While hammers and drills continued to put Paycor Stadium through its biggest facelift ever, ownership on Monday expressed optimism about its team's own roster renovation that poured most of its $300 million NFL-leading offseason into a new-look defense.
"I feel good about the roster. I mean, it's hard to ask for much more," said Bengals executive vice president Kaite Blackburn. "Because I think we're pretty solid.
"I think our offensive line, which sometimes was a spot of focus, we sort of built up a lot more stability there. We have great wide receivers, really solid tight ends, running back, there's not a glaring issue … Obviously, we worked to get some more pieces in place on the defense, and I really like our offense. Hopefully, they'll both come out strong, start strong, finish strong, and be strong in between. Then it'd be a fun season."
With the Bengals set to end the offseason this week with a mandatory minicamp, Blackburn met a group Bengals beat reporters and was joined by daughter Elizabeth Blackburn. Elizabeth Blackburn, along with sister Caroline, have exchanged titles for "vice president."
"It's more so we just work cross-functionally with so many of our amazing team members here," said Elizabeth Blackburn, who was the director of strategy and engagement. "It's kind of hard to find the right title in one area because we like to work very collaboratively."
With the centerpiece of the moves the trade for three-time Giants Pro Bowl defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence II during the week of the draft, it was collaboration that the Blackburns pointed to that drove the busy offseason with director of player personnel Duke Tobin and his staff.
"It's really just been a team effort of taking input from Duke, and our other personnel team. They worked really hard to come up with some pretty good thoughts for the offseason and then we tried to implement them," Katie Blackburn said. "We were obviously looking to make some improvements on the defense and had been looking at some different things through the offseason. Obviously, we were extremely happy to have added Jonathan Allen, (Boye) Mafe, but defensive tackle was a spot we kept talking about a lot."
After securing a Paycor lease with Hamilton County last summer that has spawned the wall-to-wall renovations, Katie Blackburn said the construction has added energy to the building.
"It's pretty neat that we can pair a positive, productive offseason that we feel should translate onto the football field with a lot of upgrades for our fans to just enhance their game day experience in the stadium," Elizabeth Blackburn said.
The pair says continuity is a reason the club stuck with the team of Tobin and head coach Zac Taylor.
"I think both Zac and Duke are experienced guys with proven success and really good people. We feel good about them for a lot of reasons," Katie Blackburn said. "I think there's also that element of consistency that hopefully will prove out to be beneficial, too. I think those are the things that we would rather try to take advantage of and build on rather than having to regroup and figure things out a little bit from scratch. We think they deserve another opportunity to prove that we can do what we hope we can do."
