By now, the Cincinnati Bengals are probably tired of hearing about how good some former players are doing with new teams.
Like Joe Mixon. And Jessie Bates, who earned an All-Pro nod last year and is right on his way to doing so again this season.
But they’re not alone.
One guy who often gets lost in the conversation? Detroit Lions guard Kevin Zeitler, who as of this writing, has 90-plus PFF grades in each of his last two outings and is the overall third-highest-graded guard in the NFL.
Zeitler is an infamous, yet easy-to-overlook part of modern Bengals history. The team took him in the first round in 2012, seemingly only did so because they had two first round picks in that draft, then never made a serious push to give him an extension.
While Zeitler hasn’t been fantastic everywhere he’s been since, he’s 34 years old and still doing fantastic at a spot that is currently a problem for Joe Burrow’s offense. Really, they haven’t truly fixed it since his departure. Had Zeitler remained all this time, he’d be staring at a Ring of Honor spot.
Instead, Zeitler goes on the pile of solid guys the Bengals drafted and developed, then let get away. He’s not a Bates-level player, but he’s in that Andrew Whitworth-type mistake bracket that the team never really recovered from.
