Bengals Booth Podcast: Something To Talk About

Director of College Scouting Mike Potts. The Combined, by the way, will be the bengals first opportunity to sit in a room and have an extended conversation with Joe Burrow and many of the top prospects in this year's draft. All of that is straight ahead, but first, here's a quick reminder that you can have the latest edition of this podcast delivered right to your phone, tablet, or compute by subscribing on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, or pod Bean.

It's the greatest thing since blowpops. So I got home from work last night and sitting at my desk was a grape blowpop courtesy of my thirteen year old son. You remember the Blowpop. It's two treats in one, a hard candy shell with a chewy bubble gum center. It's the Charms Candy Company's best selling product of all time, and I can see why they've been making kids and dentists very happy for more than half a century. Now,

let's get to football. By now, I'm guessing you've heard or read story suggesting that Joe Burrow does not want to play for the Bengals, or that the Heisman Trophy winner shouldn't want to play for the Bengals. Let's start with the first part, the notion that the LSU quarterback does not want to play in Cincinnati. I've listened to

three recent interviews featuring Joe Burrow. He was on the part in My Take podcast in December, the day after winning the Heisman, and he did two national radio shows during Super Bowl week, the Dan Patrick Show and The Rich Eisen Show. I recommend listening to all three interviews, especially the part of My Take interview from December sixteenth, where Joe shares some great stories about his two years

at LSU. It's at the very end of a long podcast In all three interviews, Burrow speaks enthusiastically about potentially being the number one overall pick in this year's draft. The only possible thing that could raise any doubts about his desire to play for the Bengals happened on The Dan Patrick Show on January thirty first, when Patrick asked if being the number one pick or going to the right team is most porton. Burrow answered as follows a

combination of both. You want to go number one, but you also want to go to a great organization that's committed to winning, committed to winning Super Bowls. Because he didn't specifically say I want to go number one and be the guy that turns things around in Cincinnati, members of the media have their story and they are running wild with it, and their logic usually goes as follows. Carson Palmer quit the Bengals and since retiring, has questioned

their commitment to winning. Joe Burrow is training for the draft under Carson's brother, Jordan Palmer. A plus B equals clickbait. Never Mind that a few weeks ago, Burrow said the following to Bloomberg News quote, whoever wants to pay me the money to play the game of football. I'll play for him. It doesn't matter to me or that. In Midjauary, his dad, Jimmy Burrow said in a radio interview quote, if the Bengals do draft him, he's going to be happy.

He'll look at it as a challenge, but he'll be confident that eventually they can win a lot of games there in Cincinnati. Now, I don't know about you, but I trust Joe's dad more than I trust Mike Florio from Pro Football Talk. Still, that didn't stop PFT from using the following headline on February eighth. Does Joe Burrow hope the Bengals don't draft him? They follow that headline with six hundred and thirty four words on the subject when they could have gone with four. We have no idea.

Media outlets have a lot of time and space to fill between now and the draft, and they're always looking for stories with sizzle. Thankfully, there's a chance that this one will die soon. It's standard operating procedure for the top draft prospects to hold a news conference at the NFL Scouting Combine, which gets under way a week from Sunday. Here's hoping Joe Burrow buries this story much like he buried Oklahoma in the National semifinal game when he threw

seven touchdown passes in the first half. Now, let's get to the second notion that media outlets are hammering that Joe Burrow shouldn't want to play for the Bengals. Listen, I get it. The team hasn't won a playoff game since January of nineteen ninety one, and they've certainly made their share of mistakes since their five year playoff streak ended in two fifteen. But it wasn't that long ago that the Bengals were being widely praised for their astute

roster building. It took me all of about a five minute Google search to find the following four stories. NFL dot Com August of two twelve. Cincinnati Bengals suddenly resemble a model franchise since an Eddie Enquirer October of two thousand and fifteen, the Bengals became the beacon of consistency and a role model for roster construction. CBS Sports, also October of two thousand and fifteen. Agents take how the

