LOVELAND MAGAZINE

News and Events from the Loveland, Ohio Area

Without fear or favor
Since 2004

Tag: national football league

  • The Bengals Address Key Needs In the 2024 Draft

    The Bengals Address Key Needs In the 2024 Draft

    Amarius Mims photo via Cincinnati Bengals on FaceBook

    by Chris Ball

    Loveland, Ohio – The 2024 Bengals have a clear set of goals entering the upcoming season: keep Joe Burrow upright and keep him healthy. That starts at one key position group: the offensive line. That group has come under intense scrutiny ever since the team took Burrow at the number one pick overall in the 2020 draft. The rate at which he has been sacked has been well documented. In 2021 it was a league high 51 times, and by 2023 he had been sacked the second-most times among all NFL quarterbacks since he entered the league. Burrow’s hits and his injuries are well-known factors league wide, as are the Bengals’ efforts to mitigate that damage and keep their franchise pillar on the field.

    While they have done well bringing in linemen in free agency, signing the likes of Alex Cappa and Ted Karras, it has been a very different story drafting and developing in the trenches. Whether it be Jonah Williams, Cedric Ogbuehi, or (dare we say it), Billy Price, the Bengals have yet to turn their top draft picks along the line into genuine stars that can show they can protect the most important position and player on the field on a consistent basis.

    Amarius Mims photo via Georgia Dogs Roster

    Bengals fans all hope that trend is coming to a close with the pick of Georgia offensive tackle Amarius Mims. He is an absolute titan of a man, at 6 foot 8 inches and 340 pounds such that it is hard to imagine a freight train being able to get past him. Never mind that he has less than 11% body fat and ran 5.07 in the 40-yard dash, there is simply no question that the physical traits and raw skill are unquestionable when it comes to Mims.

    Those traits and his potential were never in question, but there are some concerns that may prevent him from becoming the Bengals’ right tackle of the future. This issues namely come from his lack of consistent starting experience. He was able to start just eight games over three years at Georgia, and was out for six games last year with an ankle injury. While the injury itself isn’t necessarily one that is thought to impact his career long-term, any malady is magnified a hundredfold when the subject is a first round pick of the impact of a player like Mims. The lack of consistent starting and playing at Georgia means that it will be up to the Bengals staff, namely Frank Pollack, their offensive line coach, to transition Mims into the physically and mentally demanding world that is the National Football League.

    The signing of Trent Brown will undoubtedly help this transition, both from mentorship and timing angles. However, Brown has his own injury issues, as do the Bengals as a team, and there is therefore a significant possibility that Amarius Mims will see significant snaps in 2024. He has all the talent in the world to step in and contribute, it is now on the Bengals and their staff to make sure he is ready to be the tackle all Bengals fans hope he could be.

    As Bengals fans are learning, there simply isn’t enough money to go around when it comes to retaining players we all know and love. This was the case with D.J. Reader who signed a two-year deal with the Lions this past offseason. Reader was a leader and his run-stopping ability could not be denied. Run defense was an area where the team struggled overall last year (they were 26th in the league, allowing 126 yards per game) and losing Reader signaled that problem might only get worse in 2024 and beyond.

    Enter Kris Jenkins. The Bengals selected the Michigan defensive tackle and 2023 National Champion with the 49th pick in the second round of the NFL draft. According to PFF his run-stop percentage ranks in the 99th percentile and it’s hard to imagine a better fit for the Bengals’ needs in round 2 of the draft. When he’s paired with newly-signed Sheldon Rankins, who has a 71.5 pass rush grade and a 10.2 percent pass rush win rate (all very respectable numbers), that tandem could be very dangerous in the years to come, as they complement each other extremely well.

    The Bengals had significant holes to fill coming into 2024, but their first two picks appear well-positioned to address those needs and exceed expectations in the coming seasons. A smart and focused draft now could mean exceptional success during Joe Burrow’s prime years.

    Christopher Ball is a longtime Loveland resident and an attorney. He graduated from Loveland High School in 2003 and was a member of the football team before going on to become a coach’s assistant at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. He has been following and rooting for the Reds and Bengals since the early 1990s and has been through the many ups and downs that fandom has wrought over the years.

