Bengals Booth Podcast: Room Where It Happens

a decade. He shares some great stories about Cincinnati selecting Andrew Whitworth and Giovanni Bernard and also discusses why things didn't work out in twenty fifteen when the team's first two picks were Cedric Obwihi and Jake Fisher. Then I'll be joined by Tony Pauline, the senior draft analyst for Pro Football Network dot Com, who makes the case for why the Bengals should not draft Iowa center Tyler Linderbaum in round one. The Bengals Booth Podcast is presented by

Ultimate Bengals. Download Ultimate Bengals ahead of the twenty twenty two season. It's free to play next level fantasy football with fantastic Bengals prizes. Get it now on the App Store and Google Play. And here's a quick reminder that you can have the latest edition of this podcast delivered right to your phone, tablet, or computer by subscribing wherever you get your podcasts. It's the greatest thing since Wettle.

I'm guessing that many of you are playing the game Wardle, where you have to figure out a five letter word in six tries at the risk of bragging. As of this morning, I'm sixty one for sixty one. Because of the popularity of Wardle, a bunch of similar games have popped up, including an NFL version called Wettle, named for

former Pro Bowl safety Eric Weddle. In Wettle, you have eight tries to figure out the identity of an NFL player, with clues involving their team, division, position, height, age, and jersey number. If you're interested, just search for Wettle and it'll pop right up. I'm three for three so far. Now time to take you inside the Bengals draft room with former scout Greg Seaman, who was in the room where it happens for thirteen drafts from two thousand and

three to twenty fifteen. Right, we got to know each other. When you're the offensive coordinator and you see under Rick Mentor, I've never asked you this question, how did you wind up in the Bengals personnel department after? You see, I was the offensive coordinator at Miamis, Ohio. But in that six year period there, I spent a lot of time with the Bengals with Bruce Consult and Ken Anderson, who

were coaching. Was coaching the quarterbacks, and I wanted to learn in detail the West Coast system that Sam why should implement it? And we were using some of that the last couple of years I was at UC and then we used it almost exclusively when I went to Miami,

so I developed a relationship with those folks. In two thousand and two, Bruce Coslo became the offensive coordinator of the Dallas Cowboys and offered me a job there, coaching the tight ends, and I went down there not knowing that it was the last year of the head coach's contract and they were about to hire Bill Parcel. So it was a short tenure in Dallas. But when that was over, I really wanted to be back in the

Cincinnati area. I hadn't it's home for me, Southeast Indiana, and I had there were no It was a tough year looking for a coaching job, and Bruce did me a real favor. He called Mike Brown and Marvin Lewis, who had just been hired, and gave me a good recommendation. I had a year left on a Dallas contract, so I interviewed. Mike called me actually and invited me to

come to Paul Brown Stadium. I interviewed with him and with Marvin, and at that point the Bes had never had an advanced scout, someone that would study thoroughly an upcoming opponent and then on Mondays sit down with the offensive staff, the defensive staff, and then with Darren Simmons, a special teams coordinator, and go over what you knew about them, what you had learned for the previous week. So I did that in two thousand and three and

really enjoyed it. It kept me connected with coaches and it was just it was a fun job. And after that they decided to expand the player personnel department by

thirty three percent. Because there was Lippy Jill Lippincott, and there was Duke, and then there was myself, and then we added another young guy a year or so later, so it really kind of rounded things out for me because I still did a lot of the advanced scouting I was doing college scouting and we were doing pro scouting, and you were intimately involved in what was going on with the team and then also of course with the draft, and that just kind of blossomed. It became something I

really enjoyed. And I have three amazing daughters, and they were all in school, great elementary school, going into junior high. They had after school activities, and it afforded me the opportunity to be involved with a lot of the things that I probably wouldn't have had the opportunity to do were I just coaching. So it was a winding road, but it started with a relationship with Kim and with Bruce.

So were you in the draft room in two thousand and three Marvin's first draft when they selected Carson Palmer number one overall. I was, and I wasn't a part of the all the work that had been done, but that decision was an easy one and I and a wonderful approach. I thought by Marvin um In that this guy is going to be a great quarterback. And we are. We are a team in transition. You know, we're not

as good as we'd like to be. Yet we're not going to subject this guy to going out and getting sacked fifty or sixty times in the year we had John Kittman, who was a good quarterback and a really good professional. And I think to this day if people ask Carson, he has always said that worked out really well for him. He'd learned so much that year and just watching John's approach and how John handled situations during

the ballgame, communication with the coaches. So yeah, that was that was a no doubter and ended up being a very good pick. So the following year two thousand and four, was that the first time that you were really involved with the draft process? Yes, sir, what do you remember about that first draft where you're in the room and you're you're voicing your opinion and you know, really invested in every selection. You are as a guy early and you're that part of your career, you're reluctant to say

much of anything. There's a there's a certain paranoia, a healthy one when it comes to the draft room on draft day. You don't want to screw anything up and you don't want to throw out the window all the preparation that has been done prior to that. So early in your career you are to speak when called upon and otherwise, what's the old Mark Twain saying it's better to be silent and thought a fool than to open

your mouth and confirm it. So I was very happy to sit there and snack and what's the goings on and try to learn how this all works. Our guest is Greg Seeman, a former Bengal scout who is in the Bengals draft room for thirteen years. What's Mike Brown like during the draft? Mike is calm, thoughtful, he is He's really good at asking questions, posing the Okay, if it comes to this, do you want player A or player B with this pick? And why he is steady? I think Mike he grew up with the old Cleveland

Browns as a kid. I mean he hung out with Dante Loobelly and the guys on the team, and so he's been around it literally his entire life, and so there's not a lot that would surprise him. And when his father was the head coach of the of the Bengals and the general manager, Mike and his brother Pete did all of the scouting. The coaches were involved after the season, but the preparation leading up to that was

Mike and Pete. So there's not a in that particular room amongst the personnel guys, there's not a job that he hadn't already done, and so there's a wealth of experience and knowledge there. I didn't get to know his brother Pete very well, but he was known for his draft acumen. How big was his role during those years. I think that his voice was the number one voice

that Mike would listen to if there was uncertainty. I think in those years it would have been Marvin and Pete and then Duke who would have had the most effect on what we were about to do. YEA, Pete lived it. He was just remarkable the amount of time that he spent on the guys. And we had our draft board, you know, set up by rounds, But in this little anti room back behind the draft board and this little hallway, Pete had a small board set up and he would list in order as he saw them,

every draft eligible player in the country. He would have watched all of them, so he had them labeled one through four hundred or whatever there was as his own kind of guide. If we were talking about someone around and he was uncertain, he would walk around and look at his boards, see said, guys, I have him much lower. We need to investigate those and talk more about why we see this player in this inflated position in the board.

