contract extension himself. He also,

and off topic he got off track for a minute, but he also wrote a letter to Mike Brown after the season expressing how much he wanted to be here. And when I heard that, it made me think, you know, if there's anything that's happened so far this offseason, it's the fact that players that have expressed

that they have wanted to be here, they have been rewarded with contract extensions. Dalton Reisner and now Orlando Brown Jr. So at the very least, regardless of the talent that they've acquired or lack thereof or maybe still in need of, the Bengals Front Office has paid guys who have wanted to want to be here. And that stuff does matter, especially with Orlando Brown Jr. It does. You know what?

I mean, you always want guys in the building that absolutely are willing to put up with whatever, but they find this is home. and they find the team ascending like they want to, or if you're an older player, you don't want to walk because you really don't know if anybody else is going to pay you. So the one thing is, it's great that those players put themselves out there to the owner. And you know what? It sounds like Mr. Brown is very sentimental about having guys, his guys,

in the building for leadership purposes and everything else. Now it's a matter of finding more like that. Yeah. Jake, when you think of Orlando Brown Jr., I know he's getting older. He's had his injury since he's been here in Cincinnati. How much do you think he has left in him? I mean, he signed a two-year extension. It's going to take him through the 28 season.

How much do you think Orlando Brown Jr. has left? Yeah, just looking at that deal, you could call it a one-year extension. mentioned like most of these with a one-year team option at the end. If the Bengals decide after 2027 that Orlando has fallen off in terms of quality of play, they can get out of that contract, say $14 million in cap and cash in 2028. So if it doesn't work out in 28, pretty easy out for the Bengals, right? But Orlando Brown is still perfectly cromulent?

Yeah, that's the word. Perfectly fine left tackle. NFL. He struggles with Miles Garrett, who doesn't. Every now and then will be guys to give him a hard time. But for the most part, he's doing his job and is a significant leader, I think, in the locker room. Loves being in Cincinnati. And as you've talked about, that counts for something. I think that he gets a bit of a harsh rap sometimes from fans, but he's getting paid, what, $16 million per year, 17th out of all left tackles in the NFL. That seems fairly appropriate for what he's given you.

He's an average to above average left tackle in the NFL, certainly a guy that is a starter. And when you extend him for another year, the thing that that really did for me is it kind of signaled, there won't be a premium pick used on a tackle in this year's draft. And there isn't really a great fit. It's Monroe Freeling from Georgia's only. real left tackle that would be considered in the first round in this draft.

There are other guys that played tackle in college that are either right tackles or might have to kick inside at the NFL level. So the extension for Orlando Brown, having Amarious Swims on the roster, who, by the way, was a risky pick going back to the risky pick conversation with how little he played in college. But the tape he put out there, much like Drummond McCoy, was really good when he was on the field. He's been on the field for the most part for the Bengals and has certainly ascended and has

kind of hit that normal trajectory that you expect for a good tackle to hit in year two and hopefully continues it in year three. But when you have both of those guys on the roster, there might be a look late day two, early day three, maybe even late day three at a developmental tackle, somebody who they can try to mold into a future starter, somebody who could potentially be a swing tackle this year. But the big thing that that told me is that there's unlikely to be a premium investment in the tackle position this year for the bankers. Yeah, because you have two guys right now on both sides of your offensive line, Orlando Brown Jr. and Amaris Mims, who are more than adequate still.

And Orlando Brown Jr., yes, he does struggle against premier pass rushers, against Miles Garrett. We all know that. But for the most far, you know what you're getting and what you're getting is very good. And you're also, I mean, Amarius Mims coaches Jake alluded to risky pick in 2004. But ever since he slid in a start at right tackle, he has just gotten better and better and better. and now you think your interior is solid with Don Reisner and Ted Karris and Dylan Fairchild, who they took last year, and look at what he did. So suddenly you look at your offensive line that was in need for so many years. You're good there, even with Orlando Brown junior aging. Yep, you know what, and I tell you what, the great thing about Orlando Brown is, you know,

and everybody's going to have their struggles against Miles Garrett. he knows the other one that he's playing against in Baltimore twice a year. And he knows very, very well. And so, you know, he went many a practice rep, many a one-on-one rep. So, you know what? I think it was a great choice because you had no one to replace him that was that good. What do you remember most about Orlando Brown Sr. when he was playing? Oh, Zeus, tremendous player.

Big, physical, very, very bright until he took the flag in the eye. I think it was good. I mean, very good. That was a very unfortunate moment that happened to him in his career. Good stuff today, great stuff today. Jake Liscoe, coach Art Valero, Alex Frank with you on Bengals Squad on this Tuesday, April 14th. Coach, you and I are back on Friday, April 17th. Mike Santagana will join us as we.

We roll into less than one week from the NFL draft. We have just two shows remaining until our live show during the NFL draft live edition of the Bengals squad show. Coach, you and I will be talking with Bengals fans and what they have to say about the draft and maybe our show and so much more of that on Thursday night, April the 23rd. Jake Liskill, you are back with James Rapine the rest of this week on lockdown Bengals. Coach, you and I are back on Friday. this has been the Bengals Squad show right here on lockdown Bengals and the Lockdown Podcast Network, the number one sports podcast network in America and the world, your team every day. For Jake Lisco at Jake Lisco for Coach Arfellaro, current running backs coach of the UFL's Orlando Storm and Super Bowl 37 champion with the 2002 Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

I'm Alex Frank and Frankie underscore Natty. Have a great rest of your week and we will talk to you right here on Friday afternoon on the Bengals Squad show.