CINCINNATI — FOX Sports NFL reporter Greg Auman sees a reunion in the Bengals future. He thinks the team will bring back Lion defensive tackle DJ Reader to the organization after he played with the them from 2020-23.
Reader is entering free agency this offseason at 31 years old and tallied 28 tackles with no sacks in 2025. It was his first season without a sack since 2022.
“Reader, 31, just finished a two-year, $22 million contract with Detroit, starting every game as nose tackle. There’s talk he could return to Cincinnati, where he played from 2020-23, and the Bengals could use his presence up front after finishing dead last against the run and bottom three in points and yards allowed in 2025. In his prime with the Bengals, he was graded as a top-10 defensive lineman, and he’s not that anymore, but could still be a match in the $6 million range.”
Cincinnati is due to add some veteran beef in the middle of the defensive line after pouring draft resources into the position over the past few seasons.
Reader played 583 snaps this season, continuing a four-year streak of playing at least 500 snaps with a 66.5 Pro Football Focus grade floor for his entire 10-year career.
He’d be a great veteran force to reunite with in the locker room and should be able to offer a competent floor at his position, even if he likely won’t reach the heights of 2022 again, where he posted a career-best 85.2 PFF grade.
Bengals director of player personnel, Duke Tobin, noted how the team needs more leadership on defense. Reader was a notable leader in his time with Cincinnati.
“The one thing we really need is we need those guys or somebody else to take on a leadership role and demand the accountability and demand the execution,” Tobin said last month. “We need more leadership. We have tons of leadership on the offensive side of the ball. We need somebody, multiple people, to step up and lead that group from within our team.
“And it could come from the outside, and it could come from the inside. We can get improvement from both of those areas. We can get improvement and play from the inside, which I see happening, and we can get improvement from the outside, be it the draft or free agency or however we want to attack it.”
Check out the full article from Auman here.
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