Do they religiously stick to the board. I mean, you've obviously put a ton of work into it leading up to the draft. When you get to those three days, do you say, all right, we have to trust the work we put in and stick to that order for the most part, yes, you do. Let's say that you are picking sixteenth, middle of them, and it's the first round. You establish through your meetings sixteen players that you are happy to take. Within those sixteen players, and a lot

of it we're talking first round. People may not realize that there has never been a draft where there were thirty two first round pick guys, guys that were worthy of you. If you say, you know, you have to define it. So in our definition, if you're taking a guy in the first round, you're saying that he is quite possibly an immediate starter and that you expect him

to be an impactful player. So a skilled position, someone that's going to produce touchdowns or interceptions, or run for a lot of yards, or alignment that's going to get a defensive alignment that's going to produce sax or an offensive linement who's going to play for a long time at a high level. So to set the board, you have to define what each round is and then say, okay, does this player fit the description we're giving it. So there's no draft where there are thirty two guys that

bit them. So some drafts go twenty deep or eighteen deep. So if you're sitting there in the middle of the first round and you've got sixteen guys and maybe there are twelve of them, who are these guys are really good? And these next four, yeah they're first round guys, but they're not quite the same first round guy as these

other twelve. So at that point, then if one of those twelve seems to be going to be available a spot or two ahead of where you're going to go, then that's when you might talk about moving up a cup of spots, not in violation of your board, but maybe better use of the board. You have to have a guy, and you have to believe that the work and all the discussions you've done with coaches and the personnel and the arguments and where you ended up is a good plan and yes, for the most part, you

need to stay true to your board. Now, I imagine people listening to this heard you say that in no draft are there thirty two guys worthy of a first round grade, and they're thinking, well, the Bengals take thirty are going thirty first this year, does that mean they're

not going to get a first round guy. I think what a lot of people don't recognize is that the Bengals are probably going to get a guy at number thirty one that's about fourteenth on their board, or that that's just kind of a random number, but somebody that is very much higher than the thirty first best player

right in their mind. Well, that's right, and you when you're picking thirty first, it means that you have an awfully good football team, and so a player, a specific player who would fit a spot on your team, that he may be more valuable to you than he is to some other players, because it's a very specific skill

set that you're looking for. But you'll also see oftentimes, you know the Patriots for years, we're picking down near the bottom, and what they realized early on was that the second round starts around pick twenty twenty five somewhere in there. And so if someone below you has eyes for this person in the first round at thirty one, well let's trade down and get a couple more picks. We'll take an extra second rounder because we think that that's one more guy in this category of players that

are kind of the same guys. They're good players, they're going to play a lot in the NFL. But if you have defined the first round as this guy, we want people that are going to be Pro bowlers. That doesn't mean they're bad players. Aren't that many Pro bowlers around, So that's an area where you we'll see teams trade down a little bit and teams that are a little

needy jumping up to take someone at thirty one. And now you also have to weigh in the fact that that thirty first and thirty second pick have five year contract, and that can be really meaningful as you look forward at your cap numbers. Maybe it's an offensive lineman or a defensive lineman who you want to have for a long time. It's really nice to have that fifth year build into that first year that first round contract. So

that's another element into the decisions there. We're getting a peek into the war room from former Bengal Scott Greg Seeman. How big of a concern is leaking information in this process? I think it's a pretty big concern in some places. You know, there are only three people that have access to the draft board, and the room is double locked, and there are cameras and laser sensors informations. As Pete Brown used to say, once information is out, it's out

at all levels. Now there are some that like to play the information game and they will leak to a writer or an agent that you know, we're really leaning this way, or we think this guy's great, and they want that information out there. But certainly you don't want to broadcast what your intentions are. It changes the value

of picks. It changes the values placed on certain players in what teams are willing to if they want to jump ahead of you, or if you're trying to if they know you want a certain guy and you call them on draft day about moving up, the price for that spot may have gone up if they believe that you are desperate to go get that player. So yes, that information needs to stay in the house. How much did things change as Duke Tobin took on a more prominent role in running the draft. I think that we

streamlined our work everybody. The traditional approach to it is that in the spring after the draft, scouts go out to all the colleges in their region, their area and get a first thought on next year's draft eligible players at those universities, and you're building networks, talking to coaches, that kind of thing. And then in the fall you're with your team for a little while in training camp, and then as the colleges start to practice and play,

you're just gone. From maybe the third week of August until the end of the college season, you're on those campuses and doing all of that. We did have a smaller number of scouts, but as as as Duke pointed out, let's go and look at the guys that are going to play in the NFL, there's a there's some busy work that goes on with some of the teams that have really big scouting stamps. They'll they'll go into a college and grade every senior, for example, in the program.

So maybe there are eighteen seniors, Well, the place may have three prospects, and our approach was going in and find out who are the prospects, and let's pay attention to those guys and let's get on to the next place.

