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Addition, as I pose five questions to the mutant Bengals rookie Chris Jenkins. Plus Can't Lee Platt, the guy who invented relative athletics score discusses the freakiness of this year's draft class, and finally, I'll talk to a quarterback who is back on the Bengals roster six years after being
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of the Bengals. Now here's a quick reminder that you can have the latest edition of this poto delivered right to your phone, tablet, or computer by subscribing wherever you get your podcasts. It's the greatest thing since Howard denneroff. On Wednesday, it was announced that Howard is leaving Westwood One Sports after being the executive producer of its national
radio broadcasts for roughly thirty years. So if you were in your car and couldn't be in front of the TV for part of a Super Bowl or the Final Four, or the Masters, or the Kentucky Derby or the Olympics, and wound up listening on the radio, chances are Howard was in charge of the broadcast. I don't know of anybody in any walk of life who does his or her job better. Howard's knowledge, attention to detail, and ear for what makes a great broadcast and broadcaster is simply unmatched.
I don't know what he plans to do next, but any company would be fortunate to higher Howard Denaroff. Now let's get to football. Last week on this podcast, I posed five questions to first round draft pick of Marius Mims, where, among other things, we learned that he hasn't surrendered a sack since he was a junior in high school. That was five years ago. I told him, Marius, we'd all be perfectly happy if he averages one sack allowed every
five years in Cincinnati. Now time for another round of five questions with the team's second round selection, a defensive tackle out of Michigan with a fantastic nickname. Time for five questions with second round draft pick Chris Jenkins. Question number one is, Bengals fans have now learned your nickname is the Mutant, which is a fantastic sports nickname. What did you think the first time you heard it? And is there a better sports nickname than the Mutant?
So, you know, my sophomore year, that's when our head strength coach, Coach heard gave me that nickname. And this is before I earned my stripes. I've really proved myself on the team, so you know, getting that from him when I first heard it, you know, I was kind of starshucking the moment. I was kind of shocked, and then the whole team embraced that before I feel like
I really embraced it. And you know, ever since I got that nickname, you know, I just tried to embrace what people saw in me and just get that right back.
And then so Mamba Magic, I mean, does anything compare? Is there anything that you think, all right, that one's even better?
I think no, I think the Mutant definitely up there. But with that, with such a cold nickname, that just means I have to be that much colder on the field.
I like it all right.
There's a guy that puts out a freak list every year before the college football season, supposedly the top one hundred athletic freaks in college football. You were in the top ten prior to last year. And one of the things they showed, which is some video that's now like making the rounds on the internet, it's called the Turkish get up that you did with one hundred seven tventy pound dumbbells. I didn't even know they existed at one hundred and seventy pounds. Describe the Turkish get up?
Well, the Turkish get up, you know, it's really like a full body movement. It's a full body lift. You know, you start with it, you're holding you know, one hundred and seventy or one hundred and seventy pounds, you know, on a single arm and start off, but you got to use your core to push up off the ground. You got to be able to stand up with it all the way off the ground and then get back down with it without without it fall and without losing
track of it. And you know, that's really something where before I really came to the Canda, Michigan. I didn't even know I could do, let alone do that much amount of weight, So, you know, and really, those dumbells get to about two ten and I've yet to break the record there yet. But really I'm trying to get I really won't feel satisfied until I could at least get to some completely unheard of I want to break the limit the heaviest dumb bell if I could do it with it.
Oh heck yeah, all right.
For people that haven't checked it out, look up Chris Jenkins, Turkish, get up.
You will be impressed. Question number three.
You were the captain on a national championship team last year with the Wolverines. They just released them video sometime in the last week or two of your national championship rings and what they're going to look like. I assume you've seen that. What'd you think and what other swag do you have? Did you save from the national championship?
Well?
Yeah, no rings. When we saw them, they're beautiful, man, The Rose Bowl ring, it is honestly the best, to be honest, is beautiful. But you know, finally getting those rings, seeing them and putting them on, man, it was just having that jip. You know that's what you worked for and having that and to be honest with you, don't got no other jet really from the natty you know, I don't got I really don't. I'm not that joypy in general. So that's what makes the rings that much better.
That's why we got to get more and more and more, as many as possible.
