Bengals Booth Podcast: All I Need To Know

Hi, gain everybody. I'm Dan Horne. Thanks for downloading the Bengals Booth podcast, the That's All Line Need to Know audition as we go inside the Bengals draft room to review this year's class with Director of Scouting Mike Potts. Plus five fun questions with first round draft pick a Marius Mims and Dax Hill reacts to moving from safety

This sounds great, honestly, like I said, especially going through the same as Cincinnati Bengals. Man, you know, I'm just blessed and I'm very thankful for them picking me at eighteen. Man, that's how much to be thankful for? All?

Right? Question number one? I talked to a draft guru at the NFL Scouting Combine who said the following, Marius Mims was built in a lab to be an offensive tackle. Were you always a giant in comparison to the other kids? And do you remember the first time somebody said, ah, you're going to be an offensive lineman someday?

Yes, I remember, you know, being tallering there like all my class basic stuff, playing regressional league. But the first time somebody told me that you're going to be an office tackle. Was going into my sophomore high school when I switched my position from defensive land to office tackle.

So and you embraced it, you, sir, it was.

It took me a little while at this, but I was like, Okay, they can do it all right.

Question number two, According to everything I read, you did not allow a sack at Georgia. Is that the case? And do you remember the last sack you gave up? At any level? Have you given one up?

I want to say in high school, I gave one up Washington County. I want to say. I remember my junior year. It was like, I'm blocking the guy for a long time. I thought the ball was going. I'm turning around. I'm blocking to do it again. My quarterbacks still right here, can't He's out of my vengs. I think he's running. So I started blocking. Do I'm going to run on the field and he's still there and I'll see him on the ground. I'm like, oh my god.

So three years at Georgia, going back to your junior year of high school, it's been five years since you've surrendered a sack.

I guess so, yes, sir.

Okay, we'll give you one every five years. That sounds good at Cincinnati. Question number three, we have all seen the movie The blind Side where the Michael Orr character completely blocks a player right off the field. What's your best story along those lines of, you know, blocking a guy twenty yards downfield, pancaking a cup bull of guys with your.

Best I'll definitely say Tennessee game. Me and Tate we had a twist pick up against Tennessee and we like, I like Ali the guy in the ear. He came in like chokes lamb almost and it was like, you definitely gotta watch that. It was definitely, it was definitely a good play. It was great.

This year's Tennessee.

Gaines, sir, Is there this year's Tennessee game?

You Ali opa guy?

Yes, sir, yes there. It was great. First I feel bad for him, but it was great all right.

First time I've ever heard the alley oop is a football term. I look forward to checking it out. Question four. You were part of two national championship teams at Georgia. Describe what it's like when the confetti is falling and then you know that you've captured a national championship ring just a lot.

You know, you're thinking about a lot, honestly, think about like all the hard work, guys, you've done, you know what I'm saying, All the times you got cussed out by coach, all the hard practices.

You've been throom.

You literally it's just it's just all history and it's like it was all worth it. And like I said, those both the years, you know, just just very blessed going to a great university like Georgia. You know, went in two years in a row, and it's just I said, it's awesome feeling cause everything come back and get your full circle. You're like, I did all this, but it's it was for a great cause.

Had the rings on display somewhere? Do you actually break them out?

I had them last night at my draft party.

But my mom has to say and my dad has I said, I let them keep them.

Nice, alright. Fifth and final question for Marius Mems. Tell us something about you that very few people know.

I love to hunt.

I love hunt hogs, deer hunt and I duck hunt and then I fish a lot too, so I fish for bass, I go, I go DC fishing sometimes. But like I said, I'm very outdoors. So if anybody wants to go fishing, you know, or hunt, please let me know. I've been Cincinnati in two weeks.

You are going to hear from somebody hogs duck and what deer hogs? Duck and deer hogs was the first thing I love. I love hogger and especially with the thermal scope ars. So, like I said, I'm being Cincinnati in two weeks, y'all feel free to hear me up if y'all know any spots I want to go. I suspect you're going to be hearing from plenty of Bengals fans along those lines. All right, you're off the hot seat. Appreciate your time, look forward to SEENI in action.

So I appreciate you. Thank you.

So you heard the man. If you are an avid hunter or fisher and live in the Cincinnati area, al Marius is looking for a good guide. Before I get to my conversation with the Bengals scouting director, here's a reminder that the Bengals Booth podcast is brought to you by pay Corps, Proud to be the Bengals Official HR

A Marius is a guy that we've been scouting for a few years now and have really high regard for.

I think at the premium position that he plays.

Of offensive tackle and just his size, length, talent level, we felt that it was too good to pass up. We end up ranking our whole board between positions one through eighteen, and he was the highest guy up there on our board, and we feel really good about it. We feel like with the players that we have on offense and defense, if we can protect our quarterback, which Amrius will help to do, we think we're going to be right there playing in the important games that really matter late in the season.

