The media crowd surrounding Hakeem Adeniji during Tuesday’s media session in the Bengals locker room indicates he’s the presumptive heir apparent in the wake of the season-ending knee injury to right tackle La’el Collins.
With Monday night’s nationally-televised Rozzi’s on the River matchup at Paycor Stadium featuring the offensive fireworks of quarterbacks Joe Burrow of the 11-4 Bengals and Josh Allen of the 12-3 Bills (8:30, Cincinnati’s Channel 9 and ESPN), the Bengals offensive line is adjusting to its first change to the starting lineup this season.
And head coach Zac Taylor says the solution at right tackle is at Paycor.
“We’ve got good people in the building that we trust,” Taylor said Tuesday of a possible foray into the market. “We’ve got guys that we’ve had in here, developing, working in our system that we’ve got a high degree of trust in that can help us do the things that we need to do this year.”
Adeniji, as he has all season as the swing tackle, filled in capably for Collins in the final 64 plays of Saturday’s win in New England. Taylor said, “We haven’t made any determinations about any of the roles that anyone is going to play for us this game,” but Adeniji is certainly used to fireworks. He started the last 13 games of last season at right guard. Four of those games were in the playoffs. The last one was in Super Bowl LVI, where he and his line had a very public bruising battle with a Hall of Fame exhibit named Aaron Donald in the Rams’ last-minute win.
But Adeniji, who went through Kansas in three years to get a degree with a better than a 3.0, isn’t one to shy away. While there are some players who haven’t been able to bear re-watching such a game so close and so near for something so great, Adeniji says he watches it all the time.
“It took a while at first,” Adeniji said. “Like I said, the biggest growing moments in life come from your perceived biggest failures or however you want to say it. Just watching that, watching what I did, going…
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