The following takes place between six pm and seven pm.
You want answers? I think I'm entitled, Joe, what answer the truth?
You can't handle the truth?
Truth? Truth?
All right, let's get right to it. No time to waste. Welcome in rnail Carry or Sports Talk presented by Kelsey Chevrolet on Lance McAllister Man, I'm glad you were here. Buckle up, we gotta go. We've got basketball coming up. Bottom of the hour. My first guest tonight covers the Bengals and Reds for Charlie's Chalkboard. Get an email to you daily for free through Substack. Read him at Fox nineteen dot com. He's a regular contributor for Fox nineteen
now through their digital shows. That must mean we are talking with Charlie Goldsmith and Charlie. I wonder what if anything caught your eye in Mike Brown's statement yesterday.
It was the the nouns and the use of they and there. I guess those would be the pronouns. It's only the second time, kind of during this modern era of Bengals football, that Mike has released a statement like this. He had done press conferences and such earlier in his tenure, but the first example of this was twenty twenty, were coming off, you know, the Joe Burrow injury season. Mike said, Dak needs to do better. You know, we trust Zach and Duke Copin, who is kind of a face of
the front office at the time wasn't even mentioned. But then following three or four straight off seasons that have been you know, nowhere near productive enough. I blame roster construction personally much more than coaching on how the Bengals are where they are right now. Following all of that, Mike Brown named Duke. He said Zack and Duke, he
said they, he said, they're putting them together. Was really something we've never seen before between a head coach and a personnel guy whose last name wasn't Brown in the history of the Bengals organization.
Charlie, I thought you made a great point in one of your recent like chalkboards, mentioning how it will be interesting to see how outside free agents view this situation compared to how they viewed it maybe a couple of years ago.
Explain, so they're running it back with the same coaching staff, obviously, the same front office, and they're betting on the same people coming up with different results. And now, what you know, we think of that, what you know, the guys in
the locker room think of that. That doesn't even matter as much as what the free agents they're going to try to sign and March think of that because at the end of the day, while money certainly talks, We've seen Orlando Brown, Hayden Hurst, and Mike Esicki, Alex Kappa, I can name others some very very obvious examples to I know just by knowing those guys signed with Cincinnati and put a concrete, truth, angible value in the ability
to compete for championships. In some ways, they were ring chasers, and the Bengals had that benefit of a doubt. The Bengals, we all know, they know need multiple free agents who can impact their defense, and some of them will certainly be able to win over with a nice offer, But then some of them there's gonna need to be that tiebreaker and do the free agents on the market still believe in what they see externally going on in Cincinnati.
It will be a case by case basis, but I think that's the million dollar questions.
The theme will certainly be of this offseason fixing the defense. I think you could make a case and and argue players on all three levels, but is there a priority spot in your mind that needs to be addressed.
You knowing these guys and how they view football, and how they game plan for opposing teams at an offense, how they game plan for defenses, it always starts with the defensive front and the pass rush. And over the last you could argue even it was the weakness of the twenty twenty one and twenty twenty two Bengals is while Trey Henderson was awesome, and while Sam Hubbard won an incredible Bengals career, really aside from those guys and twenty twenty one BJ Hill, you weren't getting enough pass
rush across the rest of the unit. And that's something that when you look at the teams that give the Bengals the most trouble, they do it with their defensive lines. It's literally the quickest way to impact the quarterback in the most straightforward way. So I see the Bengals being most aggressive there. I see their biggest need even at defensive end, even over something like free safety, and I think they'll finally try to get that pass rushing defensive tackle as well.
I think everybody understands the importance of the off season. I think you raise another great point. A year ago in the off season, they weren't very good at multitasking as an organization, were they.
Yeah, the Bengals kind of had their thesis statement yesterday, you know was Dach Taylor's press conference. He said, the big thing this year will be year two of Al. And he said the scouts know, and Duke knows, and I know, and we all have an idea of who
we are and what we're about. But that idea kind of just raises another question, which was you know you at that much of a disadv at that much of a disadvantage in year one of Olt, Like you know, where was the delayed process of getting this coaching stat together to how I was in the college football playoffs? And then you had to rebuild a staff many of them had never worked together, most of whom who've never worked together before. Only Al had worked with the Bengals before.
Among the additions, did it take that long and hamper your ability to be as prepared as you needed to be for a free agency? Boy, that's not a good thing for an organization to have the case about it so you know, the answer to what will be better this year also raises the question of, man, what was going on last year?
Charlie, Is there something in particular that you are interested to hear Duke Tobin address on Friday?
My biggest question, and I'm going to try to figure out the best way to phrase this, is kind of why is Duke doing this? No matter what it is, whether it's a pass rush scheme or a special teams personnel grouping, I always look for what's happening that we've never seen before that's interesting to me, And you know, obviously was Paul Brown. Paul Brown wasn't going to put out a statement about himself speaking as the owner about himself as the GM. Mike Brown wasn't going to do that.
And then really Duke kind of became a face of this front office in twenty nineteen and since then, obviously there hasn't been a single postseason press conference that featured Dope, featured Duke Cobin in this way on the Bengals home turf. So what's changed to get to this point? Now? What are the different pressure points that leads to this sense of accountability that we've never seen represented in the Bengals front office before.
He's Charlie Goldsmith. He is a must read, Charlie for those listening who do want to read, how would they go about doing that?
He nailed it up front. Thanks Lance. Charlie Shockward on substack Fox nineteen. You can find it there as well. The Growler podcast Power Stacks coming back soon with red vests coming up. Excited about baseball season as well.
Absolutely, it has been too long. I always enjoy our conversations. Thanks for making time tonight.
Thank you, There you go.
Charlie Goldsmith on the Bengals News over the last twenty four hours.