- 22 hours ago
It appears the hype around Rueben Bain has fallen off quite a bit.
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00:00On the fan.
00:01The NFL draft is a week from Thursday.
00:04That is nine days away.
00:07Commanders on the clock at seven in round one,
00:1071 in round three,
00:11and then again, the rest of the draft starting in round five.
00:15It is time to count down to Pittsburgh
00:17and Thursday night's NFL draft just over a week away.
00:41Draft Day is such an underrated movie, by the way.
00:44I just hear Kevin Costner wheeling and dealing in there.
00:46All my picks back, all of them.
00:48What was his name?
00:48Sonny Weaver.
00:49Sonny Weaver.
00:50So the subplot of the family weirdness
00:54and then we have to go drop this guy's ashes out on the facility,
00:58I could have done without that part of it.
01:00Totally unnecessary.
01:01Just gets in the way.
01:02The fast-talking GM, Dennis Lurie's the coach.
01:06He's pissed off.
01:07Wait, we're doing what?
01:07I don't like Bo Callahan.
01:09No one came to his birthday party.
01:10I want my picks back.
01:11There's signs outside the Seahawks GM's door.
01:14Everything about it is good, except for the weird family subplot.
01:17If they just snipped that out of there, it would be a much better movie.
01:23Really, really good flick.
01:24I'm definitely watching it next week leading up to the draft.
01:27It's become a staple for me.
01:28Normally start streaming.
01:30One of the apps will throw it in the rotation on the main page.
01:33It'll splash page activity there.
01:35I'll check it out for the NFL draft.
01:37So I wanted to talk Reuben Bain with you, Danny.
01:40This is what Johnny Cakes-Auville of Junkies fame just had to say.
01:43He is basically taking Reuben Bain off of his board.
01:47I now have Reuben Bain on my FUBAR list.
01:50He is undraftable.
01:51I don't care how great of a pass rusher he is.
01:54He's got short, stubby arms.
01:56And then the news comes out that he's been involved in two traffic altercations,
02:00one of which cost a woman her life.
02:02He is right on the FUBAR list, at least on the FUBAR list for being drafted in the first round,
02:07in my opinion, with such a high pick.
02:10So the Reuben Bain backstory here.
02:13A lot of talk about the arm length.
02:16He was moving down the board because he didn't have long enough arms at the time of the combine.
02:21I think that full ended.
02:24And then, as people dug in and just went back to watching the tape and the highlights and the sizzle
02:31reels,
02:31you go, are we sure we care that much about the arm length?
02:35Now, by the way, I talk to really smart football people all the time.
02:38And they tell you this is very important.
02:41People who blocked edge defenders, like Logan Paulson, love blocking guys that don't have that length
02:48to grab you by the chest plate and keep you off of them.
02:51Players who play the defensive line.
02:54Really, really good pass rushers in the NFL.
02:57Gerald McCoy, I heard, opining and monologuing about this, basically saying his arms are a big problem.
03:04You can't play that position in this league if you can't use your hands and engage, basically.
03:08So I'll defer to the experts on that.
03:11I'm never going to, based on an inch or two here or there on arms or hand size or whatever,
03:16completely wash away a college career.
03:19The guy was unbelievable in some huge games, including in the playoffs this year.
03:23My issue with Reuben Bain in terms of the football part of it was always,
03:27I look at him and I see a D tackle.
03:29I guess part of that's the arms, but it's the body.
03:31It's the build.
03:32I see a guy that's probably inside more than outside.
03:34I think Mesidor at Miami will be the better NFL pass rusher.
03:38Maybe I'll be wrong, cold takes exposed me, just one boy's opinion.
03:41But the point of the dude's story is, I have not had him high on my board,
03:45whatever board that is, anyway.
03:47I like Styles and Love and Tate and the edges, Bailey and Reese,
03:53all the guys we talk about constantly more than I like Reuben Bain.
03:56But that having been said, nobody, except for the teams and apparently the insiders
04:01who just chose not to share it, which is another weird angle of this,
04:03knew until this weekend that Reuben Bain was driving a car with passengers on I-95 in 2024,
04:11hit another vehicle at a high rate of speed, driving recklessly, allegedly,
04:14that led to a crash and caused a fatality, an injury to Destiny Betts,
04:19who was a 22-year-old girl who was with him and his teammates traveling on 95 during spring break.
