When the Cincinnati Bengals face the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Week 1, the game will feature a significant fetish among college evaluators. Fetish or ick, depending on whom you ask.
For months, and sometimes years, scouts, executives, and analysts obsess over future NFL draft picks. And with the chess-bookification of football through advanced stats and analytics, it sometimes seems like we are moving further away from what matters in player evaluation.
But there is also the bigger, stronger, faster crowd on the other end of the analytic pendulum. They will also blow past whether a player is good at playing football or not, straight to Joe Burrow has small hands, and Darnell Wright has short arms.
Speaking of which, the Bengals-Buccaneers game will feature two high-profile players, Rueben Bain Jr. and Cashius Howell, who fell in the NFL's annual college talent acquisition process because of their short arms, yet were still the first pick in the draft for their respective franchises.
Cashius Howell and Rueben Bain Jr. headline revamped d-lines in Cincinnati and Tampa Bay
Someone in Cincinnati’s front office had their keys taken away from them this offseason.
First, the Bengals did something they never do when they traded their first-round pick, tenth overall, to the Giants for defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence. This was after they picked up edge rusher Boye Mafe and defensive tackle Jonathan Allen in free agency.
It appeared that the Bengals had finally given up the ghost on trying to find capable defensive linemen in the draft after repeated recent misses in that area. That is, until it was time to make their first selection in the second round.
It was at that point we knew whoever was in charge of those defensive line decisions had his keys taken away for good. With the 41st overall pick, the Bengals selected Cashius Howell, the prospect with the shortest arms for a pass rusher in the history of the draft.
It does not get more un-Bengals-like than that.
In case you are someone who only looks at numbers on a page and Twitter highlights, we urge you to watch Texas A&M against LSU last year and tell us how the Tigers’ offensive line feels about Howell’s historically short arms.
Howell finished his final collegiate season at Texas A&M with 31 tackles, 14 tackles for loss, 11.5 sacks, and six passes defensed. That is awfully impressive for someone with historically short arms.
Howell’s 30-inch arms were the shortest for an edge rusher ever recorded, putting him in the 0% range for NFL players. Still, his arms did not slow him down at Texas A&M. And the way he has shown up in training camp and the preseason suggests he does not need long arms to get the job done.
Tampa Bain has no time for arm-length slander
Former Hurricanes edge rusher Rueben Bain was a menace for Miami. He was also a popular pick among Bengals fans when they noticed that he was falling out of the top-5 in mock drafts, before Cincinnati traded the 10th overall pick to the New York Giants for Dexter Lawrence.
But even then, we didn’t actually believe that Bain would make it to ten.
Not only did Bain make it to ten, but he also overshot that mark like an Elon Musk rocket slamming into the moon. He eventually landed at 15, where the Buccaneers stopped his fall.
It is safe to say that he took that slide personally. That poor hat, and whoever set up the mirror camera, expecting every player to pose in front of it with their new team’s headgear.
Unfortunately for the Bengals, they are the first team that Bain will face after being disrespected on draft night. However, he is dealing with an injury that will leave him less than 100% at the start of his NFL career.
Still, we must hope that Zac Taylor does not get cute and call on one of their fifty-hundred-eleven tight ends on the roster to block Bain one-on-one. But it is very possible that the head coach and play caller won’t be able to control himself.
Bain’s 31-inch arms ranked in the bottom 1% of all NFL players. But at the same time, that is “better” than where Howell came in.
Nevertheless, his length-challenged limbs did not prevent Bain from recording 54 tackles, 15.5 tackles for loss, and 9.5 sacks in his third and final season for the “U.”
And like Howell, Bain’s short arms don’t seem to be an issue in the NFL so far either, evident in his dynamic preseason performance.
Howell and Bain don’t care about short-arm history
Bain fell to 15, and Howell was available in the second round for a reason. History suggests it's harder for shorter-armed players to find success in the NFL.
However, longer arms may matter when deciding whether a player should play offensive tackle or guard. On the other hand, defense is just as much about a willingness to do whatever it takes, including running through somebody's facemask every play, as it is about techniques and arm length. We should expect that from Bain and Howell every down they are on the field.
It's rare that a player can come along and shift how scouts view all prospects afterward. When the Bengals face the Buccaneers at Paycor Stadium, there will be two on the field who could do just that.
Two players from two different franchises have the opportunity to become the bane of NFL scouts' existence while changing paradigms and narratives.
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