So gosh, probably seven or eight years ago, Duke came up with the idea that the way that the film is distributed now we have all the video immediately from the colleges, and it can be really inefficient if you're at a If you're at a big school as a scout and you go there on a Wednesday to watch practice and watch tape, there may be a dozen other scouts there and sitting in a darkened room for the big part of the day, Trying to watch the video tape with eleven other people is a lot like having

twelve people fighting over the remote to watch television. You can't you wait, run that back and then one guy's going slowly and run that back running and ten other guys we've already seen this. Can we go into something else? So Duke came to me with the idea and I agreed with it wholeheartedly. He said, let's do this. Let's go out in the fall for a couple months, and let's not worry about looking at the video tape. You

might hit two schools in a day. You know, if I had the Atlantic States, for example, so I could hit Duke, North Carolina and North Canina State in two days, and instead of sitting in that room with all the other scouts, go around and talk to people. So I would spend time in the training room. I'd go see the academic counselor you know, any coaches you could grab, and let's let's build that kind of information in person, and then let's come back home and we can sit.

I can sit for a day in my office and watch all the North Carolina film I want to watch uninterrupted. And I thought that was a brilliant idea. It really streamlined our time and it made I got to see a lot more video, I got to spend a lot more time on it, and I got to talk to

more people on campus. So I don't know that many teams do it that way even yet, but I thought that, you know, we had to run of some really good drafts when we were in the kind of the glory years of Marvin's tenure there, and I thought that that approach was a big part of that. I thought we were more well informed, maybe than some of the other teams. When you're on the road talking to trainers, academic advisors,

assistant coaches, etc. How long I started. They not very you and you know that going in part of the you know, for the thirteen years that I was there, I had the same area, so I was on the East coast, and so a part of that is developing relationships. You don't really get to talk to coaches a lot during their season when you're on the campus. They'll have

someone assigned. When the scouts are there, we're usually sitting in their team room and somebody will come in and tell you about all the guys and they're gonna lie up and down the board to defend the players that they have strength. Coaches by their nature are pretty dog gone honest. You know, if you ask the right they'll they'll give you the speel. Here are the numbers. This guy benches this, this guy runs out and all that.

But if you can get them alone and you say to them, for example, when you have partner workouts, do you put young guys with him? And he says no, never, never, and it's because he's not a hard worker. Or you may ask, have you ever thrown this guy out of the weight room? Yeah, two or three times, because you know the guy just won't work. So you occasionally find that Now you also find out that once the college season is over and the draft eligible players aren't going

to be playing for them anymore. So they we're talking now and after the combine, there's a period of time a month or so where you can go back out and they're having pro days and that kind of thing. They're much more honest. The guy doesn't play there anymore, you know, but we couldn't wait to get him out of here. Or occasionally you'll know, you'll get they'll they'll tell you things. You know what, when I talk to you in September, I didn't say much about this guy.

I want to tell you something. By the end of the year, he was a real leader for us. I mean, this kid just grew as a person and I would change my recommendation to the positive now. And I want to make sure you hear that because I know I didn't leave a very good impression of him early on. So it works both ways. But they are more forthcoming once the once they don't have to have the kid

in the program, and maybe that leaks. There was one strength coach at a university I will not mention that I thought was just over the top, and what he did on every kid's locker, he had a belcro strip next to their nameplate at the top of their locker, and he had these little message boards made up and it said things like hard worker, leader, non compliant, lazy, you know, inconsistent, And on a weekly basis, he would go in and just change those and so you could

walk through the locker room you see this kid's locker and it says lazy. Okay, that's pretty direct. I think the head coach after a year made him stop doing that because he saw all the scouts walking down the hall of the aisle of the locker making notes on every player. But he felt that that was motivation, and I think that while it was well intentioned, his approach was probably less than desirable. Was there a point where

the Bengals decided to prioritize character concerns more. I think that you know, if you if you if you have a restaurant, for example, people that have a complaint are much more likely to write something on the Internet about that. And if a player has an issue and it's a public issue, it gets a great deal of attention, and not that it shouldn't, but it overshadows a whole bunch

of other guys on the football team. So uh, yes, we had a run where we had a handful of players they got in trouble and that reflected badly on everyone in the organization. So yes, then you have to look then at what you're how you're evaluating them. I think that there is a there's a there's aemistry that exists in a locker room. We were blessed to have Andrew Witworth and Domata Peco, for example, in our locker

room all those years. If a rookie came onto the team, the odds were pretty quickly he was going to end up at their homes holding a couple of their kids on their lap and waiting for dinner and just getting a sense of you know, this is how we do it. But even still, then you have a couple of guys that don't behave the way you want them to behave, and you have a you have to decide what your tolerance level is for that, and at a certain point you say, you know, this has now become a distraction.

It's beyond just something that you have to manage. It's it's becoming a negative for our football team. And yes, then you have to go you have to say, we're just not going to take too many chances on guys that we know could have an issue. And sometimes you bring a guy in that has an issue that never showed itself before, so you can't you can't always predict it the quality of your locker room, though the leaders

in the locker room can handle minor issues. If it becomes too big, then yeah, the player has to go and you have to think in a different direction. Andrew Whitworth and Delmato Pecco came in the same draft two thousand and six, Jonathan Joseph same year, so that was obviously an extremely successful year in the draft for the Bengals. Do you have a favorite draft or a favorite draft pick from the thirteen years he spent with the team.

I think wit he was He was not in my area, he was in the South, but I got to know him. And when we had our at the Indianapolis Combine, you get you can select a group of players to interview. You get fifteen minutes which each of each of them. Each team has a room, a hotel room basically, and the players come by and so Witt came in and you in that fifteen minutes you're trying to get to know him, and you try to have a oh, a set of questions that might help them reveal something about themselves.

And a lot of times you put videotape on of them playing and you asked them to explain what we're seeing. We simply asked Wit to look at a play, I think, and about ten minutes later, after he had finished discussing every aspect of his footwork, his hand placement, where the safety was, how he knew this guy was going to go inside because the placement of the pre safety and

the linebacker stuff. That was at that moment when he left the room that Marvin Lewis turned to Paul Alexander, or line coach, and famously said, if we draft this guy, I don't need you. He can coach them himself. So and you just knew his maturity and part of it was his size. I mean, there's a sixty seventh, three hundred and thirty pound guy that was really smart and a good human being. You just thought that, you know this, this guy is going to be so good for so long.

