January 9, 2026 • 10 mins
Robert Weintraub writes a weekly Bengals column for Cincinnati Magazine. He joined us to discuss the big Duke Tobin press conference extravaganza.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Twenty after four. This is ESPN fifteen thirty.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Our friend Robert Wintraub during the football season usually joins
us on Thursdays, and for twenty today is not Thursday,
but it is for twenty. We've moved him back today
because I wanted his thoughts on the Duke Tobin mega
press conference, which lasted an hour.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Robert is with us. Now, did you enjoy the press conference?
Speaker 3 (00:26):
And it's funny, you know, we wait and wait and
wait for duto to Tobin excuse me to speak, and
then he goes out a little long and everybody's like, yeah,
get this guy out of here. Where's the hook? A little?
Speaker 2 (00:41):
I wanted it to keep going. I wanted to just
go on and on. I would have been more than
okay had it leaked into our show. Did you have
any overarching takeaway from Duke's chat with the media, Well, funnily, I.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Guess my main takeaway is if he's going to be asked,
you know what changes need to be made in Cincinnati
for twenty twenty six, and he answered, we need to
win more games. I'm fine with him not coming to
any of these press conferences and not more often, which
we all sort of want, but I mean, you know,
it was mainly a filibuster. He wanted you to know
(01:13):
very clearly that the Joe Flacco move was his idea
and it should have ended up in a parade thrown
for him, and you can't understand why.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
And you know, it was a great move.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
I've given him credit for it all season, and in
a different circumstance and different context it would have been
viewed as such. But of course, you know, the overarching
issue was the fact that they just ran back a
defense that was horrible last year and it got worse.
And you know, as they do so often in Cincinnati,
they expect things to change without any particular reason for it,
(01:46):
and you know, kind of just look to the pass
and say, we did it once upon a time, we've
done it occasionally, and you know that means we can
do it again. And you know, to a point, that's true.
But that's just not the way to operate, obviously, for
a team that's supposedly going after championships. But as I
wrote in the column that right yesterday Cincinnati Magazine, the
Bengals aren't that way.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
This is not who they are.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
We all know that their settings are not set to
championship level. It's set to be competitive, you know, it's
not set to all in. It's set to put a
decent team on the field and remain financially flexible. So,
you know, the idea that we were expecting, or people
were expecting, some sort of you know, grand scheme to
be laid out by Duke and how there's going to
(02:30):
be a massive change going forward, I think was just unrealistic.
It's nice to see at least acknowledge that there's a
lot of frustration, but otherwise, you know, I don't take
away too much from it other than you know, they
at least hear from the outside that there's a lot
of noise surrounding Duke's job performance over the last couple
of years, and they at least had to trot them
(02:50):
out to you know, get the villagers to extinguish their torches.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
For five minutes.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
But overall, not much is going to change.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
I listened to them talk about how there's no comfort,
lack of comfort. He doesn't have comfort. There's no comfort
even when you win the Super Bowl. And what I
heard today beyond that and what I see sort of
flies in the face of that.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Would you agree, Yeah, completely.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
You know, I think wants to come back to what
the George and one of the most respected personnel guys
really ever in NFL history said once when you know
the Mara family wanted to put one of the sons
in charge of player of personality, he said, you can't
have player of personnel directors who are unaccountable, who can't
be fired, who can't lose their job for bad decisions.
(03:33):
And that's what the Bengals have. I mean, Duke Tobin
is not actually a Brown family member, but for all
intents and purposes, he is. He's a lot like what
we have with the New York Yankees, who I'm a
big fan of, and you have GM there Brian Cashman,
who is essentially a family member of the ownership, who's
been there since before the century he actually started. And
you know, fans wonder why things don't ever change just
(03:55):
because there's no real danger of him losing his job,
and there's no real danger of Duke Tobin losing his job.