Bengals turned into one of the NFL's model franchises. Yahoo Sports June of two thousand and sixteen, Bengals might have the deepest roster in the NFL. I'm sure I could have found a dozen more stories from that time period that basically say the same thing. So what's happened since? Well, the Bengals had a bad draft in two thousand and fifteen. Cedric o'boyhey and Jake Fisher didn't work out, making the

departure of Andrew Whitworth especially damaging. Then in the next four drafts they had brutal luck were their first round picks as will Jackson, John Ross, Billy Price, and Jonah William missed much or all of their rookie seasons. And while the Bengals historically have not gone after high priced free agents, they basically did that two years ago when they picked up Cordy Glenn. Technically it was a trade, but Cordy had three years left on one of the

priciest offensive line deals in the NFL. When the Bengals acquired him. This year, he spent nearly two months in concussion protocol. Now, I've been broadcasting the games for nine years. In that timeframe, the Bengals are one of only ten teams to make the playoffs. Five times their winning percentage, despite going two and fourteen this year, still ranks thirteenth best in the NFL. None of that is good enough.

The goal is to win the Super Bowl, and with the first pick in this year's draft, the Bengals are in a position to acquire the type of player that can ultimately help them get there. All right, let's get to this week's guest. Mike Potts is the Bengals director of college scouting. He joined the team in twenty fifteen after spending four years working in the scouting department for

the Atlanta Falcons. With the combine coming up shortly followed by on Caps Pro Days, I thought it would be a great time to pick his brain about the process of putting together this year's draft class. Mike, the NFL Scouting Combine begins in a little more than a week. Because halving the number one overall pick raise the stakes or change anything about the combine from your perspective, I mean, I think it makes it a lot more important obviously for us, because you don't want to be picking at

that spot every year. Hopefully we're never picking there again. It's obviously a rough season that you have to go through. To get to that point. But that's the spot that we're in, and to answer your question, it is important. You know, you can obviously narrow it down to fewer guys as opposed to if you're picking, you know, at the latter half of the first round, there's a lot more guys that you have to have rank and see how the board falls, So it is easier to narrow

it down to a smaller number of guys. But it's it's obviously a pick where you're gonna want a difference making guy that can that can change the franchise for you. So so it's obviously a very important selection for us, and we're gonna do all the homework that we need to do to make sure we make the right choice.

You mentioned having guy's ranked last year. For example, when you're taking the eleventh choice, you can list guys one through eleven, and then when it's your pick, maybe number four is still there, maybe number six is still there, whatever that helps you make your choice at number eleven. You've got number one this year, but you've also got number thirty three, So will you do a one through thirty three in preparation for that second pick? We will,

and even further. You know, well, we're as of right now, we're picking at sixty five at the top of the third round, and then we'll see exactly what our number is going to be at the top of the fourth round, because there'll be some compensatory selections there that end end up getting released here over the next several weeks as far as um you know, at the end of the third round, so that'll push us back a little bit from that traditional it would be the ninety seventh spot.

We may be at one hundred or something like that, but we'll probably stack the board up to at least our our fourth round pick, and then there's there's a lot of moving parts from there, you know, depending on what you take at one or thirty three, or if you move around, if you trade up, if you trade back, you may address certain positions and then we'll readdress or I'm sorry, we'll reorder the board there from there as far as by position, and you know, we may value

a certain position over another one according to what we did on day one of the draft. We're speaking to the Bengals director of college Scouting, Mike Potts. From your perspective, what is the most valuable part of the combine. I think it's the medicals for sure, you know, to get that many three hundred and some players all in the same spot, and Indianapolis is a phenomenal location for it.