  • Cris Collinsworth Welcomes The “Their Time,” Bengals To The Super Bowl 40 Years Later

    Cris Collinsworth Welcomes The “Their Time,” Bengals To The Super Bowl 40 Years Later

    Jim Breech and Cris Collinsworth (80) are watching all their postseason records disappear.

    Hobson_Geoff

    Geoff Hobson

    Bengals.com Senior Writer

    LOS ANGELES – If it seems like Al Michaels has called everything but a presidential election, it’s because he has.

    Michaels, NBC’s Miracle Man who is calling his record-tying 11th Super Bowl Sunday, puts another benediction on a team Thursday as he watches the Bengals practice at UCLA.

    “I think America has been captivated by this team,” Michaels says. “Come back down 18 to Kansas City on the road. And everybody said, ‘Whoa.’”

    Michaels could look across Bengals head coach Zac Taylor’s toughest practice of the week and see Pauley Pavilion, the gym where he called John Wooden’s last two seasons and 10th national championship. He also called some of the first great moments of the Big Red Machine and sees Sunday as a nice bookend to his days on the Ohio River that included a World Series.

    But Michaels couldn’t call it when he sat down with Bengals rookie wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase earlier Thursday and asked him who had the Bengals rookie postseason receiving record.

    Chase said he didn’t know and Michaels pointed at his partner and said, “Him.”

    “One of the great blank looks,” Cris Collinsworth says. “That’s the way it should be. This is their time.”

    Collinsworth, who has almost as many Emmys (16) analyzing the NFL as Chase has postseason catches (20), says Chase is the best receiver in Bengals history even though he’s built more like a running back.

    “That’s why,” Collinsworth says. “I think he’s a phenomenal athlete who just happens to play wide receiver. He plays the position like Gale Sayers would play it. You’ll probably have to tell him who Gale Sayers is.”

    While we’re at it, on the 40th anniversary of the Bengals’ first Super Bowl team, isn’t Joe Burrow playing quarterback like Collinsworth played that year? A rookie taking shot after shot and getting up and setting record after record on the way to the Super Bowl. And so cool while doing it. Collinsworth had ’80s aw-shucks swag. Burrow has 2020s social media swag.

    “There never has been anybody cooler than this kid,” Collinsworth says. “That’s impossible.”

    What’s not impossible is that Burrow has made an All-Pro team. You just have to go to Collinsworth’s Pro Football Focus web site to find it. It’s the Pro Bowl team he put together. Burrow is his quarterback.

    “He deserved it,” Collinsworth says.

    Shelve the PFF grades for a sec. Collinsworth can get a little nostalgic.

    “I’m like everyone else. If you can’t have fun watching these guys play football …” Collinsworth says. “They’ve got a certain energy. What’s the big deal? When I came in, I didn’t know. We were the top seed. We won the first two games at home and went to the Super Bowl. I did it in my first year. Doesn’t everybody? I get the same kind of feel with this bunch. ‘OK, we’ve won a couple of games and we’re at the Super Bowl at UCLA. We beat them in school, too, so we’ll keep winning.’ I mean, that’s just how it seems. They’re young and they’re just playing.”

    That’s why Collinsworth thinks these Bengals have repeated history and taken Cincinnati by storm. No one was expecting it.

  • Eifert’s Decision to Honor David Dorn Will Test Limits of League’s New Social Justice Policy

    Eifert’s Decision to Honor David Dorn Will Test Limits of League’s New Social Justice Policy

    by Christopher Ball

    In early September, former Bengals tight end Tyler Eifert announced that he would choose to honor the memory of David Dorn, a retired St. Louis police captain who was killed in June of this year.

    Christopher Ball is a longtime Loveland resident and an attorney

    Eifert was selected by the Bengals in the first round of the 2013 NFL Draft and played his first seven seasons in Cincinnati. He recently signed a 2-year $9.5 million deal with the Jacksonville Jaguars, where he hopes to make a comeback after several injury-plagued seasons with the Bengals. 

