Locked On Bengals - Daily Podcast On The Cincinnati Bengals - SAFETY UPGRADE! Bengals Add Bryan Cook to Solidify Secondary

Starting point is 00:00:00 It took a few hours, but the Cincinnati Bengals have made their first splash into free agency, bringing in a top safety. Brian Cook, back to Cincinnati. You are Locked on Bengals, your daily Cincinnati Bengals podcast. Part of the Locked on Podcast Network, your team every day. What up, Bengals fans, and welcome to another episode of the Lockdown Bengals podcast, part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day, and the number one sports podcast network in the land.

Starting point is 00:00:36 He's James Rapine. I'm Jake Liscoe, and today we are here to talk to you about the Bengals making a signing on day one of the legal negotiating period as the new league year is just around the corner and free agency is underway. They make a splash. They go get a starting safety. They finally spend some real money at the position, James Rapine. And while the everydayers knew that we will be doing multiple episodes today, if they've

Starting point is 00:01:00 been listening to us, this will be our first foray into cover. the Bengals making some moves to acquire talent. And they bring a Cincinnati bearcat back to Cincinnati to play for the Cincinnati Bengals as you've got your UC Bearcats hat on, James. And he was our consensus top safety in our free agent tier sheet that you, me, Joe Goodberry, Mike Santagina put together. We all had him ranked as the top safety this year. And the Bengals strike and get the deal done with Cook four years, just, sorry, three years,

Starting point is 00:01:33 just over $40 million for Brian Cook to come play safety for the Cincinnati Bengals. Yeah, huge, huge. I literally just got a text from someone in the building like, hey, did you see the news? Because that person knew, as I was looking down, if you were watching on YouTube, I was looking down at that message because obviously everything is fluid this time of year. And I made it very clear, very known. And I'm not a big like, oh, well, you got to have the Bearcat guy. Like how many times did we actually talk about Kobe Bryant?

Starting point is 00:02:03 Not many. I didn't lose any sleep when he agreed to that deal with the bears. But from the jump, Brian Cook, feels like the guy, feels like that stabilizer, feels like that person that can come in. Obviously, the Cincinnati ties are great. But you're talking about a guy that's played in a bunch of big games that is just stabilizing from a maturity standpoint, from playing in big game standpoint, from a knowing where he needs to be from a, oh, I'm going to knock the snod out of you,

Starting point is 00:02:31 because that's what safeties do. Like, he will do that. He is physical. He is a willing hitter. So there's a lot to like about Brian Cook. I love this. There isn't anything I don't like about it. There's a reason he was the top safety in our sheets.

Starting point is 00:02:46 And for me, when you go the route that Bengals have gone the past couple of years with safety, it's like, man, can you just fix it? Like, maybe Brian Cook isn't going to be an all pro during this three-year contract. But can he just fix the safety issues and help be the answer, the solution to these issues? And I certainly believe that. I think that's why we all had him. I believe we all had him as a two in our tier list of free agents, which was the highest of any safety.

Starting point is 00:03:20 So yeah, I'm excited. I threw the bear cats hat on full disclosure about 10 seconds before we started recording. I did my Cincinnati Bengals talk video without it. And I thought about it. I was like, damn, I need to put my. hat on in support because it's great and I do want to point this out. I keep highlighting this because I think it's really cool. Everyone knows about the Bengals and the Chiefs. Well, as far as I'm concerned, as far as I know, Brian Cook has kept that downtown Cincinnati skyline as his cover photo, as his

Starting point is 00:03:49 header on X throughout his time in Kansas City. So two Super Bowl rings in Kansas City. Hopefully he can bring some of that magic back to his hometown. Yeah, it fits a lot of things that Bengals are looking for we'll talk a little bit about what brian cook does why this signing makes so much sense as we wrap up the the quick hitter we have and we'll come back later today to do our full recap of everything the bengals have done this might not be the only move the bengals make today as they were supposedly in on john franklin meyers who has ended up in tennessee instead and so in anticipation of additional action potentially happening today we wanted to get out a quick hitter on brian cook and we'll recap the day a little bit later tonight and get this out to you

