Carman At Guard- Consulted Willie Anderson

[BFritz21]

(05-05-2021, 02:38 PM)SHRacerX Wrote: A couple podcasts (Hear that podcast Growlin, and Locked on Bengals...both excellent) had the Bengals Director of College Scouting, MIke Potts, on for an interview recently.

I was most interested to hear his opinions on Carman, and the details about the trade back.  He referred to Carman's play at LT as "violent", and that he was often punching his opponent first, rather than retreating and catching.  It was a perfect fit for the RPO that Clemson liked to run.  Jake Liscow asked about his ability to play guard, and mentioned that he felt like Carman "played Tackle like a Guard", in terms of the phone booth space and often met his opponent with a strike.  Potts laughed and said that they felt the same way and everyone in the Bengals room was very high on him, largely because of his physicality.  

Potts also mentioned how impressed they were about Carman's desire to finish the season the last 5 games with a herniated disc in his back, rather than opting out and having the surgery to have time to prepare for the draft.  

I think Carman is our RG for a long time, and I'm very excited about that.  My only wish was instead of Ossai, they took Spencer Brown to develop at RT behind Reiff, but I am very happy about Carman.  

First of all, I know that I'm , but I'm glad that we're finally listening to our scouting department, even if it is tiny, instead of Mike Brown making uneducated decisions because (1) he thought he was as football smart as his old man and (2) he was too cheap to pay for any real scouting.

I love that we selected Carman because of his attitude because that's what this team needs, especially on the offensive line.  I just hope that it's infectious and spreads to the other offensive linemen and the defensive linemen that he blocks in practice because the last things that any competitive football player wants is to (a) be shown up by a teammate, especially a rookie, or (b) to be pushed around by a rookie.

I agree we needed depth at RT and needed to get a guy to develop, but I'm so excited about what Ossai brings and how he'll be able to improve our pass rush that I'm ok with not taking Brown.  It does put us in a tricky situation next season if Reiff walks after this year, but let's hope he stays or that we can sign another quality free agent.

Posts like yours keep getting me more and more excited for the season!  I hope that training camp is open to the public so I can go down in the tunnel at PBS to meet Burrow and some of these other new guys and drop some crippled jokes!