The other one, for me, it was in my area. Giovanni Bernard was, you know, the kind of a scat back and punt returner int North Carolina. But I did have good contacts there, the video guy and one of the trainers, and they went out of their way to say, I gotta understand Geo as a special human. You want him on your team. He's not only a good player,

he's just really, really a good person. And so Hugh Jaccent at that point was coaching our running backs, and I called Hugh and said, we're having a pro day down here at University of North Carolina, and I'm going to be pushing for Giovanni Bernard. I need an ally in the draft meetings leading up to this. Come down, work him out and see what you think. So Hugh came down for a pro day there at UNC and worked him out. Then I think maybe he took him to lunch, spent time with him, and then he called

me later and he said, thank you so much. He said, this guy fits in perfectly with what we want to do. And Geo became one of the really good third down backs, even at his size, just a tremendous pass protector, was so important and could catch the ball out of the backfield and could run the ball, you know, better than probably given credit for and more physical runner than people thought. But those two guys really stand out just because of

all that they have contributed. Sometimes you know, you miss on a guy and you feel bad about that. When you see guys that are that you thought, I think this is what this person's going to be, and then they become that for a long period of time, and then it makes you feel good about the work that you did and that you got that one right. The Bengal selected Giovanni Bernard with a thirty seventh pick in

the twenty thirteen draft. I have it in my notes that he was eleventh on the Bengals draft board that year, which, if true, indicates how highly the organization thought of him. Was that pretty nerve wracking then waiting for that thirty seventh pick to see if he would still be there. We loved him, and Q and I won our battle in the in the draft meetings that this guy's going to really help us. But it brings up another points. As Duke would always point out, you know, there are

two grades. The most important grade is the grade that you as an organization put on a player relative to your football team. And then there's the grade of how the league is going to see this player, and we were well aware that the league would not see Giovanni Bernard as a first round running back, so there was no way he was going to go in those first

thirty two picks. But for us, we saw a guy who had first round qualities and we thought that he would have phil a real role on our team, would catch a lot of passes out of the backfield and in our offense, that was a real possibility the ball was going to be thrown to a back and that he would play for a long time, so he would be an impact player. So once you got into the second round, yeah, thirty three, thirty four, thirty five, then

you're starting to squirm a little bit. But that you mentioned information earlier, see that would be a pivotal bit of information. It would have been noticed by other teams that the Bengals running back coach was present at the North Carolina Pro Day, because one of the things you do as a scout is whether it's on your phone or a tablet or a piece of paper in your pocket, you're making note. Well, Tomlin was there and so and

the general manager was there too. So when you come back in your draft meetings, after the pro days, you're we're talking about where do you think everybody else? Seas? And the Steelers had seven guys there, so I think they liked the guy, you know, so we were Yeah, you would have been a little concerned that people would have recognized that Geo was important to us. Our guest is former Bengal scouting former NFL assistant coach Greg Sieman. One of the bengals all time best draft picks was

Gino Atkins fourth round in twenty ten. What stands out about that selection? Bill Tobin. Bill was helping us and was doing scouting. Then Duke's father in a long time scout and personnel guy and a general manager, and he had Georgia, and he was just adamant that Gino was a hard guy to block, that he would be able to rush the passer from an interior line position, which we did not have at the time, and that we shouldn't worry that he wasn't the tallest guy or necessarily

the biggest guy, but he was just going. He was strong and had balance and was powerful. And then when you met Gino, he was the quietest guy. You couldn't get him to talk. I mean, Jay Hayes coached him for years and he said, I've had like two conversations with the kid. He's in the room every day, so I mean we talked football stuff. He said, he's just

a quiet guy, but he was so intense. And when you saw how powerful he was and his balance, balance for those interior defensive lineman comes into play because they get double teamed a lot, they get combination blocked a lot, and so they're getting pushed kind of in two directions and a lot of and some of them get turned

and they fall or they go to the ground. And he just was so sturdy, and the fact that he wasn't six five and yet was so powerful was a real advantage for him because he had this built in leverage that these taller offensive linemen they just couldn't move him. You know, it's like a big picture a really a boulder with a flat bottom sitting on the ground and you can't roll it and you can't push it. And that's kind of how he was and that made such

a difference for the linebackers in the run game. And then when he was singled up on a guard or a center in the past protection, if they didn't give that person help Gino would just push them back into the quarterback space to the advantage of Michael Johnson and Colonel Stone Lap on the outside. From two thousand and nine to twenty fourteen, the Bengals had a run of six straight drafts that worked out really well. In two fifteen, the streak ended Cedric o'boyhey in round one, Jake Fisher

in round two. PJ. Dawson was one of two selections that the Bengals made in round three that year. Obviously, none of those guys really worked out the NFL. Was that a draft where you felt like he made mistakes? Is that just one of those things that sooner or later you're bound to have a bad one. We had had a number of good drafts in a row, and

we had a good football team. We were at a point where we did not know how long Wit was going to play, and we felt like we were at a point where we had good depth on the team and we could bring in some guys who did not necessarily have to play that first year but would become the heir apparent. That was the plan. Oh boy he Paul Alexander, the line coach, felt that he was one of the best prospects he had ever seen, and then Cedric in their bowl game that year, suffered a knee injury.

We consulted with the physicians that saw him at the Combine, and our own doctors examined him when we brought him to Cincinnati. The consensus was this was while it was a knee injury, it was one that has dealt with all the time, and that he should be fine. Fisher was from Oregon, aggressive, pretty good athlete. The thinking was that those two guys could become the tackles. They just didn't for whatever the reasons are. I left after the fifteen season, so I wasn't there for a lot of

their early developments. I can't speak intelligently about what happened to them, but clearly we got it wrong because they didn't develop, and we went through the same process we had done for the previous six drafts and we simply missed. And that's a shame. Luckily continued to play and continues to play until just a couple of weeks ago, so it wasn't like you didn't have a tackle, you know, at that point immediately, But yeah, we just missed, and that does happen. How heated. Does it get in the

draft room. I think it depends on the personalities. Mike would let you argue to a point, but if he thought it became personal or non productive in some way, he would put a quick into it. But I think that you know, one of Mike's really good traits is that he's a very good listener and a very observant person, and he would be interested in the level of passion you displayed about your guy as long as it was reasonable.

