{"id":708089,"date":"2026-01-27T04:46:38","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T04:46:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/708089\/"},"modified":"2026-01-27T04:46:38","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T04:46:38","slug":"former-bengals-star-take-shot-at-cincinnati-bengals-ahead-of-2026-nfl-draft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/708089\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Bengals Star Take Shot At Cincinnati Bengals Ahead of 2026 NFL Draft"},"content":{"rendered":"<p id=\"inline-text-1\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"6b\">CINCINNATI \u2014\u00a0Former Bengals linebacker Germaine Pratt likes to poke at the team he used to play for, and that continued over the weekend. Pratt is highly skeptical that Cincinnati will add any impactful defensive tackles from this year&#8217;s draft class.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-2\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"6e\">He commented on the situation on X after suiting up at linebacker for the Colts this past season and playing much better than he did for the Bengals in 2024.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-3\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"6h\">&#8220;Sorry, they won&#8217;t draft no dogs on the D-Line,&#8221; Pratt said in response to another X user saying Florida State defensive tackle Darrell Jackson Jr. should be a Bengal.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-4\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"6k\">Jackson is ranked 82nd on the consensus big board from\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nflmockdraftdatabase.com\/big-boards\/2026\/consensus-big-board-2026?pos=DL\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Mock Draft Database<\/a>\u00a0and eighth among defensive tackles. That&#8217;s a spot Cincinnati needs to keep adding to after posting a bottom-10 quarterback pressure rate this season (23rd) and allowing 5.2 yards per carry (31st).<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-5\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"6n\">Bengals director of player personnel\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.si.com\/nfl\/bengals\/onsi\/news\/full-transcript-everything-duke-tobin-said-at-bengals-season-wrap-up-press-conference-01kej8v1jn5e\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Duke Tobin<\/a>\u00a0made it clear he doesn&#8217;t want to enter the draft with clear holes like that on his team. Beefing up in free agency first is imperative.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-6\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"6q\">\u201cYou don&#8217;t want to be in that position. That&#8217;s not ideal. Many teams find themselves in that position in today&#8217;s NFL,&#8221; Tobin said about having clear holes entering the draft. &#8220;I can&#8217;t imagine what the colleges are going through. Your entire team is a free agent, and you have 22 holes and not two or four. It&#8217;s not what we want. We want those predetermined. We want to know who&#8217;s on our team that&#8217;s going to occupy those needs for us.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-7\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"6t\">&#8220;This year on offense, we feel really good. We feel like that&#8217;s a unit that&#8217;s going to be back in full, and we feel like it&#8217;s a unit that was really hitting its stride and expanding on the stride that it hit. So we feel really good about that side of the ball, and we&#8217;ll see what we can get done on defense. We need to address what needs to be addressed. We don&#8217;t bury our heads in the sand. We see what&#8217;s going on, and we&#8217;ll try to address it in every way we can.\u201d<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-8\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"6w\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.si.com\/nfl\/bengals\/news\/cincinnati-bengals-make-germaine-pratt-release-official-01jxd1hgy4g1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">The Bengals<\/a>\u00a0selected Pratt in the third round (72nd overall) in the 2019 NFL Draft. He spent six seasons in Cincinnati. <\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-9\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"6z\">Check out the full post from Pratt below:<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/images2.minutemediacdn.com\/image\/upload\/c_crop,x_0,y_0,w_0,h_0\/c_fill,w_16,ar_16:9,f_auto,q_auto,g_auto\/images\/voltaxMediaLibrary\/mmsport\/all_bengals\/01kfxabtbfm01a0c68h1.jpg\" alt=\"Germaine Pratt Bengals Call Out\" title=\"Germaine Pratt Bengals Call Out\" width=\"0\" class=\"undefined w-full w-full blur-[5px]\" q:id=\"78\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Germaine Pratt Bengals Call Out | Germaine Pratt B<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-12\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"7f\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.si.com\/nfl\/bengals\/onsi\/newsletter\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Sign UP For Our DAILY Newsletter for MORE FREE Coverage of the Cincinnati Bengals Delivered to YOU Directly<\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-13\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"7i\">For more on the Bengals,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@BengalsTalk?sub_confirmation=1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">subscribe to our YouTube Channel<\/a>\u00a0and watch the video below as part of our in-depth coverage of the team. Prefer to listen? Check out\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/cincinnati-bengals-talk\/id1789855235\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Cincinnati Bengals Talk on Apple,<\/a>\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/36NNkLeYzSZDCEIYrfAio8\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Spotify<\/a>, and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/music.amazon.com\/podcasts\/030daf38-754f-4a5f-9846-3c5689070770\/cincinnati-bengals-talk\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Amazon Podcasts<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-15\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"7p\">Make sure you\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.si.com\/nfl\/bengals\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">bookmark BengalsTalk.com\u00a0for the latest Bengals news<\/a>, exclusive interviews, insight, film breakdowns and so much more!<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-16\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"7s\">Also, check out the podcast, Locked On Bengals, wherever you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-17\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"7v\">Apple:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/bit.ly\/BengalsApple\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">bit.ly\/BengalsApple<\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-18\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"7y\">Spotify:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/bit.ly\/BengalsSpotify\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">bit.ly\/BengalsSpotify<\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-19\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"81\">YouTube:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/bit.ly\/LOBengalsYouTube\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">bit.ly\/LOBengalsYouTube<\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-20\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"84\">&#8212;&#8211;<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-21\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"87\">Follow us on X:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BengalsTalkSI\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">@BengalsTalkSI<\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-22\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"8a\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/JamesRapienBengals\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Like Our Facebook Page<\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-23\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"8d\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.tiktok.com\/@cincinnatibengalstalk\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Follow on TikTok<\/a><\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><script async src=\"\/\/www.tiktok.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CINCINNATI \u2014\u00a0Former Bengals linebacker Germaine Pratt likes to poke at the team he used to play for, and&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":708090,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2053],"tags":[228,227,256,2296,7,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-708089","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cincinnati-bengals","8":"tag-bengals","9":"tag-cincinnati","10":"tag-cincinnati-bengals","11":"tag-cincinnatibengals","12":"tag-football","13":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115965251152939787","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=708089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708089\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/708090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=708089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=708089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=708089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}