So you've actually had the ring. It wasn't just video.
Oh no, we got the rings. We got the rings right now, all four of them, all four of the beautiful rings, right where they belong.
Nice. Okay, I didn't see that.
Question Number four for Chris Jenkins, your coach at Michigan was Jim Harbaugh. Tremendous coach now with the LA Chargers, but famously quirky.
Do you have a best Jim Harbaugh story?
Absolutely? I think I want to say his really, his workout stories are the best stories for me because you wouldn't expect it, like say, whatever you're wearing now, whatever I'm wearing now plus a polo plus a cap khakis. He's he's working like that at six am. It don't matter if we're getting in the if coach, our strength coach told us to get in the cold top submerge, you know, as a mental test before we do a workout. He would do that in the khakis and a polo
before not working at it. Both like, that's that's his type of versity, and that's what we fell in love with, you know, you know, being at Michigan because you know you're gonna you're gonna.
Do that cold top in the khakis. Absolutely, that is fantastic. I wish there was a video of.
That on the end ofnet all right, fifth and final question, tell us something about you that not many people know.
Really probably not a lot of people know, But I'm an anime lover. I'm really just a nerd in general, huge nerd, Like I got comic book collection at the crib, you know that I've had since I was like young, in like a ten year old. So you know, when I'm off the field, I'm really just like i'd say, like a giant dork and a big football jock's body. Like me and me on and off the field are
kind of two completely different people. But at the same time, you know, like it's yeah, I'm just I'm just a nerd for real, for real, legos all that.
Oh my kid, loves lego.
Do you remember former NFL defensive lineman Mike Daniels, mostly of the Packers, a little bit with the Bengals, Absolutely, a little bit.
If I'm if I'm not mistaken, I think he might have played with my uncle for the time.
Well, I bring it up because he was a huge anime guy. So you're not the only NFL defensive tackle who loves animating.
Okay, No, that's what's up. Nah, that's what's up. Then we definitely gonna have to collab at some point on anime, you know, at least in the off season, at least when we know you feel me during in season. We gotta we gotta take our business.
All right.
The mutant is off the hot seat. I appreciate your time. Look forward to gtting to know you better.
Yes, appreciate you. Thank you for having me, Thank you very much.
So the Turkish get up is not the only evidence that Chris Jenkins is a physical freak. His forty yard dash, broad jump, and then press numbers were all graded as elite by a guy that many of you have undoubtedly heard of, Kent Lee Platt, the inventor of raz Or relative athletic score that takes many of the things that are measured at the combine like height, weight, forty times, vertical leap, etc. And combines them to form one number
on a scale of one to ten. Jenkins RAS score was eight point nine to nine, which is very high for a defensive tackle. I caught up with Kent this week to discuss his work and what it tells us about the Bengals. Can't you are described on the internet as a map chunkie and a football nerd?
Is that accurate?
That's very accurate. That's what I go for.
I love it.
So give us a description for how our as relative athletic score came about.
So I started rasback in twenty thirteen. This was the Leveon Beld. It wasn't just Leveon Bell, but he was kind of the catalyst, like that turning point that really made me want to go through with doing something about it. But at the time he had run a four to six in the forty yard dash and the entire argument about him going into the draft that year was about how unathletic Leveon Bell was and I just did not It just didn't track with what the data actually said.
And I'd been looking at the data for a while, so I knew that, but just the fact that that was the whole argument was he ran a bad forty. He's unathletic. You're talking about the guy that was two hundred and thirty pounds as a running back, and he had a six seventy five to three cone, which is one of the better three cones you can possibly get for any physician, let alone a two hundred and thirty
pounds running back. So the idea that we use all those terms that don't really mean anything if they don't have any context behind him. I wanted to add a little bit of that context. So I developed a system that puts all of those testing numbers on a zero to ten scale compared to the player's position group, dating back all the way back into nineteen eighty seven until the player draft year. Everything is stop light color coded again,
because it's easy, it's accessible. The intention is that anybody can look at these scores and kind of understand what they mean and what they're for. And it's been a lot of fun and I feel like people have enjoyed it so far.
There's no questions that fans enjoy it. Have you gotten feedback from NFL teams.
