Two huge plays from Bengals camp send a warning to the league

Cincinnati Bengals linebackers Demetrius Knight Jr. and Barrett Carter were thrown into the fire last season as rookies and figuratively looked like they were drinking out of a hose. Blown assignments, bad run fits, woeful pass coverage, and myriad missed tackles galore. Thumbs down!

Nevertheless, the Bengals doubled down on Carter and Knight as the linebackers of the future this offseason. The front office made unprecedentedly aggressive moves for big names like Dexter Lawrence, Bryan Cook, Boye Mafe, and Jonathan Allen to bolster the cast around the Carter-Knight combo.

Now it's up to the rising second-year pros to pay that off. If I had my way, the Lawrence trade would've looked different, the Bengals would've been in position to draft Sonny Styles, and they would've made Cook and linebacker Leo Chenal a package free-agent deal from Kansas City.

But here we are with Knight and Carter (again) instead. If the early going of training camp is any indication, though, maybe the team is right. Maybe us haters of the incumbent 'backers are wrong.

Demetrius Knight Jr.'s highlight reel INT off Joe Burrow

Local12's Yanni Tragellis — I interned there back in the day, shout out! — captured the sensational footage of Demetrius Knight Jr. climbing the ladder to pick off none other than Joe Shiesty:

Can't emphasize enough how great this is to see. While Carter is under more pressure in some ways as the green-dot/MIKE linebacker in the heart of the Bengals' defense, Knight was a second-round pick who skated through last year's training camp as an uncontested starter.

The lack of competition and Knight's draft status created a lot of positive early buzz. My first day on this job featured a story about how Albert Breer's sources suggested Knight could be one of the best players linebackers in franchise history.

Let's just say after last season, Knight has an Everest-steep mountain to climb to sniff that status.

Knight better be making great plays like this. Dude is 26 years old. Get on with it, big guy. Be better.

Proof positive of Barrett Carter's football IQ

One of the better movies of the summer was Toy Story 5. Have to call back to an original line from Buzz Lightyear. With Barrett Carter in charge of communications last season, I swear to you, when I watched the sad scenes unfold on Sundays, I would quote Buzz to myself: "There seems to be no sign of intelligent life anywhere."

Were you confused at first on where that analogy was going? Well yeah. Carter's football IQ was nowhere to be found in 2025. His head was swimming with thoughts.

Again, we are at the tail end of July. Important to remember that. I don't care. I will take Carter blowing up this screen play, courtesy of Max Loeb on X, and anything pro-Barrett I can find:

Sorry but I'm on a roll with questionably Bengals-adjacent allusions. This is a little more in the same galaxy as the subject at hand. Let me play you out of this section an excerpt from premier orator/Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni's iconic "systems" monologue:

"When we can learn our system, and we can get good at our system, then our talent can take over. Less thinking equals talent take over. But we need to have systems in place, and we will have systems in place to do so."

Less thinking equals talent takeover, Mr. Carter. Truly knowing Al Golden's system should allow Carters' talent to take over in 2026. Looks like it's happening right before our eyes, Who Dey Heads!

Bengals linebackers may not be weak links after all

Is it possible that Barrett Carter and Demetrius Knight Jr. aren't terrible? The whole objective of the offseason was to shore up the defense so much that they almost couldn't mess it up.

From what I saw last year, I didn't know if any amount of supporting star power could fix either of them. Maybe rushing to judge them wasn't totally fair.

The logic, however, seemed sound. How realistic was it — nay, is it still — to expect linebackers who ranked 83rd (Knight) and 85th (Carter) in PFF grades out of 88 qualifiers to make some quantum Year 2 leap? A huge jump would, by definition, only make them something like replacement-level starters.

It'd only take one of Knight or Carter to make meaningful strides to increase this defense's ceiling by a significant amount. What's possible if both of them are significantly improved?

OK. Need to cool my jets a bit. The jury is still out, yet it's impossible not to be at least a little amped up to see Knight and Carter making plays like the ones above. They could ultimately make or break whether the Bengals can fulfill their Super Bowl expectations in t coming years.

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