The book isn\u2019t closed yet on Barrett Carter and Demetrius Knight Jr. Not in the slightest.<\/p>\n
The two backers have each played only one season in the NFL. While their play last year may make it easy to give up on them, I\u2019m here to tell you that I will not be.<\/p>\n
Carter and Knight playing well will make the 2026 Bengals that much better. You obviously want to see players do well if you\u2019re a Bengals fan.<\/p>\n
Germaine Pratt was questionable with his performance as a rookie in 2019, and he eventually became a fan favorite from that point on. The same can happen for Carter and Knight.<\/p>\n
The Bengals sent a clear message to both Carter and Knight by not taking a linebacker in this weekend\u2019s NFL Draft. If anything, it\u2019s a message of confidence.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt definitely speaks volumes that they trust us, and they\u2019re trying to see the vision with us,\u201d Carter said to reporters on Monday. \u201cI\u2019m happy about that, but we\u2019re confident if they brought in 10 linebackers. We\u2019re confident if they didn\u2019t bring in a linebacker. We\u2019re just ready to keep going to work and keep building this foundation so that we\u2019re playing next February.\u201d<\/p>\n
Next February, a.k.a. Super Bowl LXI. Carter saying that could be a reflection of Dexter Lawrence coming in and resetting the standards on both defense and the overall organization.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe it shows a level of trust,\u201d Knight said. \u201cBut it also kicks us in the rear a little more knowing they trust us going into Year 2.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a trust fostered by defensive coordinator Al Golden, head coach Zac Taylor, and director of player personnel Duke Tobin. All three of them have confidence in Carter and Knight, which is why they didn\u2019t go in a different direction at linebacker in the NFL Draft.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have real belief in the (linebackers) that we have,\u201d Tobin told reporters on Monday. \u201cThey have full seasons under their belt. They have really good production for rookies, and they\u2019re going to grow in our scheme, and they\u2019re going to be really good players, and I think we have depth behind them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The book isn\u2019t closed yet on Barrett Carter and Demetrius Knight Jr. Not in the slightest. The two…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":876887,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2053],"tags":[228,227,256,39983,1561,2296,7,6],"class_list":["post-876886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cincinnati-bengals","tag-bengals","tag-cincinnati","tag-cincinnati-bengals","tag-cincinnati-bengals-draft","tag-cincinnati-bengals-news","tag-cincinnatibengals","tag-football","tag-nfl"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116482132112965739","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876886","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=876886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876886\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/876887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=876886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=876886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=876886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}