The Cincinnati Bengals weren't very good at linebacker in 2025, and they could use a talents upgrade.

They haven't found one in free agency.

Can they find an impact in the NFL draft?

Let's discuss linebacker targets for the Bengals in the 2026 NFL draft.

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What up Bengals fans and welcome to another episode of the Lockdown Bengals podcast.

I'm Jake Liskgo, your host of Lockdown Bengals along with today. Joe Goodberry,

once again, joining us for our position deep dive series where we're going to be getting

into targets by day of the draft. And well, Joe, we're going to talk about linebacker today.

And there are some guys on all three days of the draft, but day one, day two, probably the most interesting, especially if you're looking for early impact. We just saw what happens when you have rookie linebackers on the field together. And I don't know that you're going to necessarily get the kind of leadership that you need from this draft class at the position, something that the Bengals Brass has talked about, and they did not get done in free agency, not for lack of trying, despite what you might have heard. We do believe very strongly that they were in on a number of linebackers in free agency, but now we're looking ahead to the draft, and we're going to be talking about Sonny Stiles.

We're going to discuss Arvel Reese a little bit because if he does somehow fall to 10, which

is prohibitively unlikely, it's good to know a little bit about Arvel Reese and what he can do

in the NFL, but even Sunny Stiles feels unlikely.

A pick number 10 at this point, Joe.

So the conversation is more like, well, is he worth it?

If he is there, the answer is probably yes.

And the good thing about this, I think, is if you've listened to this series,

we talked about corners, we talked about defensive line,

we talked about all these different spots.

There's a whole lot of guys worth that 10th overall pick. So the Bengals should be able to get a player there that's really good. And the question would then be, how much does he fill an immediate need when you shouldn't be drafting for need? But when you can get both, that's nice. And Sonny Stiles represents your ability to do those things. later on in the show, we'll talk about who they can get on day two day three whether they're guys that could be impactful there but let's start

joe with sunny styles and we'll obviously like i said i'll also talk about arval riz a little bit

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