04:25Bain was cited for careless driving.
04:27The charge was dismissed before she died while she was in a coma.
04:30And you and I talked about this very quickly yesterday for a segment
04:33and just the idea that it probably is not going to hurt him very much that this comes out now
04:39because teams have known about this for an extended period of time.
04:42Now, I want to preface everything by saying our football conversation,
04:45our little sports show, is trivial in the grand scheme of the fact
04:48that this young lady, Destiny Betts, this young woman's life,
04:52ended at 22 years old in absolute tragedy and an awful thing.
04:55That is so much more important than where he gets drafted.
04:58We're just doing our little sports show.
05:00But having said that and gotten that out of the way,
05:02I do want to say, Danny, that I think it's true that the teams have known this all along,
05:07so nothing's going to change in terms of whether or not he's draftable
05:10or he's not getting moved down the board now because teams found out about this.
05:14But they may have started him lower on their board than we knew.
05:17None of us knew this was a thing.
05:19So we're looking at the tape.
05:20Looking at this hyper-productive player, national championship game.
05:23We're looking at the arm length as maybe a reason he goes down the board.
05:25What if he's 23rd on someone's board instead of 9th?
05:29And the reason is they got these red flags on him that we didn't even know existed.
05:32So that's where I think we have to recalibrate.
05:34Everybody is assuming the question is,
05:37are teams going to move him down their board now?
05:39And everyone's saying, no, they already knew.
05:41But he started lower on boards, I bet you, than we thought.
05:44This is why on some of these mocks with the plugged-in guys,
05:48you see him going 15, 17, 19 maybe.
05:50I saw him on a mock draft like a week and a half ago.
05:52I can't remember if it was Kuyper or Jeremiah or McShay or who had it.
05:56But he had Reuben Bain like in the mid-teens.
05:58And I'm thinking, there's no way in hell Reuben Bain is going way outside of the top 10.
06:03I think there's a better chance he goes in the top 5 than outside of the top 15.
06:08But maybe when they talk to these teams and they're like, where do you have Bain?
06:12He's our fifth favorite, sixth favorite defensive lineman.
06:15They're just baking that in, but nobody's known why.
06:18Right.
06:18And there could also be a million reasons.
06:19One could be the positional thing that you mentioned,
06:21where some people go, well, that's not what an edge rusher looks like.
06:23It just isn't.
06:25Somebody could say, we don't love him at our scheme.
06:28Our 4-3 defensive tackles don't look like this.
06:31Our 3-4 guys maybe do, but we're not going to draft an interior 3-4 guy at 8 overall.
06:35I mean, I'm making all that up, but there could be a million reasons.
06:38This is a tough read.
06:39So, let me move the off-field stuff to the side for a second.
06:43I will absolutely get there.
06:44These are the kinds of guys I would always be wrong about.
06:47I would always take more of a chance on.
06:49Again, off-field to the side for a second.
06:51The hyper-productive, there's no...
06:56Watching him play, you go, immediately, you see him beating whoever's in front of him,
07:01wreaking havoc in the national championship game.
07:02I think it was the three tackles for loss, a quarterback sack, he's in the backfield, every other play.
07:09He's always had the short arms.
07:10It's not a new thing where his arms got shorter and he has to adjust to it.
07:13He's always played with them.
07:14He might be facing longer tackles.
07:16Sort of the true.
07:17It's going to be hard.
07:18This sport, and every sport, is filled with people that have broken paradigms.
07:22Where it used to be X, and now it's like, oh, it's not a big deal.
07:25I remember John Randall when I was a kid.
07:27They go, he's not really an offensive tackle.
07:29Actually, he's a Hall of Famer.
07:29He's incredible at it.
07:30Now you have to run a certain scheme a certain way, because he's not the 400-pound smart car,
07:35but he's really, really good, so you figure it out.
07:37So in the interest of time, though, just to hit fast forward,
07:39we've been talking about Ruben Bain without knowing this off-field information for months,
07:43and we've had the same conversation, arm length, what is he, what isn't he.