So NFL teams all have their own dedicated analytics departments, They've got their own teams of personnel, they have access to data that we will never have access to. What RAZ provides is a useful analog to what a lot of the NFL teams are using. It's similar to what they use and close enough for some teams that it's
virtually indistinguishable. I do talk to scouts fairly regularly, and usually for them when they're coming to me for data, it's just like, hey, I want to see if these two guys are comparable, or hey, can you check and see how many guys fell within this range for forty yard dash at this weight or something like that. It's usually little requests like that. Because I have such good data availability, it's easier to get at my data than
a lot of the teams still have. But generally they all have their own stuff that they've been using for years, and this is just similar enough to it.
And it seems to me that fans are most interested in RAS in association with the draft. Is that the case for you or are you using it now in other ways as well?
I use it for all kinds of stuff outside of not even just the draft, but the NFL, NFL players, college college players that are going to the NFL. They don't really need guys like me to advertise for them, right they don't. They don't need me to go out there and talk about how athletic these guys are. Everyone knows. Everybody can watch it. They're going to get talked about for months leading up to the draft. I do some work with high school students that are trying to get
into college. Those guys don't get any anybody to advocate for them. There isn't really a good way to propose or to show the kind of testing that they have. I've been working on that for a couple of years and have made some pretty good headways in doing that and using the metrics in a way that kind of helps high schole students get their names out there. But generally, when it comes to the stuff that's for that's that's like public facing. It's all draft stuff and just looking
at neat trends. I mean, I'll do stuff at free agency and other times of the year just because it's fun, Like it's just fun to do that. Does it really matter what a guy tested? Eight nine years ago, but when he came out of the drafts on his second free agency period. No, no, it doesn't matter at all. But it's still fun, you know, it's always good to look back on that stuff and see what's up.
We're going to get to the Bengals here in a second. But are there positions where RAZ judges success best and others where it doesn't.
Absolutely, tight end is always the one that we bring up. It has one of the cleanest correlations to success for any position, just because it's just one of those positions where you've got to be athletic to win. Every other position has at least one player who has found success in the NFL just despite testing poorly. Tight end doesn't
have that. Since since the year two thousand, there's only been one player who had a poor RAZ at tight end who still found reasonable success in the NFL, and it was Jordan Reed, who barely qualified for RAZ because of injury, which was ultimately the story of a good portion of Jordan Reid's career. But every single tight end since the year two thousand has been either a well above average athlete or an elite tier athlete. And you see that every single year. Anytime that guys come out.
It's never a good sign on a tight end test poorly. Consequently, you look at the other side and you have guys like our positions like quarterback, where a lot of the skills that make a good quarterback aren't what we're testing with the drills that go into RAZ. If a quarterback is a pocket passer, pretty much none of those metrics are going to matter. You can argue that the cone might, you can argue that the shuttle might, but generally those drills don't really mean a whole lot for the success
of a quarterback. While the math says that there's a correlation with center, I've found that there's a lot of NFL centers who have tested poorly and still found NFL success. I generally chalked that up to being just a more cerebral position. You know, you're paying attention more to what a guy has north of the neckline than the general athleticism.
The math still tells us that there's a strong correlation there, but there's enough guys that have tested poorly and found success that it's notable to look at that position a little differently.
Our guest is Kent Lee Platt. He is the creator of RAS Relative Athletics Score, and he is a great X follow at math bomb. Yes math bomb, you can see his data online as well at rasis dot football. Let's take a look at the Bengals draft class, beginning with their first pick, number eighteen, overall offensive lineman A Marius Mims. He had an Elite RAS score of nine
point five nine on a scale up to ten. After the pick, you sent out the following tweet, I'm very happy for Bengals fans as their team took their first Elite RAS offense linemen in a decade. This seems to be something that you've been following for a while where the Bengals are concerned.
