John Sheeran discusses free agent guard Dalton Risner's comments about wanting to join the Cincinnati Bengals.
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00:00There is a free agent who's making it very clear that the Cincinnati Bengals are one of his
00:04preferred destinations, and in this video, I'll explain what would need to happen for the Bengals
00:08to sign. Hi again, Bengals fans. John Sheeran of A to Z Sports Cincinnati here, and the best thing
00:16that the Bengals can hear from other free agents around the league is that they want to play for
00:21the Bengals. We should not forget anytime soon that the largest external free agent contract
00:25that the Bengals have ever offered and then signed belongs to Orlando Brown Jr., and the entire reason
00:31as to why that four-year, $64 million deal came to place in the first place is because Orlando Brown
00:37Jr. and his team reached out to the Bengals about potentially linking up in free agency. The Bengals
00:42entered free agency back in 2023 thinking that they didn't have a chance in the world to sign
00:47Brown. They thought that he was going to get a contract either from the Kansas City Chiefs or
00:51any other team interested in signing him for a lot larger than they would be willing to offer him.
00:55But when Brown realized that his market wasn't anything remotely close to what he wanted it to
00:59be, he reached out to the Bengals as his preferred destination to just join a team that was obviously
01:04on the rise and make the playoffs and could compete against this former team of the Chiefs. And that is
01:09exactly how that all happened. Brown reached out first. The Bengals said, hey, if you want to do this,
01:13we'll offer you this contract. And Brown's like, yeah, I'll take it. Very rarely does free agency
01:16actually work like that, especially in the early days of free agency. But as the days turned to weeks
01:21and the weeks turned to months, that is kind of how it ends up going. And that is what we're
01:25starting to see from free agent guard Dalton Reisner. Now, a lot of Bengals fans know who
01:29Dalton Reisner is. He's been a starting guard ever since he entered the NFL as a second round pick back
01:33in 2019. And he's just been a solid starting pass protecting guard. And the Bengals still need
01:38another player like that to fill in one of the guard spots to just make sure that Joe Burrell's pocket is
01:42firm. Earlier this month, Reisner, who's very active on TikTok, he commented on a post that
01:47described how the Bengals need to sign him in free agency. And he responded saying, I would love to
01:52be a Bengal. And then about two weeks later, he went live on TikTok and someone asked him if he's
01:57on a team yet. And he said, no, I'm not on a team yet, but I have been talking to some other teams.
02:02And he was basically asking, who do you think I'm going to join? Am I going to join the Minnesota
02:05Vikings, which is the team he's played for the past two years, the Denver Broncos, which is the team
02:09that drafted him. And he played there the first three or four years of his career or the Cincinnati
02:13Bengals, who he has never played for. And when he mentioned the Bengals for a second time this month,
02:17that sparked a lot of speculation as to whether or not the Bengals have reached out to him,
02:21if there's some type of a deal in place in case the draft doesn't go the way that the Bengals want.
02:25Now, NFL insider Malik Wright, who originally posted the video describing how the Bengals
02:28need to sign Reisner, he reached out to Reisner and he clarified the Bengals have not reached out
02:33to him at all. So all this noise between the Bengals and Reisner, that is coming from Reisner
02:37himself. Now, the fact that the Bengals haven't reached out to Reisner isn't very surprising.
02:40They already signed Lucas Patrick a month ago in free agency and all their focus is on the draft
02:45right now. But just like Orlando Brown Jr. did two years ago, it can be Reisner who can start up
02:50this sort of mutual interest here. But mutual interest is not a guaranteed thing here. Just
02:53because Reisner wants to join the Bengals doesn't mean that the Bengals want Reisner on their team.
02:58And I say this because the Bengals have a coach on their staff that has worked with Reisner for the
03:03majority of his career already. Past game coordinator Justin Moscati, who was hired by the
03:06Bengals last year in 2024, he was hired by the Broncos in 2019, the same year that they drafted Reisner.
03:12He was an offensive quality control coach for the Broncos, and then he left to become the assistant
03:15offensive line coach for the Vikings a year before Reisner joined that team. Four of Reisner's first
03:20five years in the NFL featured Ruscatty on his coaching staff. If anyone in Cincinnati knows who
03:25Reisner is, it's Justin Ruscatty. And the fact that Reisner was a free agent this time last year
03:29and ended up re-signing with the Vikings instead of joining the Bengals, who clearly needed a guard
03:33at the time, I think that says something. But again, the draft is the biggest variable here,
03:37and it's the reason why Reisner has not signed with the team yet. Now, this is normally what Reisner does
03:42in the offseason. He didn't join the Vikings originally until the middle of the 2023 season,
03:46and he didn't resign with them until last year in May. He likes to wait things out. He likes to see
03:50if there's an opportunity for him to start immediately with a good team. And if the draft
03:54unfolds in a certain way where the Bengals don't find a starting guard with one of their first couple
03:58picks, and they still need a clear, solid answer at one of those spots, Reisner could be the guy that
04:03they call. And they know that Reisner would be interested in playing with them because he literally
04:07admitted it twice. So if you do see Reisner connected to the Bengals at this time, just know that
04:11right now is just a one-way street. But it can be a two-way street if the draft doesn't fold a
04:16certain way. And speaking of the draft, it is getting closer and closer. We are less than a
04:19week away from the first round starting, and we will cover all of that next week right here
04:23on A to Z Sports Cincinnati.