Bengals

Bengals DE Cashius Howell enters his rookie season after being a second-round pick in this year’s draft. Howell reflected on his path to the NFL, saying the transition from Bowling Green to Texas A&M was more difficult than getting to the league.

“Not like the NFL is easy or anything — this is the best people in the world — but I feel like it was more of a struggle trying to get from the MAC to the SEC than it was the SEC to the NFL, if that makes sense,” Howell said, via Ben Baby of ESPN. 

Bengals RT Amarius Mims was surprised to see Howell fall to them in the second round because of how impressive he’s been since coming aboard. 

“I don’t know how he fell to us in the second round,” Mims said. “I don’t know how that was possible. But I’m very glad he’s on our team. He’s going to be a great, great addition for us.”

Bengals DE Shemar Stewart was teammates with Howell at Texas A&M in 2024. Stewart recalled Howell “dogging people out” during their college days.  

“I just remember him dogging people out, doing people in,” Stewart said. “That’s the first thing that comes to mind when it comes to Cash.”

Browns

• Appearing on Orange and Brown Talk, Browns beat reporter Mary Kay Cabot went back to what led the Browns and QB Baker Mayfield to split ahead of their Week 2 matchup.
• Cabot said Mayfield and then-HC Kevin Stefanski were not seeing eye to eye at the end of 2021 “at all” and revealed the quarterback called out his head coach after a game versus the Steelers for allowing him to take as many sacks as he did. (Orange and Brown Talk)
• Cabot says Mayfield was going to either ask for a trade or ask for “significant changes.” She also brought up that it “was not good” between Mayfield and DE Myles Garrett at the time either, to the point where Garrett didn’t respond to Mayfield’s farewell text after being traded. (Orange and Brown Talk)

Steelers

• Steelers HC Mike McCarthy talked about CB Joey Porter Jr.’s practice on Wednesday: “Joey had a good day yesterday. He did everything he was scheduled to do.” (Mark Kaboly)
• McCarthy had said Porter was scheduled to do more on Thursday, but he left practice after just 30 minutes. After being listed on the injury report as limited due to conditioning/no injury on Wednesday, Porter was listed with a back injury Thursday. That’s the same issue that’s seemed to sideline him throughout his contract standoff with the team this summer. (Brooke Pryor)