CINCINNATI — There was a wildly successful and popular ad campaign from the mind of the late, great Dave Thomas that skyrocketed the Wendy’s hamburger chain into national prominence in the 1980s.
He put Clara Peller in front of camera and told the lady with grandma looks and tenacity to simply ask: “Where’s the beef?!?”
The Bengals answered that same question for their fans this week with the signing of 6-2, 305-pound defensive tackle Sheldon Rankins to a two-year, $24.5 million deal.
A day later, they came to agreement with 6-8, 370-pound Trent Brown to be their starting right tackle to replace Jonah Williams, who departed for the desert and a 2-year, $30 million deal with the Cardinals.
That’s an upgrade of three inches and 65 pounds from Williams, who had a very solid career with the Bengals, including this past season when he was arguably their most consistent offensive lineman at right tackle.
Rankins is essentially a swap and generally the same price for DJ Reader, who left to sign with the NFC North champion Lions. Rankins is actually a little lighter but the Bengals still expect him to be a huge presence next to BJ Hill on the inside as a 3-technique tackle.
Rankins wants everyone to know that while he does have the reputation for getting after the quarterback, he can still stop the run.
“I think I can do everything at a high level,” Rankins said this week in his first media availability as a Bengal. “If you go back to my last year with the Jets, coming off that year, people questioned could I rush the passer anywhere. Everyone said, ‘Oh he’s a run guy. That’s what he is, he’s a run guy.’ If you go back with my Jets, my last year there, when I was on the field, we gave up 3.8 yards a carry, and going to Houston, we became the No. 6 run defense in the league or something like that, with me playing a lot of snaps in the run defense. So, I think I do it all at a high level.
“You don’t get this far in the league, you don’t get the opportunities I’ve had to be a guy, again, the Jets didn’t have to play me on first, second down. They could have went out and got a big body and all that, but I feel like I play football really well. I don’t just rush the passer really well, like if you want to line up in 21 personnel, run power, fine, that’s cool, let’s do it. If you want to spread it out and throw it all over the park, just don’t leave me by myself all day, it’s going to be ugly. So, I feel like I do it all really well at a high level so I look forward to continuing that trend and to continue to do that over my career.”
The Bengals were manhandled in the trenches this past season by Baltimore, Cleveland and Pittsburgh, the primary reason they won just once in six tries and went 0-5 when the season was in the balance.
The Bengals know they have to be tougher and be ready to punch back when they get hit and perhaps – more to the point – hit first and with authority to establish a tone in the trenches. That tone was oozing from Rankins this week.
“I just think the way the league is now, there’s not a lot of quarterbacks who stand 12 yards deep in the pocket,” Rankins said. “Most guys are dropping back to nine, stepping up to seven or six, so if you have guys who can disrupt the middle, if you ask a lot of quarterbacks, you know they don’t like their feet getting stepped on, they don’t like when they are falling through guys helmets being in the way.
“So, if you got a guy who can — and again, I speak freely — if you’ve got a guy who can just be a dick of a person, to the annoyance of a quarterback in the middle all game long, it doesn’t even have to be hits. It’s just again, if he’s constantly having to take one hand off the ball to push an O-lineman away this way to get his feet out of the way, I mean, that just throws off timing, throws off rhythm. And he’s human.”
Defensively, not only would the Bengals like to see more beef inside to address the run against the Steelers, Ravens and Browns, they will never turn down a reliable 3-tech tackle who can get after the opposing quarterback.
That’s what Rankins is. The 2016 first-round pick (12th overall by the Saints) has 29.5 sacks, five forced fumbles, three fumble recoveries, one interception in eight NFL seasons.
“At some point, he gets annoying, he starts thinking about it,” Rankins added. “It’s just all that little stuff adds up over the course of four quarters and being able to wreak havoc. So, if you got a guy who can do that, I like to feel I can do that, then yeah, I think it matters in the sense of, especially if you’ve got good edge rushers, which we have here, it allows everybody else to kind of eat.”
On defense, they had that attitude in the four seasons Reader was on the roster and ascended to his role as team captain.
“It unlocks the key when you got that pressure up the middle and that constant force, pushing the pocket and being disruptive, allows everybody else to eat and allows guys to play coverage on the back end, allows guys to be able to jump things on the back end,” Rankins said. “Now you’re playing faster because quarterbacks gotta get the ball out faster, so now you’re playing on that, now you can play with more vision and everything like that. It all works hand in hand. So you know just being able to be that guy that can cause that disruption, cause that force in the middle. I take pride in being that kind of guy.”
On offense, the Bengals will still throw the ball all over the field with Joe Burrow. But the message now with 6-8, 345-pound Orlando Brown Jr. on the left side and Trent Brown on the right, is that opponents like Myles Garrett and TJ Watt are going to have to break through a brick wall to do so.
And the theory here is to simply wear those rushers down over the course of a game.
Secondly, the Bengals are not going to be a power run team as long as Zac Taylor is calling the shots. He wants the ball in the hands of his best player as much as possible. But he knows you do need people-movers when you want to run the ball.
To wit, Brown was the starting left tackle on the Super Bowl LIII champion New England Patriots with Ted Karras as a reserve.
They had James White and Sony Michel, who coincidentally scored the only touchdown of that game against Taylor’s Rams by running the ball straight up the gut after a Tom Brady-to-Rob Gronkowski perfectly executed seam route to the Rams 2.
It was Patriots starting left tackle Trent Brown, who won his battle with Rams defensive tackle Ethan Westbrooks, allowing Michel to run right off Brown’s backside and into the end zone for the decisive touchdown.
Remembering Sony Michel’s biggest moment for the Patriots, his game-winning TD against his new team at Super Bowl 53. pic.twitter.com/YuDDjlloq0
— PatsPropaganda (@PatsPropaganda) August 25, 2021
That’s what the Bengals want to see. Joe Burrow makes a perfect pass to put the Bengals in the low red area and Trent Brown and the Bengals offensive line mauls a defensive lineman to allow Chase Brown to finish the job.
“It means a lot,” Brown told me when asked about the chance to protect Burrow the way he did Brady. “It’s a little added motivation to do your job and keep him upright because you know he can make special things happen.”
He’ll be making special things happen with the newly-tatted Karras leading the offensive line.
“He said he loved it here,” Brown said. “This is a great organization. It’s like a family over here. I walked in the building this morning and he was in the hot tub getting ready to work out.
“That even added to it, him being here on March 19 and the offseason program doesn’t start for another month almost. That was a huge thing right there, just being where we came from where people would get out of there for a release any chance we had.”
The Bengals won’t necessarily change their run scheme but they believe they have a new physicality to execute the game plan.
Checklist:
Added: Trent Brown
Lost: Jonah Williams (Arizona)
Stayed: Cody Ford
Added: Sheldon Rankins
Lost: DJ Reader (Detroit)
Added: Vonn Bell, Geno Stone
Lost: Nick Scott (free agent)
Added: None
Lost: Chido Awuzie (Tennessee)
Added: None
Lost: None
Stayed: Akeem Davis-Gaither
Added: Zack Moss
Lost: Joe Mixon (Houston)
Stayed: Trayveon Williams
Added: None
Lost: Tyler Boyd (free agent)
Stayed: Tee Higgins (franchise tag), Trenton Irwin
Added: Mike Gesicki
Lost: None
Stayed: Drew Sample, Tanner Hudson
