Erick All Jr., the Bengals tight end with the steel-trap mindset and matching trap blocks of steel, is explaining how he kept it together last season with no football.

It's a short story. A Cincinnati Kids story.

"I'm not very social," All says. "The only people I hang out with are pretty much some of the guys I've known since kindergarten and family members."

He talks to those guys every day. Keonta Sowell. Darion Brown. Still best friends. Hangs with them on weekends. All three fathers coached them on the Little Blue Pee Wee team in Hamilton, from four years old to middle school. A few doors down from Paycor Stadium and 20 years away that now seem to be back on the doorstep.

"Houston gets after it," says All of his three-year-old son. "As soon as I get home, he wants to tackle me and play football."

It seems physicality runs in the family.

"With the word physical in the dictionary is a picture of Erick All," said Bengals head coach Zac Taylor this week after one of the OTAs. "Trying to put his face through somebody's soul."

Taylor's playbook found a soulmate in All's versatility for nine brief games during All's rookie year of 2024, before his right knee buckled with a torn ACL. The damage from a previous ACL tear the year before in his final college game was so severe that they needed a year to rebuild the new tear with strength and stability.

All worked 41% of the plays before he got hurt in 2024, hugely impactful snaps because his skill set allowed Taylor to break out his offense in new and different ways.

(This is why when, upon his return this week, Ja’Marr Chase saw All head out to the practice field, and he said almost to himself, "Good to have him back.")

In All's career-high 40 snaps, the Bengals bulled for 141yards rushing as they put up 34 points in Carolina. Ten days later he played 35 more in a Joe Burrow aerial show that posted 442 total yards. Taylor's ability to mix three-receiver sets with two tight ends featuring All's ferocious blocking and timely YAC had teams guessing run or pass, and now has the pundits wondering what might be in 2026.

A season he has so far willed into reality.

"He loves football. He kind of keeps himself going. He sleeps, breathes football. He loves working out. That's what he says when he wakes up. 'I want to go work out. I want to get bigger,' " Keonta Sowell says.

"I never saw him depressed (last year) or sad. 'I can't wait to be back. I can't wait to get back and hit somebody.' He's trying to make a statement this year."

The statement has no room for wondering what happens if the knee buckles again. His buddies don't ever remember him musing about being able to ever play again. The only thing on his mind is what body he's going to buckle.

"He'd say, 'I can't wait to get back out there and trap somebody," Darion Brown says. "He's mentally tough. He's a different breed."

The Little Blue fraternity has stayed true through the kaleidoscope of years. Sowell lives in Hamilton and is studying cybersecurity at Miami University. Brown is an independent trucker who lives in Cincinnati. If you want to know where that physicality came from and that mental edge that wears down doubt to dust, you've got to jump in Erick All Sr.'s semi and catch a fifth-grade Little Blue practice.

"This is the story," says Darion Brown of the day the coaches were trying to get their guys to tackle and nobody could or would take on All in a series of one-on-one drills.

"He's playing running back going against our line and he's literally trucking them," Brown says. "The parents are arguing. 'Why y'all doing that?' You know what our coaches said? 'We aren't tackling right. We're going to keep running him again.' He'd run them over again. 'Run it again.' He'd run them over again. 'Next person.' He'd run them over. At practice, nobody tackled him. The biggest player on the team, Erick ran his ass over."

All says the edge came to a point then. If you want to see his own soul, it's a little blue.

"My dad for sure, but it was pretty much the motto of our team," All says. "When we were four, five, six.

"Anytime there'd be a loud hit, or somebody would run somebody over, or make a good block, or whatever it is, the coaches, dads, the parents, they praised us. You're running the ball or hitting somebody on defense. That's all you had to look forward to … That's all we would talk about, even when we weren't playing football … Everybody hit. Not just me. That's the way it was. That day, I was just lucky to be the running back."

Sowell saw the same fire last year when the Bengals were on the road. All's routine was meeting Sowell and Brown in downtown Cincinnati to watch the game. E and O Kitchen was a spot.

"Focused. Dissecting certain plays. If somebody on the other team made a mistake, it was like he was coaching himself," says Sowell, the kid who handed All the phone when he escaped the draft to the Fairfield High School weight room, and Taylor called to tell him he was a Bengal.

"He's always trying to better himself. He seriously studies the game, He's got the drills on his phone, and you'll see him watch footwork."

The guys from Little Blue got him through the last year he didn't have football since he knew them.

"It's like being my teammates. It's a brotherhood," All says. "When you've been friends for that long with guys like Darion and Keonta, those guys have done nothing but keep things positive and look out for me and my family. When you have friends like that, that's all you can ask for."

The one thing he had during the rehab, time, he split between the family, his buddies, and the weight room, except for the month he trained in Tampa.

There was enough time to plan a new business he'll own and run with his dad, an independent trucking firm. Another son, August, joined Houston a little more than a year ago, just about the time All was coming to grips with no football in 2025. A nice timing route.

"It might sound cliché," All says. "The amount of love you have when you have kids, you just want to be there to provide and create the best life possible for them."

It turns out that Houston, a life changer, helped his dad, along with his dad's lifelong buddies, get after it, too, when it could have been a lost year.

"I hold my hands up to give him a hug," says All of the best hit he ever got. "He's getting so big, he'll grab my hands and just pull them down and just drop so I can swing him around. He's getting too big."