The logistics and you know, everything that they have ironed out from for doing it there for a long time is uh, you know, they really do a great job with it. And that's that's the majority of the information we get is the medical. That's the that's the most important thing, I would say. And then and then from there the interviews, dialing in on on who these players are as people. You know, we talked through their coaches, we talk to their support staff when we go through

these schools as scouts on visits. But it's uh, you know, it means a lot more looking at the player in the eye and hearing it from them, so that that part of it is is big. And then all obviously the athletic testing is a huge part of it. But if I had to, if I had to say, one was the you know, the most beneficial thing that we

get out of it will be the medical. It's a good follow up to my next question because the staff got to coach some of the top prospects at the Senior Bowl, including quarterback Justin Herbert, but Joe Burrow to a tone of Violela, Chase Young, and some of the other top candidates for the draft. We're not in mobile. Will this be your first opportunity or the team's first opportunity. It's in a room and visit with those guys. It

will be. Yeah. You know, sometimes as a scout, when you go through to a smaller school, they'll bring that player, they may only have one prospect, and they'll bring that player in to talk to you face to face during the fall. But it's not that way. You know, when when you're at a big SEC, a SEC big ten type of school, you know they have you know, sometimes fifteen to twenty prospects that that could end up having a chance of getting drafted. So you know, that's that's

not the way it works. So so yeah, this combine is the first time we will get a chance to talk to the guys that we haven't already interviewed at the at the All Star Games in January. The interview process at the combine is intriguing to be because it's like fifteen minutes of speed dating. Explain how that works, yeah, and it's it's actually it was changed this year to we used to get sixty interviews. Now we only get forty five, and they lengthen them from fifteen minutes to

eighteen minutes now. Um, So that that was part of the logistical adjustments they had to make with moving the workouts from during the day to now at nighttime and

prime time on TV. UM. So that uh, you know that that throws those a little bit of a wrench in our schedule, but um, but you know, we'll adjust, and it is it is nice to have an additional three minutes with these guys, you know, maybe some extra tape that we can throw on to ask them a specific question about, you know, whatever the play may have been on such and such game. Um. You know, in the third quarter, you know, you can really dial in on some of those details. You can get a good

feel for their personality, their intelligence. Um, you know, even even some of their leaderships, leadership and charisma will shine through in that setting. So it's really beneficial. I know it's only in this case eighteen minutes fifteen minutes in the past, but you do with with interviewing those guys back to back to back, you can make comparisons and

and it's uh, it's really beneficial for us. I think I think you get more out of it than you would think, you know, just just thinking about it going in with um, you know, having never been in one of those, uh, one of those interviews, I think you do get a good out of it. But then there'll be other guys that we want to bring into the facility on a on a visit into into Cincinnati to our facility to do more work on in those interviews.

Do you have a standard list of questions that you basically ask everybody or is it highly tailored to each player? A little bit of both. There there's some basic questions that we like to get out of the way in the beginning, you know, get the guy talk and get them comfortable, UM, and then we'll we'll dive into um you know, like I said, the early portion of the interview will be more so their personality intelligence, just basic

questions like that. UM. Some of them are repeats and some of them are are a little more tailored to the guy. And then when we when we have him go, you know, look at the tape with the position coach, it'll be more specifically tailored to that guy, and and uh, you know how he learns. You know, they'll they'll tell us about their offense or defense and just talking through x's nose. And a lot of times the players are a lot more they're a lot more comfortable in that

setting talking about football. Then they then they maybe are things off the field. So it's a it's a good process. We're talking to the Bengals Director of college Scouting Mike Potts. After the Combine, the scouts and the coaches will go to pro days from coast to coast. You'll get to see players that were not invited to the Combine. But is there anything else about the pro days specifically that you find valuable? I think, um so. So I'll sit down with with all of our position coaches and all

of our scouts at the Combine. A lot of what we do is based on guys that maybe didn't work out of the Combine for a medical reason or whatever the case may be. And so that would be a guy that you know, some of our coaches or scouts haven't seen in person, so we'll schedule it that way. Um So, it may be a guy that we're seeing work out. You know up close and personal for the first time. So that's that's one big benefit we get.

