On Friday, head coach Marvin Lewis held a pre-draft press conference which peaked Joe Reedy's interest for what the team plans on doing before next weekend's NFL Draft.
When asked about the tight end situation, Lewis said he thinks there will be some questions about that answered before Thursday’s first round, which means you can officially ramp up the speculation about the team possibly having discussions about trading for Tony Scheffler.
The speculation is coming from Reedy, but with good reason. The Denver Broncos are reportedly looking for a team to surrender a third-round draft pick in exchange for tight end Tony Scheffler. Cincinnati owns two third-round draft picks and two fourth-round draft picks; a consolidation from Denver if they can't secure a third-round pick. However, as Reedy notes, Lewis could be referring to ongoing contract negotiations with Reggie Kelly. During Geoff Hobson's posting regarding the press conference, he doesn't refer to Scheffler at all. However, Hobson did allude that the team could address the position before the draft.
With the Bengals still interested in re-signing veteran tight end Reggie Kelly, Lewis said some of the position’s needs could be addressed prior to the draft, but “we don’t need to panic in any way.”
Again, that could mean a range of things.
More interestingly is Lewis' take on Chase Coffman, which more or less confirms our suspicion that the tight end was considered more of a project his rookie year.
“We feel good about Chase. We addressed some of his physical needs and improve him physically over the last season. We knew there was a chance there could be a redshirt year for him and eventually that was the way it worked out and that was a good thing. I know there have been some good players who didn’t play their first year and they turned out to be All Pro players by the end of third year. They learned the right way, the earned the spot and they were mentored correctly.”