Maybe he's uncomfortable in the fact that he's not doing
his job to the performance level that he wants to have,
and I give him credit for that. And it's not
like he's not capable of building a decent team. Of course,
we've seen who he is. But you know, if you
(04:15):
don't have a situation where you're so uncomfortable that you're
gonna lose your job and your livelihood and have to
go find something else to do with your life, there's
really you know, there's not much else to say. You
can pay lip service for it as much as you
want at these breast conferences, but the truth of the
matter is he can do pretty much what he wants
with immunity until proven otherwise. So it's hard to try
(04:37):
to really take that too seriously when he says things
like that.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
I think a lot of folks have wanted some degree
of clarity as to who has final say over the roster. Now,
Duke kind of talked about collaboration. He did say it
is Mike Brown's team. Did you walk away from it
as frustrated with the lack of clarity about such a
thing as everybody else did, Well, I.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
Guess, I guess. I don't think it is a lack
of clarity. I think he said it flat out. I mean,
I think you know, we as much as we assume
that Mike Brown is sort of receded behind the scenes
and doesn't really give his input. I think he clearly
does give his input in quite a bit, and probably
in way more I don't want to say demonstrative fashion,
but he has a lot more of the fingerprints on
(05:24):
the team and the roster than we all kind of
give them credit for. You know, the only real difference
functionally between what Jerry Jones operates in Dallas and what
Mike Brown operates in Cincinnati is that Jerry Jones is
chesty about the fact that that's his team and that's
his roster and that's everything. And in Cincinnati you get
a lot of squid ink being thrown up all the
time because nobody really wants to be responsible for things
(05:47):
like that, and nobody wants to come out and say
that it's a ninety year old GM still kind of
you know, with the final say or the right of
first refusal or you know, I'm not saying he gives
you know, scatting reports on three hundred players and says,
here's the guy we're going to draft every single round,
anything like that. But you know, the sort of overall
just stalt of the team still flows from his opinions
(06:10):
on football and you know, Duke Tobin's role is to
sort of present with options, give his strong opinion at times.
I'm sure he talks Mike Brown at the things, but
you know, at the end of the day, it's still
the owner of the team making the final decision.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
I don't think anybody really is surprised by that. It's
always been the case, and you know, despite his advanced age,
it's always going to be the case until the day
where he's no longer with US.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Robert win Troup is with US Cincinnati Magazine dot com.
I what Duke Tobin has in front of him this offseason,
it's easy to identify the problems the Bengals have. Coming
up with solutions and navigating all the stuff they're going
to have to get right is anything but. But I
do think they have a layup. You got a guy
(06:58):
who plays guard in Dalton Reisner, who didn't not make
a lot of money last year. They got him late
in the process. Dalton has said publicly like I don't
want to go through that again. Go ahead and re
sign me. Duke Tobin, are you listening? I want to
play He plays a position the Bengals have had a
hard time filling. He played it well, especially in the
second half of the season. The offensive line could actually
be considered good. This to me, Robert is a layup.
(07:20):
You got to make your layup, So Duke Tobin, before
you do the hard stuff, do the easy stuff. You're
standing under the rim, nobody's near. You lay it in
and sign Dalton Reisner. Do you agree?
Speaker 3 (07:31):
I do agree. I would say it's a different metaphor.
It's almost like they need to be a gimme putt
where the agents for dult Risers say, ah, just take it.
You know, we don't even want to come.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Pick it up. Many move on to the next sole.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
Yeah, obviously it's a queer case of key ned player
playing well and proof of concept and it should be
very easy. That doesn't mean they're going to sign him
next week. I mean, that's just not really how things
happen in the NFL. They sign love that nature of
your own. Guys tend to drift into at least the
combine and closer to March, just because that's just the
(08:07):
way things are done in the NFL. But you know,
you made the point that they signed very late in
the process last year, and they could have had him
way earlier, and he would have been up to speed
earlier and wouldn't have had to, you know, kind of
spend several weeks, you know, playing himself into shape and
really gelling with the line. Now you have a situation
where you could easily take care of that problem. You
(08:27):
get rid of something. As you said, there's going to
be a lot of difficult decisions to be made on
the defensive side of the ball by the who and
how many players to approach and free agency in the draft.