And then you know, if it's a you know, I didn't I didn't go in every school in the country

this year as a scout. So if it's a school that maybe I didn't hit during the fall, and you know, likewise with with some of our other scouts and coaches, they may have a connection on the coaching staff or support staff at one of those schools, so you can follow up and do more homework on the prospect's personality and things like that, and you know, it's just it's just more of you know, to further further the amount of amount of information we get on the guys as

both players and people. Your territory during the season includes the SEC. So roughly, how many times do you think you saw Joe Burrow into a Tundavilela over the last couple of years, Oh, I'd have to, I'd have to count it up. I've seen them both multiple times at in both a game setting and in practice. I would say over the past two years, I probably had five or six live exposures at least to both of those guys. Like I said, in multiple different settings. So that's I mean,

I'm I'm big on that as as a scout. I think in order to have conviction and really really feel like, hey, this is the guy that we need to take, you need to see him in person. You need to seem at a game, especially the quarterback position that you mentioned. With those two guys, you want to see how their teammates respond to them on the sideline, you know, you

want to see how they interact with everybody. You want to see how they respond to adversity, you know, taking a big hit or throwing an interception, whatever it may be. And those are things that you can't pick up as far as as far as just just watching the film. You were a college quarterback and went to training camp with the Pittsburgh Steelers. Zach Taylor was a highly successful college quarterback. Duke Tobin was a college quarterback. Mike Brown

was a college quarterback years ago. In a draft where you are in a position to take the first choice of any quarterback in this draft, if that's the way you elect to go, is it advantageous to have so many quarterbacks in the building. Absolutely, you know, different guys have different experiences and being in the huddle and you know, changing protections at the line of scrimmage, reading coverages, having

been in that position is invaluable in my opinion. And to have guys that have done it at different levels, you know, at different levels of college football, at different levels of professional football. Um, you know, the more, the more perspectives, the better in my opinion. Um, you know, and we'll get together, you know, scouts, coaches, you know, whether you play the position or not, everybody you'll get

together and and have opinions on this thing. And and you know, we'll work our way through it, and we'll and we'll make the best selection for the Bengals. Where do you think this draft is deep? Oh? Man, it's it's a good draft. I would say off the top of my head. Both lines of scrimmage are very strong. The receiver class has been as has been widely publicized, is UH is a very strong group. So those are the two that that stand out off the top of

my head. Um. You know you mentioned some of these quarterbacks. There's there's UH there's some good quarterbacks. And then you know, at the top of the draft end and you know that you could potentially get in the second, third, fourth round as well. Um, so, I think we're really excited about about a lot of different positions. I couldn't just sit here and say, you know, there's one position that it's really deep at um you know, glaring way way

above the rest. We are meeting at two in the afternoon. You had a meeting with the staff earlier today. What are the types of things that you guys are meeting and discussing right now? So this week we've been meeting about the unrestrictive free agents, as far as our game plan, putting, putting together target lists, as far as who we want to attack in the in the free agent market on

the pro personnel side of things. So we've been doing that this week, organizing everything, you know, getting the ownership, the scouts and the coaches altogether and everybody on the same page as far as as far as getting the plan together. And I think that's went really smoothly. Everybody's everybody's had some you know, really really good discussions and it's been really productive. So we've been meeting on that this week, and then next week what we're gonna do

is go through all the underclassmen. I think there was one hundred and twenty one of them that came out early for the draft this year. So we'll be meeting on all those guys next week. We already have grades on all those guys, and we've been watching them all fall. It's just we like to wait and and wait till they officially declare for the draft before we before we actually study and talk about their character and their medical and what, you know, how we see them as a

player and and everything. We'd like to wait until they actually come out for the draft and or officially in the twenty and twenty draft before you know, we you know, we meet on the seniors in December. We couldn't meet on some of the juniors that we think are going to come out, but they then you end up it ends up being inefficient if you if you end up talking and using time on guys that don't actually end

up declaring early for the draft. So that's what we'll be working on over the over the next couple weeks, and that'll take us right into the combine. We're talking to the Bengals director of college scouting, Mike Potts. The first day of the draft is April twenty third. When will your draft board take shape? Well, well, we'll have these Like I said, we'll have these meetings next week. That'll that'll put the juniors and the seniors altogether for