He and Duke both did a really good job of reminding everyone at the outset that we want you to speak your mind. We want you to defend the players who are in your area that you really like. But let us remember that everybody has a voice here and that our ultimate goal is to make the Cincinnati manuals better. So that's what our decisions based upon. And Mike would say at the time, don't be upset if I don't

go the way you want me to go. I hear what you're saying, I also have to hear what everybody else is saying, and I have to have my own view. So I would encourage you to speak up and say your piece, and then we'll make a decision, and when we'll walk out of here, it's everyone's decision. I don't want to know. One thing he would not tolerate is I don't want to hear somebody going down the hall into another person's office. Is that, can you believe that, Jesus,

we just screwed this up. So I don't want to hear that. We will make a decision as a group and then it's our decision and everybody lives with them. So I thought Mike handled that kind of thing really well. Are there any examples you can share of when a guy that the Bengals really want was taken one or two picks before they were on the clock, And does that happen frequently? Is that something that happens almost every year?

I think I can't think of an example immediately. Sure it happens, But as I laid out in when we started with the first round, and I said, if you're picking sixteenth, sixteen names, you repeat that process over and over. So the draft is a three day endeavor. So when the draft is over on the first night, the scouts will stick around and you've taken those thirty two players off of your board, and now you have reordered it with the next whatever is in the second round, however

made that is forty or something. You reorder it based upon what you have, how you graded those guys. And then early the next morning, everybody comes back in and we say, okay, here's where we are. Do we want to make any adjustment to it? Well, why would you make an adjustment. You might make an adjustment based upon

who you got in the first round. You know, if you took your quarterback in the first round, then these other quarterbacks that were in that next group of players come off, you're not going to take them, and so you're going to elevate some guys up and you have to have a really good discussion at that point of Right, we're picking sixteenth gear again here in the second round. Here are the sixteen guys numbered one through sixteen that we want. You know, who we really want. We want

thirteen if we could get thirteen. So you're watching it play out, and then that again is where the discussion comes in. All Right, we've got Atlanta ahead of us, and we're looking at a edge rusher. They've got, let's say they have two great edge rushers. They're not going to draft an edge rusher, but this team behind us maybe looking at the same thing we're looking at. Should we call Atlanta first, for example, and say we'd like to move up to your spot because we can assure

ourselves that we'll get our guys. So there's a little bit of play with it, you know, at that point, based upon who you've already taken. For example. One thing that's interested me over the years that I didn't realize is that what we see on TV is not live

in the draft room. You're several minutes ahead, correct, yes, yeah, yeah, they in the first round, you have ten minutes, and the TV programming they're working on a ten minute schedule as well, and when they plot out the broadcast, so they are allowing this person to talk about the players and this person. Then there's a commercial break, and so

the teams. If you know who you're picking, and if nobody is calling on the phone, and normally you will wait unless you're just absolutely sort of we're taking this guy no matter what. As soon as it's your turn, you'll call New York and they'll hand in the card. If you aren't a position and say, well, five minutes, let's see if somebody calls and what they have, and you will have already discussed. If we're picking sixteen and we're thinking we might move, what would we take in return.

So you have all that in your mind, and you have two people in the room that man the phones that other teams can call in and say, hey, we interested in moving. So a lot is going on there, but rarely does does a team take those full ten minutes. Yes, it's the pick is in and then you wait several minutes before you see it on television. Yeah, it is a very highly rated TV show, So this stuff is important. I mean, the draft kills NBA playoff games, Major League

Baseball games MLS. I mean, it's it's really kind of crazy that to watch this thing, but it says, yes, it's a primetime showcase. Yeah, but if I'm not mistake, in, the combined rating of the first round of the NFL Draft between the various networks that now carry it exceeds any game of the World Series, which is crazy to me being a lifelong baseball fan. But that shows you

the power of the NFL. Yeah, that's same here. I grew up with the Big Red Machine as a local guy, and I can't imagine that the World Series was jeez, everything you kept scoring. You kept your score book at home. Yeah, it's very true. The NFL is a monster in terms of television. All Right, a few more hard hitting questions for my friend Greg Seman, the former Bengal Scout. How much snacking is done in the war room and what's available.

The amount of snacking at the beginning is casual, and the closer you get to your pick, it's by the handful, and you have somebody coming in just dumping checks, mix and candy bars and uh and our and our draft room. Licorice was very popular, either the stringy kind or the little cheolabol bikes. Um, a little longer lasting. Yeah, so it's uh yeah, just a tension reliever, I suppose, but yeah,

a lot as it gets closer to it. And then if you if you really get the guy you want, you're really happy, then there's celebratory snacking, you know, people, can I get you another candy bar? There? You know, self congratulations for a few minutes, and then you start thinking about the next round and oh god, is he going to be there? What are we going to do? That kind of thing. One of the funny things that it's not it's not funny at the time, but you

have a player. Again, let's say we're picking sixteen. You have a player ranked eight and he doesn't get picked eight or nine or ten or eleven or twelve. He's sliding, and you're looking at each other and say, Okay, is this really good or is this really bad? Do people know something we don't know? And you start you might reach out to contacts that you have, maybe somebody maybe a writer that has covered that guy, or somebody at the school who you have a good relationship. Why is

this guy sliding? Is there going to be our rest report tomorrow that we don't know about? And that can be that can be really agonizing because you don't We don't want to be the sucker so to speak, that takes this guy. And another part of you is saying, dag on it. We did our research on him. This guy's really good. These folks are just wrong and if he slides to us, we're going to hit a home run.