And I think that's part of what it really came down to at the end of the day.

He has tremendous upside as much as any of the tackles taken in this draft, including Joe Alto is the first one taken did the current roster in the fact that he doesn't have to start right away allow you to take a chance on an inexperienced player only eight college starts with the thought that you might be getting Pro Bowl talent.

Yes, Signing Trent Brown in free agency was huge for us because he's a quality starting tackle in the league who's played both right and left tackles. So we can bring Amrius along at whatever pace is appropriate for us. Whether he's ready to start year one or whether he's ready to start year two, that's that's up to a Marius and our coaches and their development plan there. But we are very fortunate to put him into the position

It's been classified that instead of going for the double, the Bengals wet for a home run. In other words, there might have been a slightly safer pick available on the board. This is the guy that has the most upside. Is that a fair characterization of what you did.

I'd say yes and no. We don't necessarily feel like he's a risky pick. Every player that is up there in the draft, no matter how highly rated or low that they're rated, they all have risks. There's deficiencies and negatives and holes that you can pick in in every single prospect that was on every team's draft board.

So his is a lack of play experience, but we.

Don't necessarily see him as a risky swing for the fence's type of pick or a possible strikeout, because again, when you watch his tate, he's a highly talented player. It's not like he's a guy just with rare traits but super inconsistent on his tape and you're just saying, Oh, if he could put it all together, then maybe we

We're visiting with director of scouting Mike Potts. I'm sure some people listening to this are familiar with a guy named Kent Lee Platt who invented our as relative athletic score. He's been critical of the Bengals in the past for not drafting athletic or elite athletic offensive lineman. The two offensive linemen you drafted this year, Mims and your seventh rounder Matt Lee, both had elite athletic grades. Were you looking to target more athletic offensive lineman.

We're always looking for the best of everything.

We want really good athletes who are also strong, instinctive, physical, have really good power in their lower body and through their hips to move people off of their spot in the run game, Guys with length. So there's a lot that goes into it, and we're looking for the best

They can't just be a good athlete.

An obvious area of need on the roster. With defensive tackle, you use two top one hundred picks on the interior defensive line Chris Jenkins in the second round, McKinley Jackson in the third. Both team captains, both very productive college players. What did you like most at Jenkins and Jackson.

Yeah, we really like both of those guys.

That's a position that we wanted to address. They're a defensive tackle. We got two guys maybe a little bit different styles. Chris Jenkins is more of that true defensive tackle, can get upfield and rush as a three technique, but also in the way they utilized him at Michigan. He can play stout, he can two gap, he can play the run. He's got really long arms, and again, like I mentioned, an explosive athlete with more upside, maybe even than he's already shown to this point as a pass rusher.

The pick in between those two guys was wide receiver Jermaine Burton, who started his college career at Georgia and finished it at Alabama. An unbelievably explosive athlete broad jump of more than eleven feet thirty eight and a half inch vertical. Strictly in terms of talent, How good is Jermaine Burton?

Yeah, Jermaine's a phenomenal talent. We had strong conviction amongst our scouting staff, our ownership, and coaching staff on this player, and I've been tracking him for a number of years now. Back in twenty twenty, I remember during the COVID year when we as scouts could only go and sit in the stands at games. I remember seeing him at Georgia against Mississippi State and he went for eight catches I think one hundred and ninety seven yards and two touchdowns

Weapon in the past game.

And like the competitive nature that he plays with and the ability to play potentially outside and inside for us and add another explosive element to our offense.

So you kind of addressed my next question already about getting to the bottom of some of the maturity questions involving Jermaine Burton. I take it from your visit at the Combine and his visit to Cincinnati for one of those Top thirty visits that you essentially determined this is not a bad guy. It's a guy who has occasionally had trouble controlling his emotions.

Yeah, I would not say a bad guy at all.

Yeah, with the emotional stuff that we also view some of that as a positive terms of his competitiveness and the fire that he plays with on the field.

But yeah, you're right.

We went through the whole process on him and did all of our homework, talked to as many people as we could, and then at the end of the day, the best thing we have going for us is, like I mentioned, our whole staff, you know, from multiple different departments and everybody that evaluated him and was part of

I'm guessing a lot of the people listening saw the video that was posted of Zach Taylor in the draft room after the selection of Jermaine Burton pounding the table with excitement. Was he especially high on Jermaine? Was that somewhat unusual to see Zach do that?

Yeah, Jermaine, I'm sorry, Zach was really excited after that pick. I think Zach is excited after a lot of our picks. Maybe that one just got caught on TV and was more widely publicized, But I think Zach is great in our process in general. I wouldn't just point to one specific player. I mean, you could ask him his personal opinion.

