After the Bengals tight ends caught as many yards as came from the arm of three-time Super Bowl MVP Patrick Mahomes with 151 during Sunday's improbable game in Kansas City, a question had been posed.
In the 25 years of Paycor Stadium, have the Bengals ever had a tight end as versatile and talented as rookie Erick All Jr.?
Given that All was born about a half-hour from Paycor three days after the building made its NFL debut in 2000, good question as the stadium is groomed for Monday night's game (8:15 p.m.-Cincinnati's Channel 9) against the Commanders.
Don't ask All. He's a Jason Witten guy because on Monday nights while he was growing up in the Cincinnati suburb of Fairfield, Ohio, his family rooted for the Cowboys. Not Monday, of course, when they'll make the I-75 South pilgrimage.
"It's going to be crazy. I'll treat it like any other game," All says. I'll play my heart out and do whatever it takes."
There was Reggie Kelly, one of the talented, committed veterans Bengals head coach Marvin Lewis deployed to re-build the program early in the century. Kelly was their spiritual leader and a monstrous blocker. But he didn't have a catch longer than the 19-yarder All grabbed on Sunday until his fourth season with the Bengals.
In the next decade, the Bengals went in the first round for Jermaine Gresham and Tyler Eifert three years apart. Gresham had four physical 50-catch seasons in one of the more underrated Bengals careers, but he couldn't run or leap like All. Eifert was a Pro Bowl receiver (2015), but he wasn't picking off blocks so Gresham could leak out for a route, like All did for Mike Gesicki last Sunday.
In the Joe Burrow Era, C.J. Uzomah and Hayden Hurst have been critical and good. But they weren't stalemating edge rusher George Karlaftis III (17 sacks the last two seasons) on fourth-and-three and the game swinging in the wind in the second half like All did in Arrowhead on a go-big-or-go-home-fourth-and-goal from the 3.
"Probably fair to say. Hard for me to think of somebody who has the same traits. We're excited about Erick. He's got a big future" says offensive coordinator Dan Pitcher, who arrived in 2016 and saw Eifert tie the 2019 Burrow Bowl with a 25-yard catch of an Andy Dalton loft at the gun.
"He battled on that (fourth down). The weakness in that protection is that the tight end has to go to work."
And by all accounts, All loves to work. They believe him when they say he'll play his heart out.
"He cares," says tight ends coach James Casey. "He's a Cincinnati guy. He's excited. He wants to win."
Here is what Casey finds so impressive about his block on the goal line. Not his physicality, which is immense but his presence of mind to stay with his technique.
The best defensive lineman in the game, Chris Jones, worked next to Karlaftis and Jones, failing to defeat the double team of right tackle Trent Brown and right guard Alex Cappa, tried go between Brown's right edge and All.
On Wednesday, Casey showed All how well he did when he showed him clips of tight ends around the league who overreacted on similar plays.
"The tight end often gets tied up in foot traffic, but he was able to stay strong and sturdy. He knew not to overdo it," Casey says. When guys jack those plays up, they don't understand the full play. You're anticipating this reaction from a D-End, but you've also got the tackle presence. Guys get over-antsy. If you go too far down, the guy can loop around you if your outside foot gets off the ground. You don't have to overdo it … He stayed right on his block and his feet."
All thinks one of the reasons he's picked up the offense so quickly despite coming off ACL surgery in the spring is his time at Michigan and Iowa.
"Some of the things we did at Iowa we do here, like working the back side," says All, who spent a year there after spending most of his career at Ann Arbor. "But playing in Michigan's style definitely helped."
It wasn't even supposed to be All's block. It had been assigned to vet blocker supreme Drew Sample, but he was in the locker room getting fluids.
They know All is physical enough and more than willing enough to do it, But to know when and how to do it made it that much better.
"For him to come in here, it's not an easy offense (to learn), especially the type of movement with the tight ends. He does a great job mentally," says Gesicki, the seven-year vet from Miami and New England. "He loves the physical aspect of football. You saw that out in Kansas City."
All had lowered his shoulder after a catch and bulled for a few more yards as a helmet rolled out of the pile. He finished with four catches for 32 yards, Sample had three for 28 and Gesicki used a sideline spin move to rack up 91y yards on seven catches.
"You mean the slowest spin move in NFL history?" Gesicki jokes.
Gags aside, the play reflects the talent of the tight end room, certainly the deepest in Casey's six seasons here coaching the position. Last Sunday, Bengals head coach Zac Taylor used two tight ends 31.1% of the time, the second highest in Taylor's six seasons and the most since his first one in 2019.
That comes on the heels of 29.2% in the opener, the fifth highest under Taylor. Whether that's a trend bowing to the talent of the room or a response to the absence of wide receiver Tee Higgins and the defenses's two-deep shells, there may be a better clue when Higgins returns Monday.
The Chiefs played pretty much a generic, base defense and the Bengals reacted with two tight ends (known as the 12 formation) with one of the reasons an effort to keep Kansas City's nickel defense off the field.
The Bengals love to match up their explosive weapons against a base defense and while it's hard to see teams not going to a nickel defense against Higgins and three-time Pro Bowl wide receiver Ja'Marr Chase, 12 does have its benefits.
"It gives you flexibility as an offense. There's way more things the defense has to defend," Casey says. "There's an extra gap they have to defend in the run game and there are so many schemes you can go with in 12 personnel in the run game."
Or, as Pitcher says, "It helps all sorts of ways anytime a guy that can be as equally effective in the run and pass games."
Guys like the 6-5, 255-pound All. Gesicki loves his personality and the youthful humor he brings to the room.
Late this week, they were still laughing about the play in KC where both he and Gesicki were taking the snap. It was another play where All was playing for Sample and as All was coming across the line, he saw Gesicki was still trying to block.
All yelled, "I'm here, I'm, here, you can go," and Gesicki took off into the route.
"He calls me a big kid," All says. "You can see me when I do that, I've got this big smile on my face. I just thought it was so cool that we could have that kind of communication out there on the field. It's fun."
How much fun the tight ends continue to have remains to be seen. Casey isn't so worried about the catches "That's running disciplined routes." It's the fourth-and-threes and the blocking schemes that have his attention.
"We'll get the job done Whatever the coaches want us to do, we'll do it," All says. "And we'll be pretty darn good at it."
