Mo Egger with Robert Weintraub -- 11/13/25

Robert Weintraub writes a weekly Bengals column for Cincinnati Magazine. He joined us to talk about the team he writes about on ESPN1530.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
In the NATI brought to you by bell Terra Casino
and Belterra Park on ESPN fifteen thirty, the official home
of the Cincinnati Bengals.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
If you're an FC Cincinnati fan, you're gonna have to
like rearrange your entire life. I'll explain in twelve minutes.
That is a good old fashioned radio teas right there,
twenty three minutes after four o'clock. Now we're giving out
the time, we're playing blind Melon. We really are doing
a show like it's nineteen ninety four. Robert Wintroup is

(00:31):
with us. He writes a weekly Bengals column for Cincinnati Magazine.
You could read it at Cincinnati Magazine dot com, and
he joins us every single Thursday.

Speaker 3 (00:38):
Hi, Robert, but in nineteen ninety four was a pretty
good year for me. I'm not going to complain about
your show. Going back in time. It was the good
old days when I was young and bright, fresh in
the world.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
Bengals went three and fourteen in nineteen ninety four. Big
Daddy Dan Wilkinson was the number one overall pick that
didn't work out for us.

Speaker 3 (00:56):
I like to think I had more to my life
than than justin Bengals. Unfortunately that's not the case anymore.
So yeah, again going off a cliff rapidly.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
For me, things have not changed one iota over the
last thirty one years. So I want to read a
small passage from your column this week about Joe Burrow.
Joe Burrow is back. He's so, he's back at practice.
He's not doing eleven on eleven stuff, any of that,
but inching closer to what we hope is a return
two weeks from tonight against Baltimore. We will see, but

(01:25):
you're right, Burrow will surely push to be out there
regardless of circumstances. Now, if the Bengals are playing in
games that matter at all, either to them or even
to the team they're playing, I don't think anybody should
have any issue with Joe Burrow playing. But if we
put like a Z or a Y or an ex ra,
whatever letter goes next to your team name when you've

(01:46):
been eliminated, should the Bengals tell him, Yeah, that's cool,
you want to play, Joe, but we're not gonna let you.

Speaker 3 (01:52):
Yeah, I like to use a p okay pe for playoffs. Yes, well,
let me put it this way. The Bengals have forty
six million or so reasons to not tell him not
to play, right, I mean, don't like to pay people
not to work. More to the point, I mean, if
Zach Taylor and Duke Tobin go to him and say,
you know, in our wisdom and massive judgment here, we

(02:16):
think it's best that Joe you don't play. Joe can say,
who the hell you guys tell me anything? What have
you guys proven that I should listen to your judgment
on anything. It's gonna be tough for them. I think
they want to establish you know, it's just sort of
the nature of football. And Burrow himself is certainly gonna
want to be out there regardless, like I say, of circumstances,

(02:37):
because he has to prove to himself that he's ready
to get back out there and be able to play.
And if you say no, you can't be out there,
we're out of it because we lost the Steelers and
the Pats and there's no chance of us coming back.
Then you're going a whole year without him playing basically
in a real game. Did anybody want that? I don't
know that that's gonna be something we want to see.

(02:59):
There's a lot of new wants to it, and like
you say, it's kind of dependent on the results and
if he's really even medically ready to come back for
that Thanksgiving the game, that's sort of up in the
air as well right now. But I think the Bengals
kind of want to establish a culture of guys playing regardless.
And if you have to be carried out in your shields,
you know, like Burrow has three times already in six years,

(03:22):
that's just the nature of the sport. And you know
they can trieven wrap them and bubble wrap, but you
know then he can come back next year turning camp
and get hurt in that capacity. It's the NFL, these
kind of things happen. I think all concerned within the
building there are more than happy to get him back
out in the field, regardless of circumstances. Like I say,
and even if the Bengals, you know, in their sort

(03:43):
of secret minds, think to themselves it's not a good idea,
I don't know that they're going to be able to
stop them.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
I fear you're right. I wish in any game that
the Bengals are playing where it doesn't count that they
would protect the investment. But I find it hard to
believe that. If Joe says I'm playing that, they would
tell him no. The last few weeks, the offense has cooked.
Joe Flacco should be the best story in this sport. Instead,
he's a little bit of a footnote along with that.

(04:09):
I don't know, man. Look, you could say Joe Flacco
is doing a great job of getting rid of the
football quickly, and he's making this offensive line look good.
My eyes tell me, and I'm no expert by any stretch,
I feel like this unit has progressed nicely. Do analytics
support that? And might they actually be okay with their
offensive line going into next year?

