You are Locked-on Bengals, your daily Cincinnati Bengals podcast, part of the Locked-on

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What up Bengals fans and welcome to another episode of the Locked-on Bengals podcast.

I'm your host, Jake Liskow, joined today by

Lockdown Bengals contributor, Mike Santagata. We'll be continuing our film breakdown series today

talking some DJ reader, talking some big man football. Mike, I know this is one of your

favorite things to talk about. And one of the

things that we've been doing with this series that have actually really been enjoying to set

the stage for the conversation about the players, you know, we're talking about the position.

And obviously, something that we've talked about on this show in the last couple of years and going back to

free agency when the Bengals signed DJ Reader is that nose tackles in the modern NFL are not

as valuable as they once were as teams are generally throwing the ball more generally you're

only getting a two-down player out of a nose tackle like DJ Reader.

The value has diminished from the days when the run game was a lot more popular.

There wasn't as much, you know, spread the ball out, pass the ball, 50 times a game, 60 times a game.

So when the Bengals signed DJ Reader, at the time it was Joe Goberry and I on the podcast,

and we were both very happy with the move, especially because he had just had his best

past rushing season in terms of productivity with the Houston Texans.

And the idea of adding him to a defensive line that had Gino Atckins, who was still an at least above average three technique at the time, was pretty tantalizing.

But now at this point, in the current iteration of the Bengals, there's no real interior pass rush threat on third downs.

This is something that we've been talking about quite a bit.

There is Larry Ogenjobie, of course, coming down from Cleveland, but there isn't a Gino-Ackins replacement on this

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