AFC Notes: Bengals, Ravens, Steelers

Bengals

• Bengals WR Ja’Marr Chase on the criticism surrounding him during the preseason: “I knew what I could do already. As long as I played my game, no one was going to distract me.” (Charlie Goldsmith)
• Bengals TE C.J. Uzomah is battling through a knee injury but said he doesn’t plan on missing the Super Bowl: “I’m not missing the biggest game of my life.” (Ben Volin)
• Bengals QB Joe Burrow never thought about not wanting to be selected first overall by Cincinnati: “I never thought about telling the Bengals not to draft me or anything like that. I was just happy to be in the position that I was in.” (Ben Baby)
• Burrow also praised WR Tyler Boyd, saying he doesn’t get enough credit: “He’s a very invaluable part of what we’re building.” (Baby)
• Bengals HC Zac Taylor on the relationship between himself and DC Lou Anarumo: “It’s been really fun. Lou has no ego. All those conversations you need to have, that process has been really easy for us.” (Aaron Wilson)

Ravens

Ravens GM Eric DeCosta spoke about the team’s areas of need this offseason, saying that they will take a look at the salary cap situation, find good free agents for the right price, and add through the draft with nine picks in the first four rounds.

“We have some work to do in a lot of different areas,” DeCosta said, via RavensWire.com. “I think everything is fixable, and it can be improved and built and strengthened, for sure. The first thing we have to do is look at the salary cap. We spent some time down in the Caribbean last week, I guess it was, and we discussed the salary cap. We discussed contracts. We discussed potential deals, ways of freeing up more money. I think we’ll have enough salary cap room to do everything we need to do, to do responsible, good deals that work for the club but also work for the player. We’ve never been a big, huge free agency team. We’ve dabbled in it a little bit. We’ll continue to look for players that benefit the club in different ways, certainly. Right player, right price, as always. We’ll continue to look at players that we have whose contracts are expiring to try to get some deals done. I’m comfortable with that process.

DeCosta added the team feels like it has plenty of draft picks to be able to offset any financial limitations they might have. 

“We’re excited. We have nine draft picks at this time in the first four rounds. We’re not sure exactly how that’s going to break down and where those picks will be in the first four rounds, but we know we have nine picks in the first four rounds,” he said. “For me, as I look at it and as we project and we model and see where those picks will fall … If you think about our list, our master list, if we have 100 players ranked, we feel like all of those nine picks will probably come within our Top 80 players. So, if we do our job correctly, if we stack the board the right way [and] if we’re able to play the combinations correctly – what I mean by that is drafting the players with an eye toward maximizing each pick positionally – I think we have a really good chance to build some serious and quality depth to help this team be the best it can be.”

Steelers

• Mark Kaboly of The Athletic has the team selecting Mississippi State T Charles Cross in the first round of his mock draft.
• In round two, Kaboly has the team taking Boston College G Zion Johnson, followed by Oklahoma LB Brian Asamoah in the third round.