Starting point is 00:04:30 as soon as we can, but just over $13 million per year, $13.4 million per year over a three-year deal with $18 million in year one. I wouldn't anticipate huge guarantees here for Brian Cook. They would have been reported in that upfront report about this deal being agreed to, which is what we talked about yesterday, James, which was if Brian Cook is going to take a Cincinnati friendly deal, it will be because he agrees to the Bengals structure. And I think that is what's happened here. You probably have a pretty decent signing bonus for Brian Cook to push that year one cash flow up. He'll get almost half of the money in this contract in the next calendar year.

Starting point is 00:05:11 And so that's great for him from a cash flow perspective. But what's more important is what he's going to do for the Bengals on the field. You talked about a lot of the things from a stabilizing point of view and all of the things that he can do to bring the floor of this defense up and be that better in presence. And obviously he has all of that playoff experience, which is something that I'm sure. the Bengals and Al Golden absolutely love adding to their secondary in Brian Cook. So we'll wrap up by talking about the things that Brian Cook is going to do to elevate this defense in just a minute here coming up next. Today's show is brought you by Indeed. Indeed is where you need to go, whether you're looking for a safety that's going to be a stabilizing presence or you're looking for that person in the office that's going to calm the waters and the workplace chaos. make sure that you hit those deadlines on time.

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Starting point is 00:07:59 $20 off your first purchases of tickets, download game time today. Jake, obviously I hit on a lot of the things that was made it so attractive for me from a Brian Cook standpoint and its stability. It really, that would be the theme. That would be the word when you looked at Brian Cook, what he would bring to the Bengals when you were going through the free agency sheet, we both landed on a two, which is really good high end free agent that the Bengals just landed. Why did you give him tier two?

Starting point is 00:08:31 What stood out? why is he going to fix or help fix this Bengals defense? Well, we think back to when the Bengals signed Gino Stone, right? And why we saw Gino Stone is a good fit at the time. We saw him make plays against the Bengals, obviously, that year. We saw him as a guy that was going to fix the issues they had in the back end in coverage, and they had issues in coverage. And obviously, the fit wasn't there.

Starting point is 00:08:49 That's part of why I was wary of Kobe Bryant, not to besmirch another bear cat here as we're talking up Brian Cook today, but I was wary of Kobe Bryant because he's coming from Mike McDonald's system. But now we're talking about a different problem where there's still some coverage issues in the back end that need to be ironed out. Kobe Bryant needs to know what his job is and executed at a high level. And I think he's done a lot of very complex things at the back end of a Steve Spagnolo defense. So that shouldn't be new to him if they need to do more complexity in the back end. And he should be able to help get people lined up in the right place because of that experience.

Starting point is 00:09:21 But the problem that we needed to solve was tackling. The Bengals had this huge tackling problem last year and really for the last two years. and it is accentuated in a big way by Gino Stone. Gino Stone we knew wouldn't be a great tackler, but took steps back as a tackler as you're shrugging your shoulders, showing off how Gino's Tom misses tackles. That's the tackle. He would shrug his shoulders trying to tackle.

Starting point is 00:09:43 He's just doing shoulder shrugs. Go ahead. Geno Stone has had two week periods where he's missed five tackles in back-to-back weeks a number of times in his Bengals career. Guess how many tackles Brian Cook missed in 2025? Five. Five tackles is what Brian Cook missed. 2025. That takes two games for Gino Stone's

Starting point is 00:10:02 he's missed 11 tackles in two years. Gino Stone has had zero full seasons that he's played where he's missed 11 or fewer tackles missing 17, 17 and 23 in the last three years individually. So there are a couple of things here, right? The experience, the leadership, the savviness as a veteran. We'll find out if he took a step in coverage last year where his coverage grade from pro football focus really jumped up. He had more past breakups than he had had in the prior three years combined last year.

