His guys stoned that top trio of D-Linemen. Dunker cut down Height, Iowa teammate Beau Stephens solved Hunter, and towering 6-7 Texas A&M tackle Dametrious Crownover beat Parker.<\/p>\n
McCarthy is impressed with how quickly Dunker and Stephens have adapted to NFL pass-protection techniques coming out of Iowa’s ground-and-pound scheme of iso runs blasting out of the I formation.<\/p>\n
“Complete opposite of our system,” McCarthy says. “These guys just get better in pass protection every day. Arching your back, staying square, throwing strikes, playing long. Watching the progression is fun.”<\/p>\n
But on Saturday, don’t look for Dunker at right tackle, Stephens at left guard, and Crownover at right tackle. The first thing McCarthy asked his guys Monday is their favorite position, “and that was a test.”<\/p>\n
“Only the elite can say they play one position,” McCarthy says. “Scott is the best technical guy in the league and, like we say, find out if he can play multiple positions. It’s a must in this league.”<\/p>\n
They all passed, McCarthy says. Dunker got an A with, “Anywhere you need me, Coach,” and so he’ll be playing some right guard.<\/p>\n
And look for a parade of brand-new centers coming in behind Hecht, his only center. “So, I had to make two.” At the first quarterback-center exchange, McCarthy and Stapleton suddenly had six centers to match up with the three quarterbacks.<\/p>\n
Enter Dartmouth’s Delby Lemieux, one of three FCS players in the game. He was named to the Associated Press FCS All-American first team and is trying to grab a late-round spot anyway he can.<\/p>\n
“Never played center,” McCarthy says. “Right makeup. Hungry. He’s got the mindset.”<\/p>\n
The biggest kick, though, still comes from teaching moves or a technique that has a player wanting more. McCarthy sensed it from Dunker, a massive 6-5, 315-pounder with a wide base, when they worked on pinching his outside knee. What McCarthy calls “pre-loading,” the foot.<\/p>\n
“I told all these guys that my goal for everyone was to leave here a better player in some way,” McCarthy says.<\/p>\n
Not to mention leaving the Bengals better prepared for the draft.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"His guys stoned that top trio of D-Linemen. Dunker cut down Height, Iowa teammate Beau Stephens solved Hunter,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":717761,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2053],"tags":[4955,228,443,227,256,2296,7,1843,81,898,6,3654],"class_list":{"0":"post-717760","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cincinnati-bengals","8":"tag-2026-nfl-draft","9":"tag-bengals","10":"tag-centerpiece","11":"tag-cincinnati","12":"tag-cincinnati-bengals","13":"tag-cincinnatibengals","14":"tag-football","15":"tag-hobson","16":"tag-latest-news","17":"tag-latest-stories","18":"tag-nfl","19":"tag-senior-bowl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115986822523308363","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717760","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=717760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717760\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/717761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=717760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=717760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=717760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}