    In addition to a new chapter in his NFL career, Eifert plans to wear a decal honoring Mr. Dorn this season, as part of the league’s recent decision to allow players to wear decals on the back of their helmets.  

    The NFL’s new stance is a stark reversal from its prior positions. In 2016 the league refused to allow Dallas Cowboys players to wear decals to honor five police officers killed by a sniper in downtown Dallas. Even Jerry Jones, the owner of the Cowboys, felt that allowing players to put unique messages on their helmets or wear pink to honor cancer survivors, would open “Pandora’s Box’ that would be difficult to ultimately control. In 2013 Bears wide receiver Brandon Marshall was fined for wearing green shoes to highlight issues surrounding mental health. 

    Whatever you may think of his opinions, Colin Kaepernick’s visible on-field protests against systemic racism and police violence are unquestionably a large part of the reason that he is no longer playing football. Prior to 2020, it was clear that the National Football League was doing all that it could to keep politics, protests, and uniform variance out of its brand. 

    Now that has all changed. 

    Roger Goodell has admitted that both he and the league were wrong for not listening to protesting players sooner. The new decal initiative is the National Football League’s attempt to, at least in part, allow its players to express their non-football opinions on the field, while they are at work, doing their jobs. While the new rules were ultimately put in place to allow players to place decals on their helmets “bearing names or initials of victims of systemic racism and police violence” Eifert’s choice sends a different message, one very similar to those of the 2016 Dallas Cowboys. Eifert himself has a long history of supporting military and first responders during his career, and so his choice to honor David Dorn is not surprising.  

    What will be interesting to see is whether the league will allow him to wear a decal honoring Dorn even though, by most standards, the slain police captain is not a “victim of systemic racism or police violence.” Early reports suggest that the players will be allowed to pick from an approved list of names, with options such as George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery. While the NFL has not officially released its policy on decals, nor have they provided the complete list of names from which its players can choose, Eifert’s decision to honor Dorn is one that will no doubt spark debate on the boundaries of the NFL’s new policy. 

    Whether it opens Pandora’s box, as Jerry Jones once feared, is yet to be seen.

  • Former Drill Sergeant: “Flag is a symbol not an idol.”

    Former Drill Sergeant: “Flag is a symbol not an idol.”

    “We can continue as a nation to sweep problems under the rug on which we stand – or we can take a knee.”

    by Steve Link,

    HAVE TO SAY THIS: If I thought the NFL protests were a slap in the face to “our soldiers, our police officers, and our veterans” as some have claimed, I’d be right there with those who object.

    On Tuesday, October 9 the Press Secretary for our administrative branch of government said, “We support the national anthem, the flag, and the men and women who fought to defend it.”

    Well, I was proud to serve in the military. Never in harm’s way, but served on active duty for two years. I was a Drill Sergeant. Most of my …trainees went to Vietnam. They did not fight for a flag.

    Our nation’s flag is supposed to denote and identify our great country. IT IS A SYMBOL, NOT AN IDOL. It symbolizes this nation of people and the systems within which we live – including the good and the bad. Certainly, no one salutes the flag to honor what’s wrong in America, but the bad is part of American life just as it is globally.

    I can understand some of the confusion surrounding for whom the flag flies. Many Americans believe that the United States is the “greatest nation on earth.” That’s just not so and is, frankly, fake news. The one way in which we ARE far above all other nations is in military strength. So one might confuse the symbolism of our flag as being militaristic. But our flag is certainly not designed to represent any special segment of our citizenry. Most Americans do not serve in the military or law enforcement. Rather, the American flag it is a symbol of equality for all – among other ideals – for which we try to stand as a people. (And “equality for all” is also fake news.) 

    So, I do not see the NFL players disrespecting any individuals. No, they are trying the best they can to turn our collective attention to problems in our country that are morally abhorrent. I am pleased that some of them have been passionate enough to take risks and draw upon a large audience to make a statement that needs hearing (and seeing).

    We can continue as a nation to sweep problems under the rug on which we stand – or we can take a knee.

    Steve Link, a former Drill Sergeant

    lives in the Landen Farm Lake Community

    and a recent Peace Corps Volunteer.