Bengals
Bengals sixth-round WR Andrei Iosivas has the size, speed and overall athleticism that’s impossible to teach and that prompted Cincinnati to roll the dice on him as a late-round pick out of Princeton. Now he gets to learn all the details of playing the position from two of the best, new teammates Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins.
“I really take the advice of Ja’Marr and Tee very seriously and critique myself very hard,” Iosivas said via Geoff Hobson of the team website. “Every time I’m watching film, I see what Tee tells me and try to replicate it the next day or that practice.”
Iosivas says Higgins in particular is who he’s trying to emulate.
“Tee knows we’re very similar in build, so he knows how my body works more,” Iosivas said. “In real life, Tee is humongous. He gets out of his breaks really well. If I can just be a mentee under him for a little bit. See how he does things. Even he told me that DBs in the league are surprised how fast he comes out of his breaks despite how big he is. So I want to be at that level.”
Browns
Browns QB Deshaun Watson didn’t have any updates on the team’s candidacy for free-agent WR DeAndre Hopkins, who was Watson’s teammate with the Texans.
“Really, I have no idea,” Watson said, via the team’s Youtube. “[F]or me, I have no idea where that stands. But, like I said last week, of course we would love to have him. And we’ll see how things go.”
Watson said his phone call to recruit Hopkins had very little to do with football and he just wanted to catch up with his former teammate.
“But nothing about football, just about life and how he could just enjoy his day and more blessings to him.”
Steelers
New Steelers WR Allen Robinson hasn’t been around the team long, just a few weeks since being traded from the Rams, but he’s already impressed by his new quarterback, Kenny Pickett.
“Leaders are born,” Robinson said via Teresa Varley of the team’s website. “It doesn’t take a lot of time for a guy who is a natural leader. I think anybody here can tell that from Kenny. I have been here a little over a month and you can already tell his leadership, how he leads the charge day in and day out. For a second-year guy, that isn’t easy. For a guy to be able to take a bull by the horns like that, it’s pretty impressive.”
Robinson mentioned he’d watched Pickett a little bit in some games going back to college and last year when he took over as the starter. While the stats weren’t impressive, Pickett had some clutch plays that were big in Pittsburgh’s second-half surge in 2022 and Robinson says the former first-round pick has that gamer quality to him.
“I was impressed when I got here,” Robinson said. “Watching somebody from the outside looking in, you definitely see the talent. Once you actually get in the facility and are able to be around Kenny, you see why he is successful.
“I am a person who watches a lot of football, and I was able to watch Kenny in college in some of those big games. When you have a guy like that who has a knack for winning, a knack for being the kind of player he has been, which is leading all of the groups he has been a part of. I don’t think that goes anywhere once a guy gets to the NFL. Once you put other guys around him, you start to see that player evolve into even more of a guy.”
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