Bengals Related News & Notes

[orange_black]

if i recall correclty, even if the packers score the TD, Brady gets the ball back, so im not buying the argument of "you cant give brady the ball"

[skycruiser]

They would’ve needed a two point conversion to tie it, they were down eight

[Joe Bananas]

if i recall correclty, even if the packers score the TD, Brady gets the ball back, so im not buying the argument of "you cant give brady the ball"

So you would give Brady the ball with 1:36 left (hypothetical number here) if you had a team going against him? I wouldn't give Brady the ball with 95 yards to go with 36 seconds left.

[Jmble]

I honestly don't remember this happening, but would be nice to have him now.

Shaq Barrett was ready to sign with the #Bengals two years ago and says it was a "gut shot" when it didn't happen. Now he's preparing for a Super Bowl while the Bengals still need pass rushers.
@pauldehnerjr talked to Barrett about why the deal fell apart.

The interview is in The Athletic. May post later.

[4256 Hits]

I honestly don't remember this happening, but would be nice to have him now.

Shaq Barrett was ready to sign with the #Bengals two years ago and says it was a "gut shot" when it didn't happen. Now he's preparing for a Super Bowl while the Bengals still need pass rushers.
@pauldehnerjr talked to Barrett about why the deal fell apart.

The interview is in The Athletic. May post later.

He just would have got hurt if he signed with the Bengals.

[skycruiser]

I honestly don't remember this happening, but would be nice to have him now.

Shaq Barrett was ready to sign with the #Bengals two years ago and says it was a "gut shot" when it didn't happen. Now he's preparing for a Super Bowl while the Bengals still need pass rushers.
@pauldehnerjr talked to Barrett about why the deal fell apart.

The interview is in The Athletic. May post later.

He just would have got hurt if he signed with the Bengals.

Hahaha so true

[Exile]

I honestly don't remember this happening, but would be nice to have him now.

Shaq Barrett was ready to sign with the #Bengals two years ago and says it was a "gut shot" when it didn't happen. Now he's preparing for a Super Bowl while the Bengals still need pass rushers.
@pauldehnerjr talked to Barrett about why the deal fell apart.

The interview is in The Athletic. May post later.

He just would have got hurt if he signed with the Bengals.

He would have helped us get enough wins so we couldn't draft Joe, THEN he would have had a big injury.

[4256 Hits]

He would have helped us get enough wins so we couldn't draft Joe, THEN he would have had a big injury.

That is know as the Bengals way.

[skycruiser]

can one of ya'll post the shaq barrett story?

[Bengals1]

can one of ya'll post the shaq barrett story?

Here tis'....

Shaquil Barrett wasn’t the most sought-after player when he entered free agency out of Denver two years ago. The edge rusher was looking for playing time and a chance to land a contract somewhere without Von Miller and Bradley Chubb in front of him on the depth chart.

He still hung around unsigned after the first waves of free agency.

New Bengals coach Zac Taylor and the Bengals’ personnel staff liked what they’d seen out of Barrett in his sub-package, reserve role in Denver and envisioned a world he could be a great asset to a defense needing more pop in the pass rush.

They brought him to Cincinnati on a visit. They were his most aggressive pursuer. Things were going well. It appeared he might end up with the Bengals.

What happened next? Well, I asked Barrett what happened during his Zoom availability on Media Day for Super Bowl LV as the premier pass rusher for the dynamic Bucs defense and owner of 27.5 sacks the last two seasons.

Let’s let him tell it.

“They said I had something with my shoulder or something that — I don’t have anything with my shoulder,” Barrett said. “That’s when they pulled off, which had me pretty upset because I was putting all my eggs into that basket. I thought Cincinnati would have been the right move for me and they offered me a two-year contract and my agent was sure he could get me up a little bit more than what they offered so it would have been the most money I’d ever made with the most security. And that’s all I wanted was security and stability for my family. It was a gut shot once they pulled the contract offer, but I didn’t hear from anybody else about anything from the teams I visited about any shoulder injury because I never had a shoulder injury.”

Barrett instead signed a one-year, $4 million contract with the Bucs.

It’s easy to play the game of what could have been in free agency and the draft. It’s also easy to do so with injury assessments and Barrett also had a hip flexor injury that kept him out a month in December of 2018. The Bengals doctors decided it to be too risky.

There are often so many directions and so many variables in a rapidly changing process, it’s almost unfair to play the game of hindsight.

Almost.

However, after two seasons where the Bengals found themselves desperately seeking a more prolific pass rush to think a risk assessment on what turned out to be a phantom shoulder injury kept Barrett from lining up opposite Carl Lawson for pennies on the dollar of his current worth, stings far deeper than the average reflection.

Barrett finished fourth among all edge rushers in pressures (with 19.5 sacks) in 2019. He led all edge rushers in pressures this past season and had eight sacks.

His shoulder appears just fine.

The Bengals ranked last in the NFL with just 17 sacks this past season. They managed only 31 in 2019. The 48 sacks the last two seasons is dead last in the NFL over that span. Tampa Bay ranks fourth.

The Bucs placed the one-year, $15.8 million franchise tag on Barrett to keep him from hitting free agency prior to this year. He will be a free agent again this offseason, but the price won’t be the friendly bargain the Bengals could have been the beneficiary of in 2019.

“He ain’t going anywhere,” Bucs head coach Bruce Arians said in December.

When asked about Arians standing up for him, Barrett, who just turned 28 in November, acknowledged how much he’d love to keep this perfect marriage going.

“I love that he said that,” Barrett said in December. “I want to be there. That’s my goal. It just worked out perfectly for me. I can’t be more blessed. It’s God’s plan. I wouldn’t have been here if it was my plan. I’m just happy the Bucs gave me a chance. I made the most out of that chance. … I’m just happy. I’m grateful and very appreciative.”

How grateful and appreciative would the Bengals be if Barrett got his wish? More importantly, how different would the 2-13-1 record in one-possession games be if the worst pass-rushing team in the NFL instead employed one of the most dynamic pass rushers in the game?

We’ll never know. We only know Barrett viewed it as a “gut shot” and he had “all my eggs into that basket.” That lives among the most regrettable what-if moments in this recent swoon of Bengals football.

If you received anything close to the level of play Barrett displayed in Tampa, it would have been in the conversation of the best free-agent signing in team history along with John Thornton, Bobbie Williams, Cedric Benson and a small contingent of others.

These are the types of mistakes you just can’t make when trying to dig out of the bottom of the AFC North and they can’t happen again or the Bengals will never see what it’s like to be the ones answering these questions during Super Bowl week instead of reading about them.


Paul Dehner Jr. is a senior writer and podcast host for The Athletic. He's been covering the Bengals and NFL since 2009, most notably, the past six seasons for The Cincinnati Enquirer. He's born, raised and proudly Cincinnati. Follow Paul on Twitter @pauldehnerjr .