Yeah, it's not just the Bengals. The overall athleticism on the offensive line was a big deal for me when I first started RAZ because I'm a Lions fan. I follow the Lions. That's my team, and the Lions had one of the least athletic offensive lines in the NFL for for years and years and years, and right around there with them was the Bengals. They were also there with a very unathletic offensive line. The Lions eventually got
away from that. They switched general managers they changed their focus a little bit when it came to drafting athletes on the offensive line, but the Bengals never did and it bled into their free agency signings. The type of guys they brought into free agency, it's like they were actively avoiding anyone who could move. And I've had a
lot of good laughs. I have a lot of friends that are Bengals fans, and I've been doing this for a while and we've had a lot of really good laughs joking about just how extreme it was, because it's not a small difference. I mean, they're they're on average like three or four points lower on a scale of zero to ten, like three or four points lower than the next worst team in general. So they just just
an extreme outlier in that regard. But they drafted a couple of guys in this draft class, and coming from what they've been doing for the last decade and seeing them finally change that has got to be a little bit of a breath of fresh air.
So you're right, there's seventh rounder Matt Lee also had a very high eras score. Have you found historically that the higher rated offensive lines in terms of rushing yard sacks allowed, et cetera.
Have higher RAS scores.
Generally, it's more it's a better indicator of individual performance than it is group. Anytime you look at an average, especially when you only have a couple of a couple of numbers, right so there's only five players on an offensive line, one bad score can really throw off the average, so overall looking that you don't really see that. Now, as far as a general trend, two of the teams that are generally add or near the top are the Chiefs and the Eagles. Those are generally very good teams
and they usually have good offensive lines. The Indianapolis Colts have been up and down with their offensive line performance, but they're consistently one of the highest athletic offensive lines in the NFL. So there are some general trends that we can get from it, but we also know that it has to do a little bit with scheme as well. A few years ago, when the Raiders had a good offensive line, that wasn't a very athletic offensive line, but
they were also very power heavy. They were all about those big people movers that can just bully people around. So it was very much a schematic choice for them to do that. And when you have teams that follow what the Eagles have been doing for the last fifteen or twenty years. They've been doing it for a long time, and you're trying to find those guys that have all that athleticism. They can move, they can pull along the offensive line. It just opens up a lot of what
you can do. Statistically speaking, its correlates better the further on the outside of the offensive line that you are. Tackles have a bigger correlation than guards. Guards have a bigger correlation than center. But you just want athletes when you can get them.
So if the Bengals have not historically drafted offensive lineman with high RAZ scores, what about other positions historically?
I know that they've they've they've went up and down for wide receivers, but kind of at the extreme. So Jamar Chase was one of the most athletic wide receivers of all time. But then you have guys like T Higgins who didn't test all that well. I actually had a whole thread on t Higgins before he was drafted about how you know, RAZ is really good at at identifying general trends, but there's certain players who have a style of play where it doesn't necessarily illustrate what they're
good at. We saw it with Ceedee Lamb, we saw it with Calvin Ridley. We've seen it with my favorite one, An Kwan Bolden, who you know, for An Kwon Bolden, it didn't matter that he wasn't fast or explosive or quick, because if the ball was in the air, it was his football and you had to beat him for it, and most of the time you were losing that fight. You know. With t Higgins, he mostly used his length.
He was very adept at boxing players out by using his body and using that control that he had over his size and his length to do a lot of the work for him. It doesn't matter that he didn't run a great forty times because he's not a burner that's trying to outrun everybody. He's using his body and his size to get rid of people. As long as he's not slow, you're fine. And he isn't slow. You know, he tested decent with speed, So sometimes it doesn't really
matter as much. If you're looking at the style of play, the Bengals have primarily paid attention to defensive guys on the defensive side, or sorry athletic guys on the defensive side of the ball. They haven't really paid as much obviously the offensive line, and then I said they mixed it up a bit both at running back and at
wide receiver. They've done that, so mostly they they paid attention to defense, which could just be keeping up in division because the Steelers have done the same thing, the Ravens have done the same thing, and you really can't let yourself fall behind in a competitive division.
So that's a very good segue into my next question, because one member of this year's draft class had a very poor ras score, and that is three hundred and twenty six pound nose tackle McKinley Jackson, the second of their two third round picks. But you tweeted that his score is fine for a nose tackle.
Why.