And so that tension can show up unexpectedly sometimes and you just have to work through it and stay true to what you believe and then try like hell to find out if there's something you don't know, were you amazed by the remote draft a couple of years ago with Roger Goodell and his basement and you know, Duke Tobin with a live camera in his home and all of them. Yeah, yeah, amazed as a good word. I mean it just um, well it like all of everyone

that's working from home during that period. It's just different. I mean, people are disassociated from another physically, and yeah, I didn't find it very appealing. As much as they can maybe be bill mannered at times, it's nice to have the fans in the draft and their reaction is important, I think. So it was a little bizarre almost. You were an NFL assistant coach in Dallas and in Cleveland, where the coaching staffs are not in the war room, at least not all of the time. Should they be

Do the Bengals have this right? I have a strong feeling that all the people that have worked to build the draft should be available in the room. One is a reward for all that they have done. Two to have their availability if there's a last minute question, and that what that question would be is, well, unexpectedly, guys, we can have choice here between these two players at the same position. We have one rated above the other.

We think they're both really good. Is there anything that sways us between these two at this point, maybe based upon somebody else we drafted already or whatever. The immediacy of that is good, But to go the other on the other side of it, you can't have chaos. And so you asked me early on about the two thousand and four draft, and I said, you speak when spoken to. That does have to be the way that the room works.

I think that if you if you were a team that truly had some concerns about leaks and you just didn't feel good about your people in that regard, that would be part of it. There is a complicating factor more these days than probably when I first started, even

and that's agents. Agents that represent both coaches and players, and they have their own relationship, and you have to make sure you say, and Mike said this to the coaches, if I find out that you're leaking information from the draft board about where we are on one of your agents players, then that's fiable. We can't do that. So that would be a bit of an argument for having fewer have access to it. But I felt like when you luck most all the people out who have done

all this work. It's a little insulting and a little disappointing for a young scout. I think it's important that he is in the room. If his aspirations are to run a personnel department or it would ultimately be a general manager, it is greatly to his benefit or her benefit.

Because we have more and more young ladies coming into scouting, which is awesome, it's to their benefit to be in the room and see how it works, to see how it is when you've got three minutes left on the pick and suddenly the Dallas Cowboys called, they want to move to your spot, and they're just sweeping the offer.

You've got to have a calm, steady hand there and how to handle that because it's not like the movie Draft Day where it happens all the time, but it does happen, and it happens in a point where you have time constraints, like who was it several years ago Minnesota Vikings missed their turn and somebody jumped ahead of them and took their spot. So I think that there's a benefit being in that room and seeing how that

all works. So I would favor having the people that have done the work to be in the draft room at least as observers and available as a sounding or if there's some discussion that has to take place. Were you working for the Browns when Draft Day came out?

I want to say, yeah, I was there starting in sixteen, so I think the movie came out around and that was entertaining, and you know, I love the great message he used to stay true and he got the general managers, got the note to himself in his desk drawer, you know, to remind himself, stay true to what you believe and take this guy. And then it was a little overdone with the birthday party, you know, and they interviewed the kid. Yet why didn't many of your teammates come to your

birthday party? But there is some you know, that was dramatic, certainly, But that is the kind of I think the point they we're making is a good one. That's the kind of thing that you expect a good area scout to find out that, you know, he's in that school three or four times a year, and he developed relationships where he can go down the hall and go into somebody's office unannounced and they have a friendly relationship and say, you know, what's going on with this kid? And you'd

find out. So it was entertaining. Yes, we are about a week before the draft, what's going on right now? And is the work basically done? Yes, boards are set. The process has always been assume it's the same. Obviously I haven't been in that part of it for a few years, but the last week generally was you would do a series of mock drafts yourself, and so you might take In our case, we would take all the coaches and scouts in the room and you would have

but one or two teams that you represented. You were their general manager for this draft, and then we would spend a couple of days doing drafts. And so I'm the New York Giants, and I picked John Smith, and you would come down and there's your spot, and then Mike would make the pick, or we would discuss it and say, Okay, yep, we're going to stay right where

we were and take that guy. Next day you might do it and he would ask you to make different picks, and maybe the person you were left with was the sixteenth player on your sixteen player list, and you're thinking that the seventeenth and eighteenth players are just about as good and we can pick up a second round pick. So we're if that happens, we may call these guys because we think they're looking for this same player, and maybe we can move back to get their second round

picks still get a guy we really like. So you do that and you have that discussion of you try to have done your research teams that you think might like to move to your spot, and so then you have the discussion of, Okay, the Philadelphia Eagles, as anticipated have called us about this sixteenth pick, what do we want in compensation? And what we learned in the last ten years is that general managers on a lot of teams place less value on future picks than they do

on current picks. So you feel, you know, you would say to them, Okay, well here's what we want. Maybe we want your starting right tackle and your third round pick, or we will trade your first round picks. We want a second and the fourth, or we will trade you first round picks. We want to second and next year's first, because they don't value it as much as they do this year's. Sometimes it's a GM who's in the last year of his contract that he really doesn't care about

that future pick. He just wants his player to save us. But so you try to rehearse as much as you can what's going to happen on draft days, so there aren't surprised. It's much like putting on a play, for example. You rehearse it and rehearse it and rehearse it. And so you, as somebody once said, have a plan, execute the plan, and plan for the unexpected, and that last week is the planning for the unexpected part of that.

I think last thing. I think a lot of NFL fans, football fans in general, would say being inside the war room during the draft would be on their bucket list, would be one of the coolest things they could experience. Do you feel that way about the thirteen years that you were in there with the Bengals. Yes, for a personnel guy, that's the super Bowl and it's the culmination

of so much. You know, the free agency period starts in early March, and teams have different philosophies about free agency, but free agency oftentimes will define a portion of your draft. So you want to get that part right. And then if you've done that and you've eliminated the necessity of drafting for need because you didn't answer your problem with a veteran left guard or whatever it is, and that you've got to move this left guard way up your board out of need. You don't want to do that.

