When it came to free-agent pass-rusher Boye Mafe, Bengals defensive line coach Jerry Montgomery turned on the tape and turned off that maze of numbers generated by everything from Next Gen Stats to Pro Football Focus to the next guy’s notebook.

“People can look at numbers all they want. The film doesn’t lie. Watch the film,” Montgomery says. “I think a lot of people look at all this PFF and all that stuff instead of watching the film, and he’s a ready good addition. We’re ecstatic to have him.”

A good way to describe the guy that the Bengals lured from the edge of Seattle’s Super Bowl champs to the edge Trey Hendrickson once racked up the most sacks in the NFL. Turn off the noise, and Mafe has a knack for coming through with a silent efficacy.

From using sign language to salute his late mother with every sack, to grabbing a Nigerian flag in the swirl of the confetti greeting the Super Bowl champs, to putting up numbers no matter the scheme, Mafe takes his cue from the man who accompanied him to Thursday’s signing at Paycor Stadium.

Adewale Mafe, his father, who goes by Wally, left Nigeria when he was 22, and went to college in Paris and Montreal before settling in Minneapolis. From there, he and wife Bola raised six children while he ran a cleaning company, and she had one of her own making and designing clothes.

“Four girls, two boys. All professionals,” Wally Mafe said. “They get that from the parents. We didn’t slack off.”

Boye Mafe, 27, the youngest, can tell you about that. Every morning, he saw the light. His father tells him about the darkness. But every day Boye saw the light from his dad’s office.

“He’s one of these people who taught you that you work in the dark, don’t worry about the light,” Boye Mafe said. “I’d be getting ready for school, and he’d been in his office for an hour or two. Seeing him do that every day, it makes it easier for me to say, ‘All right, I’ve got to go to work myself.”

Boye Mafe thinks about it for a second. Coming to a new country and creating a life and a business still running 37 years later (“22 employees,” Wally says), and the son shakes his head.

“To this day,” Boye Mafe said, “that’s one of my motivations. I tell myself I can’t ever complain, or be mad, or be sad. He did it without even having a chance, and he made a way. If there’s a way, there’s a will.”