Yeah. So the ras US is traditional NFL positional alignments, which it means the defensive tackles but not nose tackle and defensive end but not necessarily edge, which kind of puts us a little bit behind. And I am working on updating that a little bit, modernizing a little bit, But when it comes to nose tackles, you're kind of just looking at the overall testing and saying is this guy such a terrible athlete that he can't stand there and push guys around. You know, nose tackles don't need
to run well. They don't run forty yards. They don't even run ten yards most plays. They don't need to be quick or agile. It's great if they are. See all these things are bonuses if they have them, But they don't need to be a quick and agile guy if you're a nose tackle, because that's not how you're moving on a football field. So it doesn't matter if you don't test well there. When you have a nose tackle, you want them to weigh a good amount. Obviously they're big.
Size is a big deal for them. He weighs three hundred and twenty six pounds over ninetieth percentile for a defensive tackle. That's great. You got the weight, you're good. You want them to be strong. He had a twenty four bench, which is kind of average, but he's got longer arms so that an average bench is perfectly fine. You would prefer that they have a good broad jump. Bigger guys that can propel themselves forward quickly and with
a lot of power. That's a big bonus when you have a guy that's playing on the defensive line and nose tackles that can do that. That's a lot of weight to move forward with, so even having it just above average broad jump is important, and he did for that, and then of course the ten yard split for the exact same reason. You want a guy that can explode out of his stands and use that lower body power to provide force for the rest of his body. He
can do that just fine. McKinley. Jackson didn't test well as a defensive tackle. He's not an interior pass rusher. It doesn't matter that he didn't well test well for the same way it doesn't matter that he didn't test well for a receiver. He's not playing that position.
Let's hope not now.
One player that really stood out to me in terms of his RAS score was the Bengals' second sixth round pick, edge rusher Cedric Johnson. He's a little undersized six three two sixty but had a thirty eight inch vertical ran a four to six three forty. Is that exactly what a team should be looking for in a late sixth round pick. Somebody with measurables like that, quote unquote, A potential diamond in the rock.
Absolutely, especially for guys late pass rushers, and I mentioned tight ends earlier on the other side of the ball, that's defensive ends. Those are the types of guys that fall into that category. You want those elite tier athletes. And I've posted threads on it every year about the top sack artists in the NFL, and it is rare that we have a guy with below average testing. It's rare that we have a guy with below elite testing who becomes a double digit sack guy in the NFL.
You generally want from a broad perspective, not looking at play style or anything. You want a player that tests really well for agility, and Johnson didn't test well for agility. But that's a broad assumption. Right Again, these positional alignments are not perfect. They're based on pretty outdated concepts. If you have a defensive lineman who is very explosive. You
mentioned his vert which was ninety six percentile. He has an almost ninetieth percentile broad jump as well, so very good testing from an explosiveness standpoint, and then he has that speed. That's a guy that can burst off the line. He can use that lower body explosiveness and get off out of his stance very quickly, and he can get up to speed quickly, which is great for pursuit trying to get after the quarterback. Those are all translatable skills,
things that you see on a football field. So having traits in that area means there's something there you can develop, something you can work with. Smart teams recognize that and pay attention to it.
Our guest has Kent Lee plapped the creative Relative Athletics score. You can and should be following him on x at math bomb. He shares a lot of great data and it's free. Give us your overall impressions of this year's draft class. We've obviously covered a few of the guys, but how about the Bengals class top to bottom.
So I already mentioned that I'm very excited that the Bengals are taking a step forward in terms of their offensive line. From an overall athletic standpoint, I think they
ranked twenty twenty fourth. There's not a lot of separation when you're ranking, and like this same reason I mentioned before for averaging, it's small numbers in your averaging, so there's not going to be a huge huge difference overall, but generally they went for really strong athletes, and the guys that they took that weren't elite athletes had some elite traits. Tanner McLachlan from Arizona there I think that
was another six or seventh round pick. Didn't have elite agility, which is what kept his score from being above that eight elite mark, but he has great speed. You want a guy that can run up the seam cool he's he's got that trade, he's a thing. There's a thing that he can do at an elite level that provides an opportunity for the team to use him to contribute. Not everybody's going to be an All star, and you
shouldn't expect them all to be All pros. But if you can contribute from day one, or have those developmental traits that you can contribute long term, then the team can find value for you rather quickly. And getting guys with strong athletic traits, even if it's specialized in areas, is very smart. It's a very very wise way to approach the draft. Guys that don't test well, they've got
to have something else to make up for it. They've got They're going to be going up against guys that are way more athletic than them, so they've got to have some other trait that sets them apart. The Bengals very much just avoided having to make decision with their class this year. They didn't take anybody where they'd have to go, Okay, well is this guy going to be an exception? They don't need to worry about it. They
didn't take any exceptions. They just took a bunch of really good athletes and called it a day.
