After decompressing for a few days, Mike Potts, the Bengals’ director of college scouting, sat down with Jeff Hobson, senior writer for Bengals.com, to reflect on the NFL draft last weekend.
GH: Can you draw this better? edge. Two from the back corner. A wide receiver who has led the nation in catches and is one of the best returners in the draft. Another wide receiver who was the MVP in his league. And a gambler? Looks like you’ve reached every need but the narrow end.
MP: If I had known before how this draft was being carried out, I would have been very happy with it. Are there other situations we would like to address? Yes. definitely. Sometimes this just doesn’t happen. There are young people as you work through the process who are excluded for medical reasons, for personal reasons. When you get the coaches into the process, they don’t see a great view of the player from a schema perspective.
GH: It definitely looks like those three top picks guys, Clemson edge Miles Murphy, Michigan cornerback D.J. Turner, and Alabama safety Jordan Battle, get pretty high marks.
MP: They were men we targeted. There’s always a conversation about the order you take in just playing different depths from different positions on the draft board. We had very high miles. very high up there. We’d probably have seven or eight teams interested in getting to No. 28. Miles Murphy was a guy we didn’t want to miss.
There’s not much you can really knock him over. His rise is enormous. He’s a really, really good player. It’s almost scary what he could be as he continues to evolve. He’s still young. Only 21 years old. good kid. good personality. He wants to come here and work and I think getting a really good coach like we did in Marion Hobby, it would be a great pair of those two. An easy choice for us.
I actually texted one of my good sources over there in Clemson. It was an easy choice for us. Just thank those guys who gave you good info on scouting behind the scenes and all that stuff. If there are two more players out of the game we might feel like we’re giving up a player level but we got one of the most talented players in the draft at the bottom of the first round.
There aren’t many people in the world who have those measurable things and he’s a good player on top of that. He’s not just a big guy running fast. He can bend the edge. he is tall. He has the power. I don’t think he’s even close to his roof yet.
GH: Since Turner was the fastest man scout in the NFL, you must have made him there, too.
MP: A lot of these really fast guys are solid, linear, straight athletes. This guy has a good change of direction. Really good coverage speed. Really good comprehensive coverage skills. He’s a narrow framed guy, but really strong. fly around. He throws his body around. Really physical. We think he can play indoors and outdoors. There are not many holes in his game as he continues to improve. His body could add a bit of bulk.