Orlando Brown Jr. says there’s a big reason free agents keep picking the Cincinnati Bengals.
And it’s not just about Joe Burrow or the team being a Super Bowl contender, either.
Brown says that a big part of the reason is free agents see how the Bengals welcome in players and let them be themselves, especially compared to other teams. While chatting about this, he even spotlighted Bengals center Ted Karras as a prime example.
“Ted Karras is an example of that,” Brown said, according to Geoff Hobson of Bengals.com. “Someone who was given one-year opportunities and they gave him (a multiple-year deal) here and he’s been able to flourish and be the best player he can be. Not that he hasn’t always been that guy. He just necessarily hasn’t always gotten that opportunity to truly be himself and be himself on the football field and this is the place to do that.”
It’s a pretty interesting look behind the proverbial curtain from Collins — and a fitting one. It was actually his camp that reached out to the Bengals during free agency, not the other way around. The team considered Brown out of reach before that.
Instead, Brown’s reps reached out, likely in part due to these reasons. It speaks to the culture of the program Zac Taylor has built in Cincinnati and is more proof players 100 percent see the little things when looking around the league.