And this is a guy who you know, it's obvious.
The answer is right in front of you. Now these
are the Bengals. Never assume they do the obvious thing.
They could easily look it around and say, well, we
(08:47):
drafted a guy Jalen Rivers, who you know we like
and and maybe if we could save some money and
a Dalton Riser and put it to the defensive side
of the ball and get away with having a you know,
an untested or a guy in the right guard that
we don't love and hasn't proven himself. But you would
hope that wouldn't be the case. And it's just something
that the Bengals, for all the talk this year about
(09:10):
how you know the reason in the rationale behind you know,
keeping Zach Taylor and and Do Tobin, you know, doing
things the way they always have been done and nothing's
gonna change. Well okay, well then if it's not that
complicated and you have everything set right in front of you,
then just take care of an easy one without any
you know, drama, without the usual nonsense that goes through
(09:32):
the training camp period. And you know that we see
every single year all the noise and get people talking
on the national shows about the Bengals being the same
old Bengals. They can eliminate that in this particular case
with one easy move. You would hope they would do it,
but you never know what this club. So I'm not
gonna say it's an automatic give me put They'll have
to make that lay themselves.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Yeah. Well if much like me, if they could blow
a gimme putt, they will, so I guess I can
relate to Duke Tobin in that regard.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Always awesome stuff. Man, Well chat soon, thank you as.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
Always anytime, Thanks so much, Happy New year everyone, right
back at you.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
That's our guy, Robert Wintribe. You could read his Bengals column.
The latest one is up at Cincinnati Magazine dot com.
Indiana University is sixty minutes away from playing for a
college football playoff national championship. Now that maybe makes it
sound easy. We're going to talk about the Hoosiers with
somebody who knows more about IU football than anybody on
(10:27):
ESPN fifteen thirty, Cincinnati Sports station
Twenty after four. This is ESPN fifteen thirty.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Our friend Robert Wintraub during the football season usually joins
us on Thursdays, and for twenty today is not Thursday,
but it is for twenty. We've moved him back today
because I wanted his thoughts on the Duke Tobin mega
press conference, which lasted an hour.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Robert is with us. Now, did you enjoy the press conference?
Speaker 3 (00:26):
And it's funny, you know, we wait and wait and
wait for duto to Tobin excuse me to speak, and
then he goes out a little long and everybody's like, yeah,
get this guy out of here. Where's the hook? A little?
Speaker 2 (00:41):
I wanted it to keep going. I wanted to just
go on and on. I would have been more than
okay had it leaked into our show. Did you have
any overarching takeaway from Duke's chat with the media, Well, funnily, I.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Guess my main takeaway is if he's going to be asked,
you know what changes need to be made in Cincinnati
for twenty twenty six, and he answered, we need to
win more games. I'm fine with him not coming to
any of these press conferences and not more often, which
we all sort of want, but I mean, you know,
it was mainly a filibuster. He wanted you to know
(01:13):
very clearly that the Joe Flacco move was his idea
and it should have ended up in a parade thrown
for him, and you can't understand why.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
And you know, it was a great move.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
I've given him credit for it all season, and in
a different circumstance and different context it would have been
viewed as such. But of course, you know, the overarching
issue was the fact that they just ran back a
defense that was horrible last year and it got worse.
And you know, as they do so often in Cincinnati,
they expect things to change without any particular reason for it,
(01:46):
and you know, kind of just look to the pass
and say, we did it once upon a time, we've
done it occasionally, and you know that means we can
do it again. And you know, to a point, that's true.