How do the Bengals compare to their opponents in the AFC North the Steelers, Ravens, and Browns.
So the Steelers, I know, have been trying to get a little bit more defensive on there, are a little bit more athletic on their defense. They've they've had a few a few weaker picks on that side of the ball over the last few years and they've been trying to make up for it. They've generally gotten better there. The Browns have been a little bit up and down with some of that stuff, but they've overall been pretty analytics focused for several years. I mean, they went through
what fourteen GMS or something like that. Eventually something had to stick right, But generally they kind of looked at the Ravens are always a difficult team to evaluate because they're they're so they have such a different approach to talent evaluation than any other team in the NFL. So sometimes they will take big, big swings on guys with lower athletic testing. They didn't really do that this year. They tended to focus on on athletes, so did the Browns,
so did the Steelers. Overall, the conference as a whole and the division as a whole spent a lot of time trying to find those those top athletes, and that means it's competitive. That means that you're fighting with people who are looking for the same thing. So they're they're all trying to get a bit more fast, a bit more explosive.
Looking at the Bengals current roster andre Yosi, Bosh had the highest RAZ at nine point nine to six, which makes sense since he is a world class heptathlete. I imagine that was kind of a fun one to study coming out of Princeton.
Yeah, any anytime you get those guys that are that are and I'm using the term it sounds kind of derived, but are just athletes, right, That's that's their whole calling card is the fact that they are extremely strong athletically. It's always exciting to watch those guys grow because it's it is a big risk to take a swing on guys like that. I don't think it's as big of
a risk. I actually know some people who who have worked with him and have coached with have coached him, and none of them think that he's this developmental, long term thing. They all believe that he's a guy that can step in and start and start working right away
and contribute right away. But when you're looking at it from a broader perspective, you're looking at a guy with all of the traits that you need, not one or two, all of the traits you need to be a successful wide receiver in the NFL, and you give yourself that little playing piece that you can start working into your offense, that you can start trying to find, Okay, what can we do with that? What can we do with a guy that has this size, the speed, this explosiveness, this agility,
What can we do to get him more involved. It's always exciting to watch those guys and see how it works out. Sometimes it's a little messy, but sometimes you get guys you don't expect to be as good as they are. Jason Peters was a tight end coming up by college. He was an undrafted tight end who went on to become one of the best offensive tackles in
NFL history. Sometimes you take those swings and they work out, and using mid late round picks on guys like that is a good, good idea to go ahead and take those swings.
So this offseason, the Chiefs picked up Hollywood Brown. They drafted Xavier Worthy, who set the forty yard dash record at the combine. I'm half convinced that they're going to sign you Saint Bolt tomorrow. It seems like anybody that can run that fast is going to be a Kansas City Chief. Do they stand out as the most athletic team in the NFL? Or are they high on the list? What do you find in looking at Kansas City over the years.
I don't think they've been number one in any draft in a while, but they're always very high up there. They're either a top five or top ten team pretty much every year, and that kind of predates Andy Reid. That's not something that was specific just to Andy Reid. It's something they've been doing through multiple, multiple leadership groups. But they they are very much at the top of the NFL when it comes to selecting athletes. They were a top five team this year. Actually they might have
think they might have been two. They're they're very very high, whichever it was. They, like you said, they want fast guys. They know who they are, they know what they want to do. They look for the guys that do those things and that that thing just happens to be very fast on offense. So, like you said, if a guy runs fast, he's a he's a candidate to be a chief.
Are there any misconceptions about raz.
Yes, lots.
