Devonta Smith Heisman Winner

[Exile]

I said before that I wouldn't hate picking Smith at 5, and I'll stand by it, but it wouldn't be my ideal scenario.

I'm really hesitant about Parsons, especially that early. From some things I read, I'd be concerned about character issues. Plus our young LB corps isn't terrible and seems to be progressing.

Farley or Surtain both have quite a bit of appeal, especially if we don't resign WJIII.

I saw a mock with Slater, the tackle from Northwestern, going 9th to the Broncos, so I don't know if that would really be a reach for us to take him. Guess it all depends on how he grades out.

I think Pitts is a very good player, wouldn't hate the pick, but I think our TE room with a healthy Uzomah and Sample who made progress this year is good enough that it's not a priority position.

[Jmble]

I said before that I wouldn't hate picking Smith at 5, and I'll stand by it, but it wouldn't be my ideal scenario.

I'm really hesitant about Parsons, especially that early. From some things I read, I'd be concerned about character issues. Plus our young LB corps isn't terrible and seems to be progressing.

Farley or Surtain both have quite a bit of appeal, especially if we don't resign WJIII.

I saw a mock with Slater, the tackle from Northwestern, going 9th to the Broncos, so I don't know if that would really be a reach for us to take him. Guess it all depends on how he grades out.

I think Pitts is a very good player, wouldn't hate the pick, but I think our TE room with a healthy Uzomah and Sample who made progress this year is good enough that it's not a priority position.

I'm curious which part of the young linebacker corps that you see progressing well? Logan Wilson seems to be the only guy that has much potential and he looked lost at times last year. I can chalk that up to being a rookie, Josh Bynes had by far his worst season of his career and he's in his 30s now. I don't see him suddenly bouncing back. He's also an unrestricted free agent. Jordan Evans was okay but really didn't see the field very much.

[Bengals1]

Yeah, I'm with J. I'm all for strengthening the Linebacking Corp. I just don't know if its something we need to address with our very first pick...

[MeatHeadbengal]

I said before that I wouldn't hate picking Smith at 5, and I'll stand by it, but it wouldn't be my ideal scenario.

I'm really hesitant about Parsons, especially that early. From some things I read, I'd be concerned about character issues. Plus our young LB corps isn't terrible and seems to be progressing.

Farley or Surtain both have quite a bit of appeal, especially if we don't resign WJIII.

I saw a mock with Slater, the tackle from Northwestern, going 9th to the Broncos, so I don't know if that would really be a reach for us to take him. Guess it all depends on how he grades out.

I think Pitts is a very good player, wouldn't hate the pick, but I think our TE room with a healthy Uzomah and Sample who made progress this year is good enough that it's not a priority position.

I'm curious which part of the young linebacker corps that you see progressing well? Logan Wilson seems to be the only guy that has much potential and he looked lost at times last year. I can chalk that up to being a rookie, Josh Bynes had by far his worst season of his career and he's in his 30s now. I don't see him suddenly bouncing back. He's also an unrestricted free agent. Jordan Evans was okay but really didn't see the field very much.

Geather was starting to play pretty well I though towards the end of the season. I think Wilson trailed off a bit, I have hope for them still though.

[Exile]

Yeah, I was thinking primarily of Logan Wilson and Akeem Davis-Gaither. Wilson seemed to make pretty steady progress throughout the season, though he was by no means "plug and play"--he was growing and making mistakes, but seemed to have good potential. D-G seemed to be showing something late, though it's hard to judge much positive or negative when the defense is as broken down as ours was late in the season. There were several games that I didn't see, though, so I'm probably talking out my ass a bit. I'm really just trying to add more reasons not to take Parsons.

[Jmble]

To be honest, I didn't watch any of the last game and very little of the game before that. I kind of checked out, so if Gaither looked much better, then great.

I don't completely rely on PFF Grades. I paid for a year subscription around the draft last year because I wanted to check out their draft coverage. But it is something I've referred back to because it's an impartial judge of players that is supposed to rely on looking at every snap and at each player individually. That's why if not a perfect system, it does seem to be a pretty reliable way to look at players from the outside.

Having said that, Gaither's grade for the year was a 40. This was good for 83rd out of 90 Linebackers. I hadn't been looking weekly to see changes but after week 8 his score was 40.6.

Maybe you guys see something in him that I haven't personally seen yet and I do agree with B1 that we don't need to use our first pick on Linebacker, but I also wouldn't completely dismiss it. Right now there is nobody in our linebacker corps that i look at and say "this guy's got it". Logan Wilson may be that guy, and who knows, maybe even Gaither will turn into that guy. Frankly I hope they both do, but I'd still be looking at Linebackers in the offseason.

[4256 Hits]

Honestly this year and the past few year the Bengals LB were good at one thing and that was sucking. It is almost like all they did all week was practice sucking they were so good at it.