But that's just not the way to operate, obviously, for
a team that's supposedly going after championships. But as I
wrote in the column that right yesterday Cincinnati Magazine, the
Bengals aren't that way.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
This is not who they are.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
We all know that their settings are not set to
championship level. It's set to be competitive, you know, it's
not set to all in. It's set to put a
decent team on the field and remain financially flexible. So,
you know, the idea that we were expecting, or people
were expecting, some sort of you know, grand scheme to
be laid out by Duke and how there's going to
(02:30):
be a massive change going forward, I think was just unrealistic.
It's nice to see at least acknowledge that there's a
lot of frustration, but otherwise, you know, I don't take
away too much from it other than you know, they
at least hear from the outside that there's a lot
of noise surrounding Duke's job performance over the last couple
of years, and they at least had to trot them
(02:50):
out to you know, get the villagers to extinguish their torches.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
For five minutes.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
But overall, not much is going to change.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
I listened to them talk about how there's no comfort,
lack of comfort. He doesn't have comfort. There's no comfort
even when you win the Super Bowl. And what I
heard today beyond that and what I see sort of
flies in the face of that.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Would you agree, Yeah, completely.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
You know, I think wants to come back to what
the George and one of the most respected personnel guys
really ever in NFL history said once when you know
the Mara family wanted to put one of the sons
in charge of player of personality, he said, you can't
have player of personnel directors who are unaccountable, who can't
be fired, who can't lose their job for bad decisions.
(03:33):
And that's what the Bengals have. I mean, Duke Tobin
is not actually a Brown family member, but for all
intents and purposes, he is. He's a lot like what
we have with the New York Yankees, who I'm a
big fan of, and you have GM there Brian Cashman,
who is essentially a family member of the ownership, who's
been there since before the century he actually started. And
you know, fans wonder why things don't ever change just
(03:55):
because there's no real danger of him losing his job,
and there's no real danger of Duke Tobin losing his job.
Maybe he's uncomfortable in the fact that he's not doing
his job to the performance level that he wants to have,
and I give him credit for that. And it's not
like he's not capable of building a decent team. Of course,
we've seen who he is. But you know, if you
(04:15):
don't have a situation where you're so uncomfortable that you're
gonna lose your job and your livelihood and have to
go find something else to do with your life, there's
really you know, there's not much else to say. You
can pay lip service for it as much as you
want at these breast conferences, but the truth of the
matter is he can do pretty much what he wants
with immunity until proven otherwise. So it's hard to try
(04:37):
to really take that too seriously when he says things
like that.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
I think a lot of folks have wanted some degree
of clarity as to who has final say over the roster. Now,
Duke kind of talked about collaboration. He did say it
is Mike Brown's team. Did you walk away from it
as frustrated with the lack of clarity about such a
thing as everybody else did, Well, I.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
Guess, I guess. I don't think it is a lack
of clarity. I think he said it flat out. I mean,
I think you know, we as much as we assume
that Mike Brown is sort of receded behind the scenes
and doesn't really give his input. I think he clearly
does give his input in quite a bit, and probably
in way more I don't want to say demonstrative fashion,
but he has a lot more of the fingerprints on
(05:24):
the team and the roster than we all kind of
give them credit for. You know, the only real difference
functionally between what Jerry Jones operates in Dallas and what
Mike Brown operates in Cincinnati is that Jerry Jones is
chesty about the fact that that's his team and that's
his roster and that's everything. And in Cincinnati you get
a lot of squid ink being thrown up all the
time because nobody really wants to be responsible for things
(05:47):
like that, and nobody wants to come out and say
that it's a ninety year old GM still kind of
you know, with the final say or the right of
first refusal or you know, I'm not saying he gives
you know, scatting reports on three hundred players and says,
here's the guy we're going to draft every single round,
anything like that. But you know, the sort of overall
just stalt of the team still flows from his opinions
(06:10):
on football and you know, Duke Tobin's role is to
sort of present with options, give his strong opinion at times.