One of the biggest things that comes up is is how we chart like success or how likely guys are to be successful. A guy testing well doesn't mean that he's going to be successful in the NFL, and it doesn't even really mean that he is likely to be
successful in the NFL. Most NFL prospects fail and it's I discussed it every year, but it's just really hard to wrap your around sometimes that there's about two hundred and fifty players that are drafted every year, and of those two hundred and fifty, maybe ten percent will become starters in the NFL, so maybe twenty players something like that. There are over two thousand players in every draft. It's generally about twenty two to twenty five hundred players in
every draft. Most of those players won't get drafted. Most of those players will never see an NFL field, They'll never be in an NFL training camp, whether or not they tested well. So when you start looking at things like RAZ, you're looking at what are the successful players in the NFL and what common traits do they share with NFL prospects.
And that is.
Generally where you find your athletes, your guys like Amarius Mims who have all these very strong athletic traits that line up very well with players who have been successful previously, and if they test well, you look at how they win on the football field. And this is where the biggest misconception is, which is that I'm just the numbers guy, right, and I'm all, it's just the numbers, and that's it. RAZ is meant to be a part of an evaluation.
It is not the evaluation. You should never start and stop with RAZ. It should always be a piece of that puzzle. And if you're looking at a guy that tests really well. That's obviously a positive thing, but if it doesn't show up on a football field, you have to ask yourself, why while why am I not seeing those athletic traits? And sometimes it's attitude. Sometimes they just they just check out. They don't really care that much about football, they don't want to be out there. Sometimes
it's technique. Danielle Hunter is one of my favorite examples for that because he had none in college. He had I think three total sacks in his career something like that when he was in college. A perennial double digit sack guy now, but he had all those athletic traits, and the Vikings were smart enough to look at that and say, Okay, there's a lot that we can work with. He just needs to do things with his arms. He's
got to learn how to use his arms. You know, you've got to be able to marry the testing with the tape, and you've got to have you got I have that gumption to be able to look at a player's testing, whether it's very poor or very good, and if it doesn't match the tape, you've got to be able to say to yourself, I am comfortable drafting this player or I am not regardless of the testing, but you need to acknowledge that, you need to be aware that that's a thing that you're doing, because if you
just ignore the numbers, you're going to make mistakes. We see it every year with some of the guys that get drafted, and you always hear people say, oh, you can't measure heart, and yeah, that's I mean, that's true, but it's not inversely proportional to athletic ability. Guys. Guys still got to be able to move, you know.
So you take all of these things that are measured at the combine and at players pro day's height, weight, forty time, bench press, broad jump, vertical, three cone drill, et cetera, and combine it into one easy to understand number. But having said all that, do you think that any of those tests is most important?
Not for every position. I think for individual types of players, there are some that very much stand out. There's some broad generalizations that you can make the shuttle drill and offensive lineman. If you have a very elite shuttle time four or five or below, there is a very high probability you're going to be an NFL starter. Whether you're drafted in the first round or drafted in the seventh there's a very high probability you're going to end up
starting in the NFL. Very hard to ignore when the data lines up that cleanly. For pass rushers, if you want guys that are going to be bending the edge, they're gonna be those agile guys that can bend around the side. You want them to have a really good cone drill. You want them to have a sub seven cone. If you have a speed receiver, obviously you want them to test good in the forty. If a guy runs a four or five and you expect him to be your speedster, there's a lot of corners that are going
to be faster than him. That's not going to be as successful as you think it's going to be. So there are some individual traits that are are are specific to individual positions in different areas, but none that are broad. The cone, I think, tends to line up with the most number of positions. So if there was one drill that was the most important one, it's probably going to be the three cone. But I don't think that that's universal.
You have lived up to your description as a math chunkie and a football nerd. I have told people how they can find you on Twitter, but where are all the various places that they can see your work?
So I'm on multiple socials, I'm primarily on Twitter. You already mentioned that math bomb. My website is RAZ dot Football. You can go and check out anything there for free. We're up to twenty six thousand players I think on there from nineteen eighty seven to twenty twenty four. I also run the Pro Football Network, a mock draft simulator, so if you're one of those people who likes doing mock drafts, you can always give that a try and hopefully you enjoy that as much as you like the
other stuff that we do. And if you're just bored and want to talk football, obviously like talking football, so I'm always up for that.
