Over the weekend and ahead of the 2020 Senior Bowl, a report broke suggesting the Cincinnati Bengals won’t trade the No. 1 pick in the 2020 NFL draft.
Just don’t tell Bengals director of player personnel Duke Tobin.
Tobin, speaking with the team’s site in Mobile, kept it short and sweet when asked about the report suggesting his team has decided to hang on to the pick: “That’s news to me.”
Tobin elaborated a bit more, noting things are too early in the process to make such claims.
“I don’t know that any decision has been made for what we’re going to do in April. We’re early in the process,” Tobin said. “We certainly haven’t had any meetings to determine that at this point. Those will be meetings we’ll have as we go through the process.”
The report the Bengals won’t trade the first overall pick always seemed premature — Cincinnati should at least listen to offers for the pick that could be Joe Burrow.
While this is little more than the Bengals suggesting nothing has been outright decided yet, it sure doesn’t hurt that this sort of statement works in a few ways. It can be construed as the team remains open to anything, which could indeed mean other teams pick up the phone about a trade.
As always, a report about what the Bengals might do months later was too early, especially in an NFL landscape where things change by the hour.
[vertical-gallery id=27041]