Official First Round Pick prediction for the Cincinnati Bengals in the 2025 NFL Draft

AtoZ Sports

John Sheeran shares who he thinks the Cincinnati Bengals will select in the first round of the 2025 NFL Draft!

Transcript

00:00The NFL Draft is less than one month away, and I have a pretty good idea about who the

00:03Bengals are going to be targeting, so in this video, I'm going to call my shot and make my

00:07early prediction. Hi again, Bengals fans. John Sheeran of A to Z Sports Cincinnati here, and

00:14we've still got a few weeks to go before the NFL Draft, but that has not stopped me in years past

00:18from making a prediction with this much time to go. This time last year for A to Z Sports,

00:22it was just before April. We did a site-wide first-round mock draft where every single

00:26writer contributed. We made all 32 picks, and for the Bengals, I picked, at that time,

00:31Amarius Mims, and I picked him for the same reasons that the Bengals eventually picked

00:34him for as well, because this team has very specific tendencies when they pick in the first

00:39round, specifically in the last four or five years. You got to be looking for a young player,

00:43someone who's probably 21 or younger. Obviously, Joe Burrow was an exception to that rule because

00:47he was the number one pick. He was the best quarterback in 2020, but Jonah Williams,

00:51Jamar Chase, Dax Hill, Miles Murphy, Amarius Mims, all were 21 years old when they were drafted.

00:57All of them also played for major schools, big-time programs who played in big-time games.

01:01Typically, they ended up in the college football playoff. You're talking about Alabama, LSU,

01:06Michigan, Clemson, Georgia. You guys all know those programs. They go for the big schools,

01:10and most of those guys, before they even got to those schools, were five-star prospects. I think,

01:14again, Burrow was an exception there. I think he was a four-star coming out of Athens. I think

01:17Jamar Chase was also a four-star before he got to LSU. Again, Williams, Hill, Murphy, Mims,

01:24all five-star. Typically, it's not too hard to decipher which position they're going to be

01:28targeting in the first round because you can typically glean from that from where they ignored

01:32on the roster in free agency. Those are the boxes that all of us should be trying to check off when

01:36trying to predict this pick. Obviously, tape, production, athleticism matters, but all of that

01:40is configured into how likely a player is to be picked in the first round in the first place.

01:44Utilizing all of that information at my disposal for this year's A-Z Sports sidewide

01:49first-round mock draft, I had the Cincinnati Bengals select Ole Miss defensive tackle Walter

01:53Nolan. Let's go through this checklist quickly then. Walter Nolan is 21 years old. He was a

01:59former five-star recruit from Texas A&M and Ole Miss, so two big-time SEC programs. There's a

02:05good start right there. Now, Nolan has been kind of a polarizing name in recent weeks. I know our

02:09boys for A-Z Film Room, both Ryan and Joe, aren't particularly high on him. They may not be

02:13comfortable taking him in the first round, but I think the Bengals are very interested here.

02:17The Bengals kept a close eye on Nolan at the Senior Bowl. They met with him at the Combine.

02:20They're probably going to bring him in here for a Top 30 visit pretty shortly, and I would be

02:24pretty surprised if they didn't. But there's still one more box that we haven't officially checked

02:28yet, and it's the position that they're likely to target. Now, a couple weeks ago, when free

02:31agency first began, the Bengals re-signed B.J. Hill and they signed T.J. Slayton to play nose

02:36tackle, and I came on here on this channel to make a video about how the defensive tackle room feels

02:40a bit incomplete. It feels very one-dimensional. They don't really have someone that can provide

02:44disruption against both the Ryan and the pass. T.J. Slayton is going to be a fine nose tackle.

02:48B.J. Hill is going to be who he's always been. We still don't really know who Chris Jenkins and

02:52McKinley Jackson are, but again, an X factor is missing from this group, and they want this group

02:56to be much deeper than it was last year, so we should expect a defensive tackle to be drafted

03:01very early. And Nolan, to me, fits that billing better than anyone that they could possibly draft

03:06at this juncture, because not only is he a productive pass rusher who can win one-on-ones

03:10and actually finish at the quarterback, but he's a very good run defender and he can get off blocks

03:14and he can make plays in the backfield. And I think the run defense aspect of that is very

03:17important here, because new defensive line coach Jerry Montgomery has been very adamant about if

03:21you can't stop the run, if you can't make plays against the run, you probably don't have a spot

03:24here on this defense. And I think that's what separates Nolan from a guy like Derek Harmon,

03:27who has a lot of issues finishing tackles in the backfield and just in run defense in general.

03:31I'm definitely aware of the concerns about his motor and any other potential character issues

03:34that may come with him. I don't know all the specifics. Obviously, none of us really do.

03:38I'm aware of that, but I also think that the Bengals will be confident that they can get the

03:41most out of it. The Bengals probably should have been more aggressive to add a pass rushing

03:45presence at defensive tackle and free agency, but because they didn't, they've kind of pigeonholed

03:49themselves to be in this spot. And I think they did that partly because they feel confident

03:53that someone like Nolan or maybe Nolan specifically will be there at pick number 17.

03:57So unless things change here in the coming weeks, maybe there's a move here or two that

04:00changes the landscape of things. Walter Nolan is who I think the Bengals will draft in the

04:04first round. But what do you guys think? Who do you think the Bengals will take right now

04:07with their first round pick? Let me know in the comments below.

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