Best Seventh Round Draft Picks During Marvin Lewis Era: Number Five - Ethan Kilmer

We are currently ranking the best players based on the round that they were drafted during the Marvin Lewis era. We've finished the first two rounds. Now we're finishing with the seventh round first.

Really? Ethan Kilmer? It's not like Freddie Brown, Angelo Craig, Mario Urrutia or Casey Bramlet deserve mention, considering they've never played a down with the Bengals. The truth is Ethan Kilmer made the list for two reasons. There's hardly any seventh rounders that the Bengals selected that made the team, much less significant playing time. He scored a defensive touchdown in a regular season game.

With the 209th overall selection in the 2006 NFL Draft, the Cincinnati Bengals selected Penn State wide receiver Ethan Kilmer. He was the first of two seventh rounders selected by the team that year; LSU wide receiver Bennie Brazell, who spent his rookie season on injured reserve and waived before the 2007 season, being the other.

While he was a productive special teams player -- he had 19 total tackles playing all 16 games in 2006 --Kilmer primarily worked as a safety. He intercepted a Drew Brees pass and returned it 52 yards for a touchdown, giving the Bengals a 31-10 lead with just over six minutes left in the game.

Kilmer would spend most of 2007 on IR and was released with an injury settlement in October 2008 after suffering a preseason thigh injury. Kilmer signed with the Dolphins in January 2009, but left the team several months later. He's now out of football.

And the most interesting note in all of this beside the fact I just made you read an entire post on Ethan Kilmer? I learned that Bennie Brazell was at one point on the USA Rugby Sevens squad.