Starting point is 00:10:37 But the tackling improvement, the run defense improvement, the versatility, the ability to kind of line up in a number of different spots, it really fits to me what the Bengals were looking for here. And the tackling is hard to understate how much of a very. a breath of fresh air, it will be if Brian Cook reprises his last two years of tackling performance and continues to miss tackles at an infrequent rate. Yeah, I think that's it. Like when I say stabilizing, we're saying it in different ways.

Starting point is 00:11:11 Yeah. But stabilizing means doing what the hell you're supposed to do, right? Exactly. Yeah. Tackle. You better be able to tackle and hit. Like I need you to do that. Like it's such a simple thing.

Starting point is 00:11:23 And that's why like going into that, I think back to the Patriots week when Gino Stone, like had it like the game of his, what was the Patriots game, I believe, just played really, really well. And we were just all over him. Like, it's the most basic thing in the world. Brian Cook is going to do that. He's going to do those things. And you're right.

Starting point is 00:11:39 I love that you brought up the Steve Spagnolo element here. That experience playing for him, learning and grow. I mean, getting better and better each year, obviously coming off of his best season. You want to talk about a force multiplier? someone that's been there done that for big teams, big games, Super Bowls with arguably the best defensive coordinator in the NFL, one of the best defensive minds on the planet. Like there's a lot of reasons to like this. Number one, though, is the most simple thing. Tackling.

Starting point is 00:12:11 And he does it at a really, really high level. Yeah, I think that is the first few lines that are selling us on Brian Cook. Like the tackling track record for Brian Cook in the last couple of years. fantastic. And our guy Brad Spielberger pointing out, man, that Cincinnati 20-22 draft blast. Sauce Gardner, Alex Pierce, Brian Cook, Kobe Bryant. They were studs. Yeah, I mean, studs. And they went to the college football playoff. Yeah. Desmond Ritter knew how to throw. Yeah. They would have had a shot against

Starting point is 00:12:41 Bama, for real. Pretty incredible. Pretty incredible for that year of Cincinnati college football. Bill Barnwell, with the tweet that I like here and we'll wrap up here. The bank was going for Gino Stone to Brian Cook in terms of tackling might be the biggest upgrade any team has made at any one individual thing all day. Does this count as aggression, James? There was a crash out starting.

Starting point is 00:13:04 I was live streaming as this happened. There's a crash out starting. Because the John Franklin Myers landed in Tennessee. Didn't we tell people he was probably going to Tennessee? Like I feel like that was not a like very secret thing. No, it was the best that worst kept secret at the combine. like that that was going to happen in the Bengals tried it's hard it's hard sometimes so far as we're recording this and maybe Addafe OA gets signed but so far there's been no one that's

Starting point is 00:13:33 signed that I didn't expect to sign elsewhere and Brian Cook was one that I was hoping ended up in Cincinnati so let's just let's see let's see what they do there's still plenty to be done yeah we'll see what the next few hours bring we'll be back with you here with another quick hitter if the Bengals make another move before this evening and if they don't. Well, we'll be back with you this evening to talk about the moves they did or did not make. And we'll get into more of some of the guys that have signed elsewhere and where the Bengals should or should not have been active on some of those things. And if you're with us on the Lockdown Bengals Insider Group, thank you. They found out about it without having to check social media

Starting point is 00:14:07 at join subtext.com slash lockdown Bengals where we will be keeping you updated all day, all week, and really forever. That is not just a free agency subscription option that is out there for you. But until next time, that's going to do for this episode of the Lockdown Bengals podcast. Thanks for listening, Ho day and have a good.

Locked On Bengals - Daily Podcast On The Cincinnati Bengals - SAFETY UPGRADE! Bengals Add Bryan Cook to Solidify Secondary

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