So if you have a well planned, well designed draft, it's a ball. You feel like you're in some control and that you're making your team better and that you're making your team better for a period of years. And so, yeah, would it would be a it would be a well experienced bucket list event. Yes, it's very cool. This has been extremely enjoyable and informative. I appreciate your time and your friendship. Thank you so much, Dan, Thank you, it's

been a pleasure. By the way, the Draft Day movie starring Kevin Costner as Sonny Weaver Junior, the fictitious GM of the Browns, actually came out in twenty fourteen while Greg was still working for the Bengals, and the famous note in Sonny's pocket read Vonte mac No matter what. The Bengals Booth podcast is presented by Ultimate Bengals, the

free to play fantasy football game. This past season, Ultimate Bengals awarded a weekly winner during the course of the year with tickets, autograph merchandise and money can't buy experiences all up for grabs. Find Ultimate Bengals in the app Store and Google Play. One of the best websites for information about the draft is Pro Football Network dot Com. They also have a fun and easy to use draft simulator.

I did a three round mock draft today and got Iowa center Tyler Linderbaum in round one, Colorado State tight end Trey McBride and round two, and Alabama cornerback Jalen armor Davis in round three. I think most Bengals fans would be happy with that, but I'm not so sure that Tony Pauline would agree. He's the senior draft analyst for Pro Football Network dot Com and I caught up with Tony this week. Tony, the name that comes up most frequently on mock drafts to the Bengals is Iowa

center Tyler Linderbaum. Let's start with your evaluation. How good is Tyler Linderbaum. I think he's worth a late late first round pick early second round pick. I thought that he has been overrated throughout most of the process. There was talk here in New York about the Jets potentially taking him with one of their two top ten picks. I thought that was ridiculous, But I think the late first round may not be a bad place for him. He's a solid player, he's not a great player. He's

a zone blocker. He's a guy that needs a running start into his blocks. He's not a big, strong, mailer guy. I tell people go back and watch the film of the Big Ten title game when he was basically handled by Chris Hinton, and then you factor in that he's only he has arms that are barely thirty one inches long, and you wonder how he's going to handle those big Jordan Davis type defensive tackles in the middle of the line.

I think if you put him in his own blocking situation, you ask him to get out to the second level, you have to pull across the line of scrimmage and block emotion, He's gonna do exceptionally well. He's a tough guy. She's not a very big or powerful guy. But still I think it fits in need and I think the end of round one isn't a bad spot for Linderbaum. Tony. It sounds like you are not as high on Linderbaum as many well, I mean as far as centers are concerned.

There are Day two and Day three guys. I think someone like Cameron Jergens of Nebraska, who I think is ridiculously underrated. I have him as a third round pick. But I think Cameron Jergens Nebraska is better value at the end of round two for the Bengals than say, Tyler Linderbaum is the end of round one. And then you get guys like Zach tom of Wick Forrest, Dylan Palm of Memphis. Those are all maybe late Day two, early day three guys who I think have got a

tremendous tremendous amount of upside potential. But if you're looking at the Bengals the end of round one, I think you got to consider cornerback. You gotta see which cornerback is still available, and they could potentially get a very

good one there. I think your top three cornerbacks Am Odd Gardner of Cincinnati, Derek Stingley of LSU, Trent McDuffie Washington will be off the board, but still whether it's Roger McCreary of Auburn, kar Elam of Florida, Andrew Booth of Clemson, Kylie Gordon of Washington, although some people think that Gordon could be a late first round choice. Those are all going to be considerations. Those are all good prospects, and I think those are all upgrades over what the

Bengals presently have at cornerback. Of the four corners you just mentioned McCreery, Elam, Gordon, and Booth, do you like two more than the others? I love Roger McCreary of Auburn. I mean, he's a tremendous shutdown cornerback. He gets it

between the ears, he's got great ball skills. What he does is he does a tremendous job making plays with his back to the ball, almost knowing when the ball is in his air, and getting his head back around the position himself against the opponents to make plays on the ball. And I recommend anybody go back and watch that Alabama Auburn game which ended the regular season last year, and he was dynamite against those two outstanding Alabama receivers.

A problem with McCreary is he's under five foot he's under six foot tall. He's five ft eleven, ran in the low four fives at the combine, and he's got short arms, which is going to downgrade him. But he's got outstanding cover skills. I also like Ker Elam a lot. He's a big, physical guy, he's fast, he shows some solid ball skills. I think the issue with Elam is opponents purposely stayed away from him. They threw the ball in the opposite direction or the opposite side of the

field of where he was. And sometimes that's a little bit difficult to completely scout a player like that. But I think Elam's got a tremendous amount of upside potential. I like him a lot as well. Tony Pauline is our guest. He is the chief draft analyst for Pro Football Network dot Com. Last week, the Bengals reportedly hosted Houston defensive lineman Logan Hall on a pre draft visit. What's your scouting report on Logan Hall? And could you see him going as high as thirty one? No, I

don't think he's the first round pick. I think he's a Day two selection. He's a very athletic guy who's just hitting his stride. He's a bit of a tweeter, you know. Is he a defensive end? Is he a defensive tackle? Is he a three technique guy? I think he's got to get a little bit bigger. He's got

to get a little bit stronger. I think he's got some upside, But I think that the Bengals can fit other positions of need with guys who will be able to bring more immediate impact as rookies, as opposed to Hall, who I think is going to need a little bit of time. I like Hall, but I like Hall as a late second round pick and a guy that will be a real good player two or three years down

the road. Tony offensive line is not the obvious need that it was before free agency since the Bengals went out and signed three guys, But there's still one opening on paper for now. Left guard hasn't completely been determined. Now Ted Carris could kick over and play guard at the Bengals wind up taking a center. But let's look at the guards because the name Zion Johnson and Kenyan Green have been men and often do you like those two guys? And do you see either or both lasting

as long as thirty one? I'd be surprised if both are available. Maybe one of them. I think in Zion Johnson you're getting a guy who could play guard. He also started at left tackle for Boston College for a while. I don't think He's gonna be a left tackle at the next level, but still, if your left tackle goes down, Zion Johnson successfully played that position at Boston College, so

we could fill in a pinch. Zion Johnson is also a guy that successfully took snaps, etc. During Senior Bowl practices, So you're getting a guy that can, you know, play two interior positions and may be able to play left tackle in a need if your guy goes down. Kenyon Green is a big, moler guy. He's the type of guy that I think a Tyler Lindebaum, you know, would have problems with if he was on the opposite side of the ball. He's a nasty guy. He is a tough,

slug it out, punching your face type of alignement. He doesn't have the versatility of Johnson. Although Kenyon Green did play a little bit left tackle, wasn't as good as Zion Johnson at left tackle, but he's a bigger guy. He's more of a smash mouth power gap lineman. I think in Johnson you're getting a good, versatile offensive lineman that can play multiple positions. You can use them in his own blocking system. I think in Kenyan Green you're looking at more of a smash you in the mouth,

power gap type of lineman. The Bengals top three wide receivers are excellent, and they all stayed healthy last year, but it's unlikely that pet's going to happen in back to back seasons. How deep is the wide receiver crop in this draft and how far down would you have to go to get somebody who could contribute right away? Yeah, you should be able to get good receivers in the fourth and fifth round in this draft. You know, if you're talking about a guy in the fourth round of