Well, this has been great. I've been very intrigued by RAZ for years now, and I'm glad we finally had the opportunity to chat. I appreciate your time, Thanks for coming on the pod, and keep up the great work.
Thanks so much, appreciate you having me.
Here's a quick reminder that the Bengals Booth podcast is brought to you by pay Corps, 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 the best fans. Kettering Health is the official healthcare provider of the Bengals. The Bengals open the Rookie
Mini Camp on Friday. In addition to their ten draft picks, the Bengals will be signing nearly fifteen undrafted free agents. The team can announce them until they've passed physicals and signed their contracts, but the players and or their colleges have shared their plans to sign at Cincinnati. I checked out the RAS scores for all of those players, and the guy with the highest number is a wide receiver
named Cole Burgess. He's from Dan Pitchers alma mater, Cortland, a Division III school in upstate New York, not far from Syracuse. The six foot tall, one hundred ninety two pound Burgess helped the Red Dragons win the Division III national championship last year by catching eighty seven passes for nearly fourteen hundred yards, including sixteen for touchdowns. In his college career, he averaged more than seventeen yards a catch, and Burgess also had three kick returns for touchdowns. His
RAS score was nine point eight. That would have ranked eighth among wide receivers who tested at the NFL Combine, as Burgess ran a four four five forty with a forty one and a half inch vertical and he broad jumped more than eleven feet. I'll be eager to get a look at Cole Burgess on Friday. Finally, two years before the Bengals drafted Joe Burrow, they used a seventh round pick on a quarterback from the University of Toledo
named Logan Woodside. He never played in the regular season for Cincinnati, but Woodside has played in the NFL for Tennessee and Atlanta. Now, Logan has returned to the Bengals as a free agent and will likely battle an undrafted rookie named Rocky Lombardi who played at Michigan State in Northern Illinois, to be the bengals number three quarterback. I caught up with Logan on his first day back in the Bengals locker room. Logan, It's funny sometimes how things
come full circle. You are back with the team that originally drafted you. Tell us about signing with the Bengals.
Yeah, super excited, super super grateful to be back and to have this opportunity, and yeah, it's funny how things work out.
And then I'm super grateful to be here.
What appealed to you about this opportunity?
I think just to come back and obviously be a part of a great organization, a team that's had a lot of success over the last couple of years, and you know, just being close to home definitely helps.
And uh, just excited to be here.
Obviously being a Joe Burrow teammate speaks for itself. But Jake Browning also had a lot of success last year when he got the opportunity.
Do you see a.
Quarterback room that can help you bring out the best in yourself?
I think so.
You know, obviously I've known Jake a little bit through college and then you know, obviously meeting him this past week and youet to meet Joe, but excited to do that as well. And two great dudes and obviously great quarterbacks, and I'm excited to be a part of it.
You've had some success when given the opportunity to play for other teams in the NFL, how would you characterize your career and how you've done so far, you know.
Just tried to you know, fight each and every day to to earn a roster spot, and also just with every opportunity, just just being just being ready and trying to take advantage of that moment.
You aren't far from home, as you alluded to. How have friends and family reacted to this news? Really surprised?
Yeah, super, they're super excited.
You know.
Obviously, my wife is super excited to be back here. You know, we met it up here and just excited to be back.
Have the Bengals giving you any indication of what your role might be?
Are they?
Did they tell you they're likely to keep two on the active roster, another person on the practice squad or what kind of info did you get from them?
Not a ton of info on that.
Just really trying to come in here each and every day and learn my teammates and you know, learn this offense as quickly as possible, and try to find myself a role.
We'll certainly be throwing to some great targets. That has to be appealing, I would think to anybody looking to play quarterback in the NFL.
Yeah, absolutely, great group of skill receivers and obviously running backs tight ends. So super sided to continue to meet all these guys and continue.
To work with them.
Welcome back, appreciate your time, Thank you very much.
Woodside has played very well in NFL preseason games and in a stint with the San Antonio commanders of the now defunct AAF.
That's going to do it.
For This episode of the Bengals Booth pot brought to you by pay Core, Proud to be the Bengals official HR software provider, by Ulta 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 the best fans. Kettering Health is the official healthcare provider
of the Bengals. 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 Hord and thanks for listening to The Bengals Booth Podcast