Cincinnati Bengals players and coaches have boasted proudly about the team’s bond throughout the season.
That’s what made Monday afternoon so difficult as the team cleaned out the locker room and parted ways into the offseason following Sunday night’s 23-20 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC Championship game.
“It’s like the last day of school,” said center Ted Karras.
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Karras knows how taxing an unexpected end to a season can be when a team is as close as Cincinnati was this year. Karras, a seven-year veteran, was a free agent after each of the last three seasons.
“The team’s not gonna be the same. There’s gonna be changes to every NFL franchise. It’s just the nature of the business,” Karras said. “I don’t know if we have a lot of free agents, but some guys have been there. I empathize with a lot of the guys that are gonna go on a journey and understand that it’s a business. Hopefully we can get everybody back that wants to be here.”
Bengals’ safety Jessie Bates: “I want to be here.”
The Bengals enter the offseason with over a dozen players set to become unrestricted free agents, according to Spotrac. Most notably is safety Jessie Bates, who reported to training camp in late August and played on the franchise tag.
“I want to be here,” Bates said Monday. “Unfortunately, this business, there’s different scenarios where I’m not in a situation where I can leave $10 million on the table and be OK with that. It wouldn’t be fair to myself, my family, my legacy.”
Bates credited the culture change and a tight-knit locker room for the way he handled himself over the last two seasons, when offseason talks of a long-term extension fizzled.
“I could have easily went to a different route, been a cancer. It had a lot to do with the people in this locker room and organization,” Bates said. “They brought me in here and helped me get through tough times. I was in shells. I would not talk to anybody at times. The brotherhood we have in here got me out of that.”
Germaine Pratt discusses post-game video: “I wasn’t a great teammate in that moment.”
Cameras caught Bengals linebacker Germaine Pratt visible frustrated Sunday while walking to the locker room after the loss. Pratt voiced his displeasures on the unnecessary roughness penalty called on defensive end Joseph Ossai, which moved Kansas City in range for a game-winning field goal.
Pratt addressed the video Monday, explaining that it was a mistake he made in the heat of the moment.
“It’s a reaction that anybody has that’s a competitor. You know what was at stake in that moment,” Pratt said. “A guy made a mistake, over and done with it. I was emotional. I was in the moment. As a man, you can look yourself in the mirror and say I was wrong. I wasn’t a great teammate in that moment.”
Pratt is one of five defensive starters who are set to hit free agency this offseason. The third-round pick in 2019 has been crucial to the franchise’s turnaround from laughingstock to contender. Pratt said the money is important, but he’s looking to be with a franchise that is committed to winning.
“I want to be a Super Bowl champion. You don’t play this game just to go out there and get the money and go home. You’ll be miserable,” Pratt said. “You love this game so much you put so much time in it, you want to be a Super Bowl champion.”
With one of the league’s top quarterbacks under center, Pratt is adamant that he can one day hoist a Lombardi Trophy in Cincinnati and is open to negotiating his return.
“I would say we’ve got Joe Burrow as a top quarterback. You want to be around a franchise quarterback that can compete for championships,” Pratt said. “Nobody wants to leave and go to a team that ain’t got a Top-5 quarterback that can take us to championships. I don’t want to leave that.”
Bengals rookies reflect on long season, bright future
The Bengals have many questions to answer in the secondary this offseason with Bates, Vonn Bell, Eli Apple and Tre Flowers all on expiring deals.
Apple, on his fourth NFL team, said the last two seasons have helped clear his head of doubt he had early on in his career.
“It’s by far the best locker room I’ve been in,” Apple said. “To come in here and be around great guys and have a chance to pick their brains every day, I thank God and hope those relationships last for a while.”
For all the question marks on defense, rookies Dax Hill and Cam Taylor-Britt are just getting started.
Taylor-Britt battled the roller-coaster ride that comes with being a rookie. He was placed on injured reserve to start the season and received a bigger workload when Chidobe Awuzie suffered a season-ending knee injury on Halloween.
“It’s the opportunity of a lifetime,” Taylor-Britt said. “You don’t know how it’ll play out. I didn’t know I’d be on IR; I didn’t know that Chido (Chidobe Awuzie) would get hurt and I’d end up starting. It’s just a blessing to make it that far and hold my own. There were a lot of guys who were telling me how big it was that I stepped up and played my role.”
Hill played just five defensive snaps on Sunday and found a role primarily on special teams. The uncertainty of his role made the year difficult.
“I really didn’t know what I was doing in terms of each week. That's kind of hard at this level just to know exactly what you're doing and trying to be as sharp as possible for Sunday. That's kind of a tall task. I tried to do as best as I could.
“Just trying to balance everything I had on my plate, it was kind of tough. I kind of know what to expect now and I can just reflect.”
