Duke Tobin will never outrun the regret tied to one atrocious Bengals move

The Cincinnati Bengals' 2021 NFL Draft class will forever be celebrated, because with the fifth overall pick, they acquired someone who's bound to go down as the best wide receiver in franchise history.

Pairing Ja'Marr Chase with his LSU quarterback, 2020 No. 1 overall pick Joe Burrow, was the no-brainer to end all no-brainers. To me, it was also a no-brainer to mortgage the future, trade up, and acquire eventual Detroit Lions All-Pro offensive tackle Penei Sewell, but that's neither here nor there.

Not to build you up only to break you down, dear reader, but this is where the other shoe drops.

Duke Tobin and the NFL's most undermanned scouting department will forever live in infamy for what he did with the rest of that 2021 draft class.

Super Bowl LX Patriots defensive tackle Christian Barmore symbolizes everything wrong with Duke Tobin & Bengals front office

Maybe it felt like Cincinnati's brass was playing with house money once Chase was in the fold on Day 1 of that '21 draft. How else do you explain what the Bengals did when they went on the clock at Pick 38 in the second round?

Defensive tackle wasn't a huge need with D.J. Reader in tow, but an interior pass rusher would've complemented him nicely. After all, franchise legend Geno Atkins was out of football following the 2020 campaign.

Alabama's Christian Barmore was sitting there, fully available to Cincinnati with the 38th pick. Tobin instead turned around, and let the New England Patriots trade up for the rights to Barmore.

As bad as Bill Belichick was at drafting throughout much of his New England tenure, he definitely knew defensive personnel better than offense. And given his penchant for trading down, in the draft, you'd have to be a moron to do business with The Hoodie if he was actually trading up for someone.

Blood clots derailed Barmore's career in 2024, when he'd just come off an 8.5-sack season and netted himself a ho-hum four-year, $84 million contract extension. However, he's back in action this season as a pass rushing menace at defensive tackle. A key starter on the Pats' Super Bowl LX-worthy defense.

Meanwhile, let's see what Duke Tobin and his minions managed to bring aboard from their end of that Barmore draft day trade:-round and two fourth-round selections

• Round 2, Pick 46 —Jackson Carman, OL, Clemson
• Round 4, Pick 122 — Tyler Shelvin, DT, LSU
• Round 4, Pick 139 — D'Ante Smith, OT, East Carolina

Tell me, Who Dey Heads, would you trade those three guys straight-up for Barmore today?

Carman had some serious off-field concerns coming into the draft. Shelvin was about as unproductive as you could be, and I'm pretty sure the Bengals just said, "Well, we have Joe and Ja'Marr from that loaded LSU natty team, why not get their boy to fill one of our needs!?"

LOL. As for D'Ante Smith, well...has anyone heard from him? Doubtful. Been out of the league since 2024.

The Bengals just don't seem to learn from their mistakes. When they drafted McKinnley Jackson in Round 3 of the 2024 draft, he wasn't quite a Shelvin-level disaster, yet was similar enough to raise red flags. Jackson was a healthy scratch for much of the 2025 season.

Re: the X post above, at least Myles Murphy started showing something in the second half of his third season. Same goes for free agent Joseph Ossai in YEAR FOUR.

And hey look. Everyone misses in the draft. A big reason why I put together a big board every year despite limited college all-22 film access is because, honestly, the draft is as close to a professional guessing game as you can get. The people whose literal job it is to draft well in the NFL whiff on picks left and right. All the time.

Unless a prospect is truly of the blue-chip variety, where he lands has as much to do with his success or lack thereof as everything that's actually in his control.

That's why it baffles me when the Bengals roll the dice on chasing upside — or like, specialized internal qualifications/traits that only they know so often — as opposed to collegiate production.

Especially at this specific moment in time, this Bengals organization is not equipped with the resources nor has the luxury to have raw players on a glacial developmental track. What's even worse is when the front office bets big on a player they have seemingly no business drafting by any publicly-available metric.

Burrow has said this offseason is "as big as it gets." If Cincinnati misses the playoffs yet again, Joe Shiesty will be less inclined to stick around and could very well demand a trade.

I just hope history doesn't repeat itself in the 2026 NFL Draft. My mock Bengals offseason provides one potential way out of this vicious cycle of baffling talent evaluations, canyon-sized reaches on raw prospects, and could redeem Tobin's worst personnel sins.

...What a bummer it figures to be, though, when Barmore keeps racking up sacks while the Bengals' perpetual search for a capable 3-technique drones on.

Thanks, Duke. Real Dookie you laid there in 2021, but congrats on the Ja'Marr layup.