our initial draft board going into the Combine. We'll go through the Combine in the pro day process, make some tweaks here and there, and then we have our final meetings. It's uh, you know, the first two or three weeks roughly of of April is when we'll do that. So it'll be it'll be pretty much set the I would say a week or so before the draft, it'll be pretty much set. And then we're always, you know, all the way up until the day before the draft, we're

making last minute tweaks, um. But you know, it'll be set position by position, how we see those guys ranked. And then we have to combine all those positions together and like you said, rank them one to thirty three, rank them one to sixty five, you know, and so forth. Uh. You know, because if if so and so goes, then you know, this is our plan. If if this guy goes, who's who is uh, you know, our our top ranked guy three selections before our our pick, then you know

we move on to this guy. You know, so, um, we just have to be ready for for every scenario. And um, like I mentioned earlier, we have to be ready for trades. If there's a guy that we have ranked in our top ten and you know we're at pick twenty five and he's still there, we have to be prepared to have a plan of attack to to uh, you know, see what it would take to acquire a

player like that. It's almost like you have two top ten picks this year because you get Jonah Williams back, the first offensive lineman taking in last year's draft, who unfortunately did not play. How does Jonah compare to the top offensive tackles in this draft? Oh, he's He's right up there. Jonah was a guy I think we uh, we all were very high on. Um. You know that I'd have to go through player by player to compare him one by one, but you know he would he

would be right at the at the top. You know, equal two are better than the majority of the of the guys in this draft. Um, in my opinion, UM, you know, everybody you know that that's my opinion. You know, every scouter coach may have a slightly different opinion, but I don't I don't think too many people would say he'd be, he'd be far off from from what's available in this draft. So obviously it was really unfortunate that

he couldn't play at all his rookie year. But like you said, it is a it is gonna be nice having him back for the twenty twenty season. People have stories to write and talk shows to fill. It's a lot of chatter between now in April twenty third and Joe Burrow name has come up in a wide variety of places. Are you listening to all of this Joe Burrow talk? No, I don't think you can. You can

listen to it. There's got to be, you know, headlines, and there's gonna be headlines regardless of what the situation is. I think. I think from our perspective, we're just worried about what's going on in this building. You know, We're we're watching the watching the film. We're calling these players coaches on the phone, and and getting gathering more and

more information as we go throughout the process. And like you said, for for the first time in a week and a half or so, at the combine, we'll have the first time to sit down and look look these guys in the eye and talk to on face to face, so you know that that stuff is out our control. Who's gonna who's gonna make the headlines and who's gonna

create stories, whether they have credibility or they don't have credibility. Um, so I think we would be you know, it would be taking us away from what's really the most important thing at hand for us. It would be taking us away from that if we were spending too much time worrying about what's what's in the news. So you get to talk to forty five guys at the combine for eighteen minutes apiece? Do you have that list of forty five?

We do. We actually had to submit that on Tuesday of this week, so we have we submit that to the Combine and through the league and we have those forty five guys set and we will, like I said, will be a lot of them will be will end up being an underclassman just because we we coach a lot of these guys at the Senior Bowl. So we do have that leg up advantage on on some teams. As far as the exposure that we got to a lot of the seniors at the at the down down

in Mobile. So that is uh, that is something that we're going to use to our advantage and use the information that we gathered for that week down at the Senior Bowl. And there still will be seniors that we that we do formal interviews with the combine, but I think this gives us a chance to to really focus on on some of the underclassmen that we don't you know, have as much face to face exposure with At this point in the process. It's a really busy time for

you and the other guys on the staff. I know you're gonna be spending a lot of time on the road coming up sell best of Lockin. We look forward to April twenty third, twenty fourth, and twenty fifth. Absolutely, Dann, thanks for having me. That's going to do it for this episode of the podcast. If you haven't done so already, don't forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and if you have a minute, please give it a rating or share a comment. Five star ratings help more Bengals

fans find this podcast. I'm Dan Horde, and thanks for listening to The Bengals Booth podcast.