Speaker 3 (04:30):
Yeah, well, they definitely support it in the run game,
which is where he can really isolate it. And remember
how the running attack was at the bottom of the
barrel in the first month of the season. Now they're
up to ninth in DVOA and rushing. They're third, typeer,
third and EPA per rush. Now they've run it fewer
than any other, fewer attempts than any other team in
the league. That tends to help. And when we separate out,

(04:52):
we have a stack called adjusted lineyards that kind of
separates the line from the running back. In terms of
running plays, and they're you know, still down around twenty
fourth in that sense of the line. So they're not great.
But I think what you see is that they've switched
almost entirely. Now they're first in the league and running
man blocking schemes when they're running the ball, and you
know that when you have two rookies on the line

(05:13):
and a second year player, getting rid of some of
the complexity of those zone schemes that they wanted to
run is probably the best bet. And we should give
Scott Peters some credit for that. I mean, he gets
lost a lot. Talk about a guy you'd never hear
his name mentioned right now with Al Golden and the
defense sucking up all the oxygen. But he's taking a
unit that has a lot of young, inexperienced guys that
was struggling certainly with at the beginning of the year,

(05:35):
and it turned it into a decent unit. Are they great? No,
But you know, I think there's reason to be cautiously optimistic,
if not unbridled enthusiasm about them going into next year. Certainly,
you know, we would have said about Cordell Wolson after
his rookie year that oh, things are looking good. He's
turning up and then you know, he went straight down
the barrel. And that's what happens with Day three guys

(05:57):
like a Jalen Rivers. So I'd be caution against saying
that he's going to be an answer for the long
term future necessarily. But so far he's looked okay. He's
treading water, and obviously you have the other rookie deal
and Fairchild playing pretty well, Amariusmim's playing pretty well, and
take Care signed for next year. He'll be thirty three,
but they know what they're getting from him. Really, the
question mark is Orlando Brown. I think in a perfect

(06:19):
world they would try and look for his sort of
long to medium term replacement in this offseason, either in
the draft or free agency. But I don't know if
they can do that given the whole defense, and they
have to credit every asset they have toward that end
of the ball. So they may cross their fingers and
hope as the injury that he suffered last year bad

(06:39):
one gets further into his rear view that his play
takes another uptick. He can see that right now it's
still kind of affecting him, so hopefully it left tackle
is not a position. We're worried about next year. By
twenty twenty seven, we certainly will, but hopefully they can
hang on for another year there because the defense needs
all the attention right now.

Speaker 2 (06:56):
Robert Wintrop is with this Rita's Bengals column at Cincinnati
MAGA dot com. You write about Trey Hendrickson's presence being
sorely missed. Because time with this franchise is a flat circle.
We're kind of left wondering the same thing about the
Bengals and Trey Hendrickson this year we were last year,
which is, can you really move on from him? To

(07:17):
not move on from him this coming offseason would likely
involve the franchise tag. Is there a world war? It
would make sense to apply that to him.

Speaker 3 (07:26):
It's funny, you know, because I wrote it one breath
in the column. We may have seen his last down
as a Bengal already, right, I have no such information
about how bad his injury is, but it certainly didn't
look good at the time, and you know that certainly
hasn't improved over the last few weeks, so that would
obviously be bad. At the same time, it's almost like,

(07:46):
because he's injured, his value to the rest of the
league going into the offseason might be so depressed that
and his age obviously a consideration, and this is what
happens with older players. Kind of what the Bengals were,
you know, holding the line about all this time. They
didn't want to pay him because they were worried about
just what we've seen happen, him getting hurt. And I
guess it's a possibility that they can be able to

(08:08):
sign him for next year and not even necessarily even
invoke the franchise tag. Maybe they can come down and
you know, he's always said, Trey that he wants to
remain a Bengal. It's not entirely impossible that they find
a calming ground and just sign him to a slightly
lesser deal that you know, both sides feel good about
because he didn't get to show his wares on the

(08:29):
field this year, and he won't be able to get
a huge contract elsewhere. So I think there's no question
that even if you're Trey Hendrickson coming off a year
that's kind of lost in twenty twenty five, he'd still
probably be their best player defensively next year. They don't
seem to have be able to find a pass Rusher
with his salt without him, so I definitely think while

(08:51):
it's entirely possible we've seen the last of them, I
think it's possible he's back in stripes next year. Who
would have said that that a month ago or six
weeks ago. Hard believe. But as you say, things change
so rapidly around the Bengals, you have to have to
have an airstick bag at all times.

Speaker 2 (09:05):
Trey Hendrickson has been an unending content machine. I'm not
ready to let it go. I need I need more,
I need more tray time.

Speaker 3 (09:14):
Listen, all of us would be digging deep for material
without him. We definitely want him in stripes as long
as possible.

Speaker 2 (09:22):
Treasure trove tray, no question. Robert wintrob Bengals column is
Cincinnati Magazine dot com awesome as always, Thank you so.

Speaker 3 (09:28):
Much, Thank you, MO appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (09:30):
That's our guy. Robert Wintroub read his column right now.
Cincinnati Magazine dot Com MLS is like changing its entire calendar,
and I think this is a good thing because you know,
my opinion matters. We'll do that next.

Speaker 1 (09:41):
You've been listening to football in the NATI on ESPN
fifteen thirty, the official home of the Cincinnati Bengals,