Romeo Dubbs of Nevada, who's Carson Strong's favorite receiver. Kyle Phillips, a smallish slot guy who does a great job running routes, could also double up as a return specialist. Boaw Melton of Rutgers a guy who I don't think was properly developed at Rutgers, primarily because they had problems on the offensive line. How the terrific Senior Bowl a week of Senior Bowl practices, ran four three four at the combines,

so you know he's got that sort of upside. Taekwon Thornton of Baylor, the guy who ran four to eight during the combine. He's a toller thing guy, six two and a half one hundred and eighty one pounds, a lot of good developmental type of prospects that I think as rookies could contribute as number four receivers. Tony the Bengal's top two safeties, Jesse Bates and Von Bell, could both be in the final year of their deal. Jesse

Bates was franchise tagged. Von Bell's got one year left on the contract he signed a couple of years ago. How about safety in the first few rounds? How is that crop? I think what's gonna happen with the safeties is if you want one of the top safeties. And I'm going to take Kyle Hamilton out of this equation for a variety of reasons, but if you want a top safety, you better draft them late in round one or by the middle of round two, because I think they're going to be off the board late round two

at round three. I mean, you're top guys or the guys that are good safeties, terrific free safeties that goes sidelines to sideline, excellent ball skills that could go late first round early round two include US scene of Georgia, Daxton Hill of Michigan, Jerlen Petrie of Baylor, Jaquon Brisker

of Penn State, the Cross of Maryland. You know, I think, except for maybe seen in Dixton Dixon, Daxton Hill, I'm sorry, all those other guys are more second round picks, but they won't be there when the Bengals are called to the clock Layton round two, I mean later on. You're talking about guys like Portell Flat of LSU, who's sort of a combo corner safety who's very good, only had one really good season at LSU, although he was good

last year. A little bit ta tall, thin guy Dane Belton of Iowa, who's a fourth round pick, more of a straight line downhill safety. Ron Kinley of Oregon terrific player but not a good athlete. Could not break four six five and I'll lead up to the draft, so you're talking about Day three guys that have got a lot of limitations in their game. Quentin Lake of UCLA

as someone who I absolutely love. Terrific football player, great instincts, great ball skills, but he barely broke four six in Pro day workouts in the combine, which is going to be an issue at the next level. Tony Pauline is our guest. His big board on Pro Football Network dot Com is amazing. I highly recommend checking it out. This is a Bengals podcast, but there's obviously a lot of interest in UC Bearcat prospects since up to nine guys could be drafted this year. We know Sauce Gardner is

going to go in the first round. Do you think Desmond Ritter will as well? If it was up to me, I'd say no, because Desmond Ritter to me, is a Day two pick. But the information I'm getting back from teams is just about everybody has a first round great on him. And you know, one thing we've seen the past what fifteen years in the NFL draft is that quarterbacks are always overdrafted. So I'd say right now there's a better than fifty fifty chance that Desmond Ritter ends

up in the first round. I have joked that my nightmare is Desmond Ridder to the rival Pittsburgh Steelers. Could you see Pittsburgh taking Ridder at number twenty. I think they're leaning more towards Malik Willis of Liberty, whether he's there at twenty or whether they have to trade up to get him. I think that's been their game plan all along. I think there's that's a possibility. Same thing with Matt Correll to the Steelers at twenty. How have

super seniors changed your draft evaluation this year? Well, hasn't changed the draft evaluation. What it does is it means that there's more draftable players than there are draft slots. And you know, you go back to last year because so many seniors went back for that extra year of eligibility granted to them by the NC two A, what you had was you had players that were usually seventh type talent go in the fifth round. You had players that usually would have been priority free agents end up

being selected in a draft. The opposite's going to happen this year. There's going to be a ton of plethora of talent in Day three. So what's going to happen is guys that will usually be fourth or fifth round value could go six or seventh round just because of the numbers, and guys that have draftable grades may end up not getting drafted drafted at all. So basically, on my board, there's only two fifty five players selected in a draft. I have about two hundred and eighty players

with draftable grades. And that is primarily because so many players went back for that second senior season that was granted to them by the end of two A and you've evaluated more than fourteen hundred guys correct, correct, And this is you know, a couple of years process. This hasn't done over the course of months. I mean most of these guys I have notes on for two and three years. That's why I like to look at the body of work. I can talk about a guy like

or extinctly throughout his career. So yeah, the evaluations are done over the course of their college careers. Obviously, more emphasis is put on the final year before they entered the draft, but you can't forget about the early seasons while they were on the college field. Well, Tony, as I mentioned, your big board is awesome. The mock simulator on Pro Football Network dot Com is addictive. I love them both and I really appreciate your time and your

expertise today. Thank you so much, thanks for having me again. That's going to do it for this episode of The Bengals Booth podcast presented by Ultimate Bengals. Download Ultimate Bengals ahead of the twenty twenty two season. It's free to play next level fantasy football with fantastic Bengals prizes. Get

it now on the App Store and Google Play. And if you haven't done so already, please subscribe to this podcast and if you have a minute, give it a rating or share a comment that helps more Bengals fans find us. I'm Dan Horde and thanks for listening to the Bengals Booth podcast.