I'm sure he talks Mike Brown at the things, but
you know, at the end of the day, it's still
the owner of the team making the final decision.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
I don't think anybody really is surprised by that. It's
always been the case, and you know, despite his advanced age,
it's always going to be the case until the day
where he's no longer with US.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Robert win Troup is with US Cincinnati Magazine dot com.
I what Duke Tobin has in front of him this offseason,
it's easy to identify the problems the Bengals have. Coming
up with solutions and navigating all the stuff they're going
to have to get right is anything but. But I
do think they have a layup. You got a guy
(06:58):
who plays guard in Dalton Reisner, who didn't not make
a lot of money last year. They got him late
in the process. Dalton has said publicly like I don't
want to go through that again. Go ahead and re
sign me. Duke Tobin, are you listening? I want to
play He plays a position the Bengals have had a
hard time filling. He played it well, especially in the
second half of the season. The offensive line could actually
be considered good. This to me, Robert is a layup.
(07:20):
You got to make your layup, So Duke Tobin, before
you do the hard stuff, do the easy stuff. You're
standing under the rim, nobody's near. You lay it in
and sign Dalton Reisner. Do you agree?
Speaker 3 (07:31):
I do agree. I would say it's a different metaphor.
It's almost like they need to be a gimme putt
where the agents for dult Risers say, ah, just take it.
You know, we don't even want to come.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Pick it up. Many move on to the next sole.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
Yeah, obviously it's a queer case of key ned player
playing well and proof of concept and it should be
very easy. That doesn't mean they're going to sign him
next week. I mean, that's just not really how things
happen in the NFL. They sign love that nature of
your own. Guys tend to drift into at least the
combine and closer to March, just because that's just the
(08:07):
way things are done in the NFL. But you know,
you made the point that they signed very late in
the process last year, and they could have had him
way earlier, and he would have been up to speed
earlier and wouldn't have had to, you know, kind of
spend several weeks, you know, playing himself into shape and
really gelling with the line. Now you have a situation
where you could easily take care of that problem. You
(08:27):
get rid of something. As you said, there's going to
be a lot of difficult decisions to be made on
the defensive side of the ball by the who and
how many players to approach and free agency in the draft.
And this is a guy who you know, it's obvious.
The answer is right in front of you. Now these
are the Bengals. Never assume they do the obvious thing.
They could easily look it around and say, well, we
(08:47):
drafted a guy Jalen Rivers, who you know we like
and and maybe if we could save some money and
a Dalton Riser and put it to the defensive side
of the ball and get away with having a you know,
an untested or a guy in the right guard that
we don't love and hasn't proven himself. But you would
hope that wouldn't be the case. And it's just something
that the Bengals, for all the talk this year about
(09:10):
how you know the reason in the rationale behind you know,
keeping Zach Taylor and and Do Tobin, you know, doing
things the way they always have been done and nothing's
gonna change. Well okay, well then if it's not that
complicated and you have everything set right in front of you,
then just take care of an easy one without any
you know, drama, without the usual nonsense that goes through
(09:32):
the training camp period. And you know that we see
every single year all the noise and get people talking
on the national shows about the Bengals being the same
old Bengals. They can eliminate that in this particular case
with one easy move. You would hope they would do it,
but you never know what this club. So I'm not
gonna say it's an automatic give me put They'll have
to make that lay themselves.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Yeah. Well if much like me, if they could blow
a gimme putt, they will, so I guess I can
relate to Duke Tobin in that regard.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Always awesome stuff. Man, Well chat soon, thank you as.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
Always anytime, Thanks so much, Happy New year everyone, right
back at you.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
That's our guy, Robert Wintribe. You could read his Bengals column.
The latest one is up at Cincinnati Magazine dot com.
Indiana University is sixty minutes away from playing for a
college football playoff national championship. Now that maybe makes it
sound easy. We're going to talk about the Hoosiers with
somebody who knows more about IU football than anybody on
(10:27):
ESPN fifteen thirty, Cincinnati Sports station
Mo Egger News
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