If last Sunday's opener is the dawning of the Age of Amarius, then Sunday's game in Houston (1 p.m.-Cincinnati’s Local 12) is getting on to high noon as Bengals right tackle Amarius Mims and his offensive line show down with a starry NFL constellation.

But then, the Bengals and the numbers tell you that as he begins his third season, he's pretty elite himself.

"By the end of the season," says center Ted Karras, "I predict he's RT1 in the league."

Against the Bucs, the numbers say, his man didn't breathe on quarterback Joe Burrow on 38 pass sets. And then there's that joyous 6-8, 350-pound eclipse of the Bucs edge in the secondary.

"A transportation play," is what right guard Dalton Risner calls it, and Mims Moving and Storage picked up the first down racing downhill in space.

"He's a fast, athletic, huge human being," Risner said. "He's doubled down trying to get better. He's doubled down being coachable. He's doubled down on getting to know the guys around him, doubling down on his strengths and weaknesses and understanding he's got a high ceiling."

That ceiling is what offensive line coach Scott Peters has been pointing to these last two seasons, and he senses Mims is now realizing he can get there without a ladder. Moments like that transportation play.

"It's hard for you to really collectively understand in your mind how good you could be, and it was us reinforcing that with him," Peters says. "But he saw it along the way, and he started to take it. 'I like that. That was fun. Let me do a little bit more.'  And his desire to be a great player is the big thing driving it."

That's what Peters saw even before he came to the Bengals. As the O-line coach for the Patriots, Peters spent plenty of time meeting with Mims before that 2024 draft. All you could do was meet him. He was still a little banged up and wasn't working out. And it's not like you could watch a lot of tape on him because there were just 803 snaps at Georgia over three years.

So when you went to Athens in the spring of '24, you had to talk to Mims, and Peters was sold.

"I loved him," Peters says. "The thing that he had going against him really was the lack of game experience. He didn't play a lot of games in college, so you don't really know what you're getting.

"But for me, I really liked the kid. He's smart. He's got a great personality and demeanor. I liked everything about him. The attributes. It's kind of almost more becoming the norm now. You're just projecting how a player is going to become in the draft. I think the Bengals really nailed that pick. Obviously, with Mims, because there's just nobody like him out there that has all those traits, and when you have the character and the intelligence that he does, that's a home run if he gets a chance to play healthy and get that experience."

The character Peters saw is what the Bengals have seen from Mims, starting from that first day after the draft when he came to Paycor Stadium with his parents. Back in Georgia, his high school line coach and offensive coordinator, Ryan McKenzie , was recalling that day a 6-4, 270-pound eighth-grader he had taken to a recent practice. The kid was looking at images of Mims on his phone.

"Do you know who that is?" McKenize asked, and the kid said, " 'He goes to Georgia, and I want to be just like him.'

"So I called Amarius and put him on and the kid almost started crying," McKenzie told Bengals.com in April of 2024. "Amarius spent a lot of time talking to him. That's the kind of guy he is. It's never about him. It's about his teammates, his family, friends. Character off the roof."

Peters is the Hands Guy who brought martial arts into the Bengals offensive line room when he arrived in 2025. If you take last Sunday's opener and the last half of last year, he's had a big hand in the group's most effective stretch in years.

Peters says Mims' improvement in how he uses his hands during this past offseason has been a big factor in his development. Which is interesting because he sees one of Sunday's pass rushers that Mims is to face, Danielle Hunter, as the edge defender who uses his hands the best in the NFL.

What Peters calls hands that are "Black Belt," good have served Hunter well through a dozen seasons and 114.5 sacks, sixth most on the active list.

"You have to counter the hand moves," Peters says. "We've made that a big point this year. Point of emphasis because he's got long arms. He's got 36-inch plus arms, and last year he wasn't initially using his hands as much. But he was still blocking guys.

"That's such a huge element of what we teach is playing long. Using the length to get separation on the edge. You can buy width on the edge there, and he was blocking people with his mass and his movement skills, but he wasn't utilizing length, which is critically important. Some guys don't have all the things he has, and they just use their length, and they're effective. He's looking to get on all cylinders all the time."

Take a timeout and look at what the Bengals' first-round picks of 2023 and 2024 did in the opener. Myles Murphy, the Clemson edge who set the opener's tone with his early pressures, worked daily against Mims in training camp and believes he's one of the best he's faced.

"All-Pro caliber type of tackle," Murphy says. "Not many tackles have that physique and size. His technique makes him one of the top guys in the league, in my opinion."

Pure mass. But what's under it is what is so challenging, Murphy says.

"Most guys who are really big and strong have slow feet," Murphy says. "That's not the case with him. He's got quick, good feet and a high IQ of where the quarterback is in the pocket. It turns into a chess match."

Murphy noticed how far Mims has come with his hands in training camp and how it's made him more dangerous.

"It's more so he's not doing the same," Murphy says. "Like striking two hands the whole time. He's got two-hand strikes, one-hand strikes, low, high. I feel like he's been switching it up. As a rusher, you're not 100% sure what you're going to get going against him."

Peters says Mims has to use that length and those hands against not only Hunter, but the monstrous Will Anderson Jr.

"He's got elite power. He's got an elite motor. He's really twitchy. He's powerful," Peters says. He's got legitimate power that he can run through guards. He can run through centers. He can run through tackles. Everything that he does is through people.

"(But) he's got the power, the juice that he's always had, and he's added some things with his hands."

Left tackle Orlando Brown Jr., the vet 6-8, 350-pounder who has gifted Mims with his Big Man experience, keeps going back to last Sunday's tape and how Mims handled Bucs first-round pick Reuben Bain Jr.

(The Bengals performance, by the way, in the first round of the 2020s is starting to look prodigious, starting with Joe Burrow through Dexter Lawrence II with Mims, Murphy, Dax Hill and Ja’Marr Chase far from throw ins.)

"I think (Bain) is a guy who is going to have a good rookie year," Brown says. "The thing with Mims is he's overwhelming people with his size. His overwhelming physicality."

It was Brown who right away urged Mims to "play big," and that was so nice to hear from someone that big. Mims had never been on a team where he wasn't the biggest guy.

"But he's athletic enough to play small," Brown says of Mims' ability to mirror, "and by that I mean pass protecting in space. To be able to go out and push a guy 10, 15 yards downfield. It's what makes Mims Mims."

The Age of Amarius moves into the next phase.