John Sheeran recaps Germaine Pratt's release from the Cincinnati Bengals and discusses why it took the team till June to do it.
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00:00The Bengals finally made a roster move that was four months in the making and it has everyone
00:03asking the same question about it. So in this video, I'm going to give you the answer that
00:07the team itself will not admit. Hi again, Bengals fans. John Sheeran of A to Z Sports Cincinnati
00:15here and Jermaine Pratt has finally been released by the Cincinnati Bengals four months after he
00:20first requested a trade-off of the team. Now, I don't have to explain this move to any one of you
00:24guys. This has been a long time in the making, quite frankly, a little too long in the making,
00:28we'll get to that in a second. But Jermaine Pratt has been a quality player for the majority
00:33of his six years in Cincinnati, spending most of those six years as a starter. He was the first
00:37draft pick spent on the defensive side of the ball in the Zach Taylor era back in 2019. And once he
00:43became an established starter and the rest of the defense formed around him in 2021, we saw the
00:47good parts of Pratt as a player. And he was good enough in that season. And in 2022, he made so
00:52many game-defining and game-winning plays in those two years that he earned a second contract worth
00:58$20 million in 2023. But what happened to Pratt, and this is definitely not exclusive to him,
01:02we see it all over the league, he got older and older and his abilities just started to decline.
01:06And this was definitely noticeable in the 2023 and 2024 seasons. We all knew this release was coming.
01:12He was just not the same player that he was when he signed that second contract back in 2023.
01:16And when the team moved on from Manorumo, even if they did hire Pratt's former linebacker coach
01:20and Al Golden, we did kind of sense that the change in guard and the change in leadership for the
01:24entire defensive side of the ball, it did mean the end of Pratt's time here in Cincinnati.
01:28But the question on everyone's mind about this release is why did it take so long? The simplest
01:32answer is the Bengals really wanted to trade Pratt and just held onto him for the longest period of
01:37time that they felt comfortable doing so. And in defense of the Bengals here for a quick second,
01:41this is exactly what the Green Bay Packers just did with cornerback Jair Alexander. Now,
01:45Alexander is a much better player and a much more notable name, so it's fair to say that his
01:49trade market was actually more robust compared to the trade market for Jermaine Pratt. But the
01:53Packers were very likely to move on from Alexander or at the very least have him take a pay cut,
01:58which he denied. And just a day before mandatory minicamp began for the Packers, in which Alexander
02:02would have had to show up in order for him to avoid being fined, the Packers just went ahead
02:06and released him. And this was the exact same timeline that we just saw with the Bengals and
02:09Pratt. Because Pratt obviously didn't show up to voluntary workouts, he didn't show up to OTAs,
02:13he knew he wasn't going to be on the team for much longer, and the team knew it as well. So instead of
02:16keeping him around during the week of mandatory minicamp, in which, again, he would have been required to show up,
02:20the Bengals just let him go. Which is definitely better compared to the alternative, in which they could
02:24have kept him on the roster throughout the entire offseason in case some team wanted to trade away
02:28like a seventh-round pick for him. But if it hadn't happened by now in June, it probably wasn't going
02:32to happen in August. So it is better for the team to release in three months before the season begins,
02:36as opposed to maybe three days before the season begins. But again, this probably should have happened
02:40weeks, if not months, prior to this. The Bengals had no issue releasing both Alex Kappa and Sheldon
02:45Rankins before free agency started, and both of those guys landed on their feet in that month.
02:48And maybe by the time that this video is posted, Pratt ended up signing with the Indianapolis Colts
02:52and reunited with Inarumo, or he signed with any other team that needs a linebacker. I don't know.
02:56But if that's not the case, he's kind of out in limbo here, late in the offseason, just hoping that
03:00another team calls him. Long past free agency, when linebackers were making a lot more money than I think
03:04the Bengals were expecting on the opening market. Long past the NFL draft, and a lot of teams found
03:08younger linebackers than him. It's just not ideal for players to get released at this point in the offseason.
03:12And for a guy like Pratt, who had such a successful career, and had so many defining moments with the
03:16Bengals, you would have expected him to be treated a little bit better than this. But it was really
03:20funny when the Packers released Alexander, because I was thinking to myself, why in the world haven't
03:23the Bengals done this with Pratt? This gives them basically no excuse to keep holding on to him,
03:27and then a couple hours later, they released him. So yes, it absolutely should have happened earlier,
03:31but at least it didn't happen during this week, where they could have even fined him for not showing
03:34up to minicamp. At the end of the day, the Jermaine Pratt era in Cincinnati is over, and every single
03:39captain of the Bengals defense from last year is now off the team. All that's left for the Bengals to do
03:43is just figure out the contracts of both Shamar Stewart and Trey Hendrickson, and then they can
03:47officially move past every single problem that they've faced this offseason. But in typical Bengals
03:51fashion, we might have to wait a little bit longer than we should.