We're visiting the director of scouting, Mike Potts. Let's move to Day three, Round four. Your first pick was tight end Eric All. He's a local kid from Cincinnati, went to Fairfield High School, started his college career at Michigan. He was a captain there, then finished up at Iowa. I was speaking to Dj Turner, his former Michigan teammate, who said that Eric All would have been a first round pick if not for the back and knee injuries

He's very talented. I don't know if he would have been a first round picker or not. We had very high grades on him. We think he's got starting caliber ability in his body in terms of his physical talent. Everybody knows he's coming off the injury right now, so we'll do our best to get that rehab and bring him along at the appropriate pace in terms of when he may be ready and you know, make sure he's full strength once he can get out there and make

He took another tight end two rounds later, Tanner McLaughlin out of Arizona. Why did you double down on the tight end position in rounds four and six.

Tenner's a guy we would have considered even earlier than that. So I think the short answer to your question is he was the best player available. We think he's a real dynamic guy in the past game, still has some more upside in his body as a as a blocker. He is physical, he is willing, but he's he's really

Tanner was on college rosters for six years. He's twenty five years old. How heavily do you consider age in the draft?

Age is definitely a factor the you know, sometimes it can be a good thing in terms of the age, the guy may be more ready to come in and.

Play right away, maybe more mature.

He may be further along in his personal life off the field and have everything squared away that way.

So it's not.

Always a negative the age, you know, maybe in terms of if everything's even on the maturity level of the character all that stuff, sometimes you could lean to a younger guy.

So I don't know. I can't speak for the other teams.

Maybe the age is part of a reason that he fell a little bit lower, But we feel fortunate to get Tanner there in the sixth round because we think his talent was higher than that.

In the fifth round, he took a corner back, Josh Newton out of TCU. After the draft, Zach Taylor told reporters that Dax Hill is going to be moving to corner back. Did that impact how you dealt with drafting a cornerback this year?

We wanted to address corner either way.

We've had discussions about Dak's you know, going over the past couple of months, and we want to get our best players out there. With dj Ivy coming off of the injury that that he's coming off of, we felt like corner was a position that we could address and had a young guy in that room. We obviously really liked Dax Hill, We really liked dj Ivy, We really really like all of the corners that we have in that room. We just felt like it was a spot where we could add one more guy that had a

Really had a high regard for.

Again, another guy that that we felt could have went higher than than he actually did on draft Day and feel fortunate to get him there in the fifth round. We like his his versatility, physicality, instincts. You know, he's a really really productive player there at TCU who had a high profile in the scouting community, and you know, we're excited to get him out here and see what he can do forty pass breakup seven interceptions in his college career.

His defensive coordinator called him the ultimate competitor. I'm really intrigued by Josh Newton the more I see and read about him.

Yeah, we are too, We're very intrigued. He's a name that just kept coming up as we were discussing and going through the corner position just in terms, like you said, his production, his intangibles, his instincts.

He tested well as well.

You know, ran a four to four seven. He's a very high character guy, clean medically. So there's not a lot to not like about Josh Newton in his game, and you know, we're really excited about adding that competition to our corner room. Whether that was perceived as a high need or a low need publicly, I'm not sure, but that's a position that we wanted to address and I'm glad that it shook out there where we were able to fire him where we did.

I think I saw four or five to one at the combine, so he ran a four to four to seven.

In later testing, I believe we had two times on him. You know that they run two times at the combine. I think it was a four four seven and a four to five to one were the two times that we had in our system. The way we usually do it is we have our scouts doing handheld times down there on the field. We also get handheld times from the combine, and then there's electronic.

Times on that.

So we have a formula that we use in terms of throwing out the outliers and then averaging the rest of the numbers. So it's never a huge discrepancy from the numbers that may be reported, but it may be off a couple hundreds here and there.

All right, final three picks and edge rusher Cedric Johnson out of All Miss, safety Dejon Anthony, his teammate at All Miss, and center Matt Lee out of Miami after starting his college career at UCF. Tell us a little bit about each of those guys, Cedric Johnson, Dejon Anthony, and Matt Lee.

Yeah, the two Ole Miss teammates, Cedric Johnson and Dejon Anthony. We were really glad to get all three of those guys that we got. But starting with the Old Miss guy, Cedric Johnson is a guy that we've been looking at.

For a few years.

Really explosive, fast, powerful pass rusher who can play the run as well.

He was another guy, you know, I don't.

Mean to be repetitive, but he was the top guy on our board there when we got him in the sixth round. We really like our defensive end room in our edge spot that we have on the roster. It's probably one of the deeper spots that we have. But again, you take a guy, you build out that depth, and you never know how the competition will play out in training camp. You never know into the season how injuries

And then Matt Lee it was our last pick.

