{"id":818491,"date":"2026-03-18T04:41:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-18T04:41:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/818491\/"},"modified":"2026-03-18T04:41:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T04:41:13","slug":"controversial-bengals-free-agent-makes-some-head-turning-comments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/818491\/","title":{"rendered":"Controversial Bengals free agent makes some head-turning comments"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>March 17, 2026, 10:00 p.m. ET<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">Former <a href=\"\/\" data-t-l=\":b|e|k|\u2691u\" class=\"gnt_ar_b_a\">Cincinnati Bengals<\/a> safety Geno Stone has landed with the Buffalo Bills in NFL free agency.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">And in doing so, he rankled more than a few <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/sportsdata.usatoday.com\/football\/nfl\/teams\/cincinnati-bengals\/327\" data-autotag=\"6d3e484d-5133-4c06-a871-967f8646390b\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" data-t-l=\":b|e|k|\u2691u\" class=\"gnt_ar_b_a\">Bengals<\/a> fans by saying that he&#8217;s \u201cback into a winning culture\u201d during his first media session after signing.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">Maybe Stone didn\u2019t mean anything by it, or it came out weird. He\u2019s praising Joe Burrow in the same clip, too. It\u2019s probably athlete-speak stuff for stressing how happy he is to land with a new team.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">Alas, this is one of those cases where the messenger very much matters. The Bengals added Stone in 2024, hoping he\u2019d ascend into a starter as the years-later Jessie Bates replacement.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">Instead, Stone was the poster boy for a defense lacking in fundamentals like tackling during a coordinator transition, finishing last season with an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pff.com\/nfl\/players\/geno-stone\/55967\" data-t-l=\":b|z|k|\u2691u\" class=\"gnt_ar_b_a\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">81st ranking<\/a> out of 98 safeties at PFF.\u00a0To his credit, gross issues in front of them across the unit didn&#8217;t help.<\/p>\n<p>Need a news break? <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" data-t-l=\":body nav (play)|e|auto spike click:5|\u2691u\" class=\"gnt_ar_b_sp_a\" href=\"https:\/\/play.usatoday.com\/?itm_source=SPIKE&amp;itm_campaign=PLAYSPIKE&amp;itm_medium=ONSITE\">Check out the all new PLAY hub with puzzles, games and more!<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">There was never a chance Stone was coming back to the Bengals, who quickly added Bryan Cook as their biggest free-agency signing of the market this year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">Stone has since clarified his comments:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"March 17, 2026, 10:00 p.m. ET Former Cincinnati Bengals safety Geno Stone has landed with the Buffalo Bills&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":818492,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2053],"tags":[95878,228,227,256,2296,7,6,13078,95905,95882,104162,95913,97484,101504,96121,95896,95888,95897,95883,95881],"class_list":{"0":"post-818491","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cincinnati-bengals","8":"tag-accessfree","9":"tag-bengals","10":"tag-cincinnati","11":"tag-cincinnati-bengals","12":"tag-cincinnatibengals","13":"tag-football","14":"tag-nfl","15":"tag-sstssportsnflbengals","16":"tag-sstsnbengals","17":"tag-tagamerican-football","18":"tag-tagbryan-cook","19":"tag-tagcincinnati-bengals","20":"tag-taggeno-stone","21":"tag-tagjessie-bates-iii","22":"tag-tagjoe-burrow","23":"tag-tagnational-sports","24":"tag-tagnfl","25":"tag-tagoverall-negative","26":"tag-tagsports-news","27":"tag-typestory"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116248345829937376","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818491","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=818491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818491\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/818492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=818491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=818491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=818491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}