John Sheeran shares who he thinks the Cincinnati Bengals will select in the first round of the 2025 NFL Draft!
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00The NFL Draft is less than one month away, and I have a pretty good idea about who the
00:03Bengals are going to be targeting, so in this video, I'm going to call my shot and make my
00:07early prediction. Hi again, Bengals fans. John Sheeran of A to Z Sports Cincinnati here, and
00:14we've still got a few weeks to go before the NFL Draft, but that has not stopped me in years past
00:18from making a prediction with this much time to go. This time last year for A to Z Sports,
00:22it was just before April. We did a site-wide first-round mock draft where every single
00:26writer contributed. We made all 32 picks, and for the Bengals, I picked, at that time,
00:31Amarius Mims, and I picked him for the same reasons that the Bengals eventually picked
00:34him for as well, because this team has very specific tendencies when they pick in the first
00:39round, specifically in the last four or five years. You got to be looking for a young player,
00:43someone who's probably 21 or younger. Obviously, Joe Burrow was an exception to that rule because
00:47he was the number one pick. He was the best quarterback in 2020, but Jonah Williams,
00:51Jamar Chase, Dax Hill, Miles Murphy, Amarius Mims, all were 21 years old when they were drafted.
00:57All of them also played for major schools, big-time programs who played in big-time games.
01:01Typically, they ended up in the college football playoff. You're talking about Alabama, LSU,
01:06Michigan, Clemson, Georgia. You guys all know those programs. They go for the big schools,
01:10and most of those guys, before they even got to those schools, were five-star prospects. I think,
01:14again, Burrow was an exception there. I think he was a four-star coming out of Athens. I think
01:17Jamar Chase was also a four-star before he got to LSU. Again, Williams, Hill, Murphy, Mims,
01:24all five-star. Typically, it's not too hard to decipher which position they're going to be
01:28targeting in the first round because you can typically glean from that from where they ignored
01:32on the roster in free agency. Those are the boxes that all of us should be trying to check off when
01:36trying to predict this pick. Obviously, tape, production, athleticism matters, but all of that
01:40is configured into how likely a player is to be picked in the first round in the first place.
01:44Utilizing all of that information at my disposal for this year's A-Z Sports sidewide
01:49first-round mock draft, I had the Cincinnati Bengals select Ole Miss defensive tackle Walter
01:53Nolan. Let's go through this checklist quickly then. Walter Nolan is 21 years old. He was a
01:59former five-star recruit from Texas A&M and Ole Miss, so two big-time SEC programs. There's a
02:05good start right there. Now, Nolan has been kind of a polarizing name in recent weeks. I know our
02:09boys for A-Z Film Room, both Ryan and Joe, aren't particularly high on him. They may not be
02:13comfortable taking him in the first round, but I think the Bengals are very interested here.
02:17The Bengals kept a close eye on Nolan at the Senior Bowl. They met with him at the Combine.
02:20They're probably going to bring him in here for a Top 30 visit pretty shortly, and I would be
02:24pretty surprised if they didn't. But there's still one more box that we haven't officially checked
02:28yet, and it's the position that they're likely to target. Now, a couple weeks ago, when free
02:31agency first began, the Bengals re-signed B.J. Hill and they signed T.J. Slayton to play nose
02:36tackle, and I came on here on this channel to make a video about how the defensive tackle room feels
02:40a bit incomplete. It feels very one-dimensional. They don't really have someone that can provide
02:44disruption against both the Ryan and the pass. T.J. Slayton is going to be a fine nose tackle.
02:48B.J. Hill is going to be who he's always been. We still don't really know who Chris Jenkins and
02:52McKinley Jackson are, but again, an X factor is missing from this group, and they want this group
02:56to be much deeper than it was last year, so we should expect a defensive tackle to be drafted
03:01very early. And Nolan, to me, fits that billing better than anyone that they could possibly draft
03:06at this juncture, because not only is he a productive pass rusher who can win one-on-ones
03:10and actually finish at the quarterback, but he's a very good run defender and he can get off blocks
03:14and he can make plays in the backfield. And I think the run defense aspect of that is very
03:17important here, because new defensive line coach Jerry Montgomery has been very adamant about if
03:21you can't stop the run, if you can't make plays against the run, you probably don't have a spot
03:24here on this defense. And I think that's what separates Nolan from a guy like Derek Harmon,
03:27who has a lot of issues finishing tackles in the backfield and just in run defense in general.
03:31I'm definitely aware of the concerns about his motor and any other potential character issues
03:34that may come with him. I don't know all the specifics. Obviously, none of us really do.
03:38I'm aware of that, but I also think that the Bengals will be confident that they can get the
03:41most out of it. The Bengals probably should have been more aggressive to add a pass rushing
03:45presence at defensive tackle and free agency, but because they didn't, they've kind of pigeonholed
03:49themselves to be in this spot. And I think they did that partly because they feel confident
03:53that someone like Nolan or maybe Nolan specifically will be there at pick number 17.
03:57So unless things change here in the coming weeks, maybe there's a move here or two that
04:00changes the landscape of things. Walter Nolan is who I think the Bengals will draft in the
04:04first round. But what do you guys think? Who do you think the Bengals will take right now
04:07with their first round pick? Let me know in the comments below.