He's another guy that we had a lot of love for throughout the scouting process. We also interviewed him down there at the East West Shrine game as well. Like I said with Dejon Anthony, he's a very athletic center, very instinctive physical player. Really like his character, makeup and the passion that he plays with. Sources there at Miami rave about this guy's character and makeup, and you know, we think he has he has really hot potential at

It seems to me like most of these guys came in for top thirty visits, and maybe in the past that could be wrong about this, but it kind of felt like more of those visits would go to guys that you didn't know much about. They weren't combine invites, maybe more quote unquote long shots. Have you changed your approach so that those top thirty visits are largely for guys that you are you know, have high on your board and are strongly considering drafting.

Have necessarily changed our approach wholesale, so to say, we evaluated on a year to year basis, and this year, just the way the board fell, we felt very strongly about some of the some of the top guys at a number of different positions and really wanted to do our homework on them. We always bring in non combined guys to make sure we get the medical on them, and you know, in terms of if they're not at the combine, we don't have that full medical work up.

We did.

We still did bring in a good number of non combined guys, a good number of potential later round targets.

Dejon Anthony.

We didn't know if he would be there in the later rounds or not, but we knew going into the process that he's a guy that could fit in a lot of different areas for us and a guy that we had targeted.

And wanted to do the full work up on them.

Now, a lot of times we bring guys in and they have the opposite impression. Potentially they could be a guy that you end up crossing off of your list due to your exposure on the visit because you don't like their football intelligence, their character, their medical assessment, at whatever the case is. So I wouldn't say there's an exact rhyme or reason to looking at exactly who we bring in and oh, these are the top guys that

According to how that visit goes.

How close were you to trading out at any point?

We were very close. A number of times.

It felt like there was probably one hundred or so calls. I don't know how many exactly there were, but we're constantly working the phone lines, you know, text calls, and there's constant conversation. We had plenty of plenty of conversations

It's been publicly reported that the Falcons reached out with the possible idea of moving up to number eighteen, and we're considering giving you their first round pick in next year's draft. However, had that deal come to fruition, you would have had to drop back into the middle of

Yeah, I saw that that was publicly reported. I mean, obviously, all those trade discussions are confidential. We wouldn't want to put any any team's you know, private discussions out there publicly. I did see that that specific one was reported that Atlanta was looking to come up to target some specific players. It's there's always a conversation on how far you're willing

That's just the way it shook out this year.

Why do you start working on the class at twenty five?

Probably h take most of the rest of this week to exhale, you know, rehash this. This draft class always great talking with guys like you and and you know, going going back through it, it's there. There's a little bit more information that you can go through now as a posted before the draft when there's there's a less that

For sure will be full force working on twenty twenty five.

Appreciate your time, Mike, thank you.

Thanks a lot, Dan, I appreciate you.

Before we wrap things up, let's check in with a former first round draft pick, Dax Hill. On Saturday, Zach Taylor made it official when he told reporters that Dax is moving from safety to cornerback. He'll be giving the chance to compete for a starting spot on the outside. In Hill's final year at Michigan, roughly seventy two percent of his snaps came at cornerback, so this isn't totally new. Dax answered some questions about the switch on Monday.

I love covering. That's something I always done pretty well in college, So I'm kind of just glad that I'm back in that same, similar role and I'm really just looking forward to competing.

How that initial conversation would go.

With Coally really, I mean he kind of just told me straightforward he's going to be moving me and really just having a good chance to compete with, you know, some guys on the squad, So I'm excited for it.

What's the biggest challenge that's from moving from safety to.

Course really just the technique. But for the most part, it's kind of similar. I mean, you're covering I mean's I mean, you're covering different type of bodies, but at the same time, I mean it's covering you know, quality people, football players, so uh, you know, it's it's different, but I mean it's gonna be some learning there, but I feel like that's something, you know, my skill set I'm able to do.

Are you okay with the movie.

Yeah, yeah, I mean I'm gonna have to, you know, so I have no choice. But that's something I've done before. So I'm pretty comfortable and confident in myself to.

Keep it positive at it.

It seems like you're you know, you've got to smile, you're happy, good attitude to our house. Important to keep.

It good attitude.

Making this change, I mean, it's just gonna make it easier for myself. I mean I could take it one or two ways, and I'm gonna just you know, take the you know, the best way to look at it.

And I just sees it.

As an opportunity for me and my you know, my family, and you know, there's I feel like I have a high ceiling, you know, for myself whether whatever position it is, I'm confident in myself. So, uh, I really don't have a bad at Who's wards it.

Dax has good size, tremendous speed, and he's tough. There's little doubt he can be an excellent NFL player. It's all about finding the right spot that's going to do it. For this episode of the Bengals Booth Podcast, brought to you by pay Core, Proud to be the Bengals Official HR software provider by Alta Fiber future proof fiber Internet designed to elevate your home, business and community to a new level, and by Kettering Health the best care for