NFL Draft 2024: Cincinnati Bengals Prospects - Sawyer, Henderson & More

The Bengals have a pretty unique advantage when it comes to hosting prospects on pre-draft visits

and in this video, I'll explain exactly how they're capitalizing on it. What's up, Bengals fans? John Sheeran of A to Z Sports Cincinnati here

and for those watching outside of the state, this is a message for you

Sometimes, it does pay to live in Ohio. Now, maybe you don't want to live right next to the Ohio River when it rains for four straight days

but that's beside the point. We are just about four months removed from Ohio State winning the first ever 12-team college football playoff national championship

It was a phenomenal season for the Buckeyes. They assembled a really expensive but really talented roster, and they put together another championship team

So it should come as no surprise that the Bengals are very interested in a handful of players from that specific team

You're talking about Jack Sawyer, Ty Hamilton, Quinshawn Judkins, and Travion Henderson have all made or will make visits to the Cincinnati Bengals leading up to the NFL draft

Now what interesting here is that NFL teams have a limited number of what called top 30 visits that they can use on prospects in the NFL draft And they can fly them in they can get medical checks they can just interview them get to know them a little bit better but they can only do that with a certain number of prospects every single year So it makes

a lot of sense that you want to be really selective about which players that you want to have visit

If you have a lot of questions about their character, their background, anything that you

may have missed in the evaluation process, or just guys that you are really, really interested

in drafting either really early or really late, maybe bringing in as an undrafted free agent

Whatever the case may be, the Bengals typically end up with a decent amount of players that they bring in for visits leading up to the draft

Now, does that mean that half the Bengals draft class is going to be Ohio State Buckeyes? I'm not ready to go that far yet, but the Bengals have an interesting advantage here that pretty much the entire NFL does not

Because Ohio State is one of the programs that's close enough in proximity to the Cincinnati Bengals where player visits from that school can be classified as local visits

Now, local visits don't actually count as top 30 visits. So the Bengals can have all their top 30 visits separated from checking in on players from the reigning national champions

And that is a pretty decent advantage. Now let go through those players once again You have a defensive end in Jack Sawyer a defensive tackle in Ty Hamilton and two running backs in Quinshawn Judkins and Travion Henderson What is the likelihood that the Bengals will actually draft any of these guys

Well, they're probably only going to be able to draft one of those running backs. I think Henderson and Judkins have a really good chance of going in the second round

I feel like if the Bengals want either of those guys, they're going to have to pick them with their second round pick

And while Judkins does seem like the better overall athlete, he's a little bit larger and he's really fast

He had a lot of production before he got to Ohio State when he was in the SEC as a true freshman down at Ole Miss. Henderson is a team captain. He's really good in pass

protection. He's just a well-rounded player. I feel like Henderson would be the guy that the

Bengals would target. And he was also a five-star recruit, which does matter a lot when you're talking about Bengals draft targets. And the Bengals did meet with a lot of running backs at

the NFL scouting combine. There's clearly a hole at RB2 next to Chase Brown. It should be expected

that they do draft a running back, at least at some point in this draft. But will they draft one

in the second round? I'm not quite ready to predict that just yet. But I think if they had

Jack Sawyer graded as a second round prospect, I think he would very much be in consideration for that pick

Again, another five-star recruit, team first guy from Ohio He not exactly a Sam Hubbard clone but it would make a lot of sense to replace Sam Hubbard with let be honest someone who looks like him But Sawyer didn provide any athleticism testing

He won a lot as a pass rusher, but his production wasn't quite indicative of a high quality player

Plus he's got really short arms, and I don't really know what Al Golden's preferences are in terms of length for his defensive lineman

Regardless, if Sawyer falls to the third round, I definitely think he's a prime target to look at

And then he got Ty Hamilton, who's probably going to be drafted after all of those guys that I just mentioned

Now, defensive tackle is kind of a weird position to project what the Bengals are going to do in the draft

I did predict that they would draft Walter Nolan in the first round, and I still stand by that

But if they don't draft Walter Nolan or any defensive tackle in the first two rounds, they may punt on that position altogether

And a guy like Ty Hamilton is projected to go anywhere between the fourth and sixth round. He may just be very similar to guys that they already have on the team

But clearly, they do like enough about Hamilton's profile to come bring him in, get to know him a little bit better

And maybe if he does slip beyond expectation in the draft, maybe they take a flyer on him

But the point of all this is, if it seems like the Bengals are focusing a little bit too much

on Ohio State players and not spreading out their visits with more equal distribution across the country

there is a reason for that. It's just like I said, sometimes it pays to live in the state