07:46The new development here is the part you put to the side,
07:49which is that in 2024, on March 17th, he's 19 years old, he's driving this vehicle, there's a death.
07:55The teams have known about this.
07:56By the way, the weirdest thing is, all the insiders come out and go,
07:59Yeah, we knew it.
08:00Yeah, we knew it.
08:01Yeah, we knew that.
08:01Well, this was already out there, guys.
08:02Everyone knew about this.
08:05You just chose, I guess, that we didn't deserve to know about it?
08:07Like, you don't think that the people that follow this thing and invest in this thing
08:12would want to know about it?
08:13I mean, I get that there are times where you have to make the decision
08:16as to whether or not you're going to report on something.
08:18When I covered the Redskins, this happened to me constantly.
08:21There were these little things that would happen, a fight in the locker room,
08:24an offensive lineman getting into it with a trainer and knocking him to the ground,
08:28whatever it might be at any given moment, and you hear these stories and you do your
08:32reporting and you do your digging and you go,
08:34This would be bad for these people if it got out.
08:37Is it important to the public?
08:39Is it important to the fans for the betterment of them going and buying their tickets
08:42and watching the team?
08:43Should I report on this?
08:44As far as the draft goes, when everyone's predicting who goes where
08:49and talking about who's going to end up where, that's a pretty important omission, I would say.
08:53I think it's 100%.
08:54And it's very irritating, quite frankly, to me in the public.
08:58We find out about every DUI.
08:59This guy got in trouble for weed when he was 16 years old.
09:02There was a death.
09:04And people knew this and just decided, I'm not going to tell you.
09:07Well, it sounds like the kid in class that when Grant gets called on,
09:10they go, Grant, what's five times five?
09:13I was going to say 25.
09:14I was going to say 25.
09:15I knew the answer also.
09:16Congratulations for also knowing it.
09:18And it's incredibly irritating and condescending.
09:20So stop gatekeeping and actually share the info.
09:22Do your job.
09:22I know you weren't fed by an agent, but maybe you could actually do some reporting.
09:25But here's what I care about with the incident.
09:28It's not to say I don't care about that first incident.
09:30Of course I do.
09:31I'm a human being.
09:32It's awful.
09:34I need to know now, how did you handle it?
09:38How are you processing it?
09:39What's going to be different going forward?
09:41There's two sentences in the report that we read yesterday that I care about above all else here.
09:45So this is from a leaked source.
09:46Again, I don't know what's true.
09:47What's not?
09:48This needs to come out, though.
09:49It feels like it could be Larry Mutantz all over again, a leaked source told Read Optional.
09:53This is from Read Optional, the story.
09:54It doesn't feel like Bain has been transparent with us.
09:57We are concerned about multiple incidents, another team executive said.
10:01We are waiting for the other shoe.
10:02If there are no lessons learned from the first thing, he's off my board entirely.
10:07The multiple incidents worries me.
10:10That's what I care about.
10:11What are they talking about?
10:12Now, I know there was a second traffic incident in 2025.
10:16I don't know if that's what they are referencing there.
10:19That second incident.
10:21So that is March of 24 to October 2025.
10:24You're talking about what is what?
10:2616, 17 months later.
10:27Something like that.
10:28Now, if you didn't come to a complete stop or you failed the signal, okay, whatever.
10:33But it was another careless driving citation.
10:35It was also dismissed for defective citation.
10:37I guess, I don't know, the cop wrote something down wrong or however you get out of that.
10:41You probably got a decent lawyer and a technicality and you're out of it.
10:44That's fine.
10:45But to that point, Danny, he's 19.
10:48He made a horrendous mistake.
10:50Horrendous mistake.
10:51He's got to live with that forever.
10:53I'm sure you beat yourself up every morning when you look into the mirror and you think about it more
10:58days than you don't that destiny bets is no longer alive because of a mistake you made when you're 19.
11:02And that is awful.
11:03And I have great empathy for him and I feel for the family more than anything else, right?
11:08But while you should not be judged maybe by the worst mistake you ever make at 19 years old, I
11:13firmly believe that.
11:15You have to learn from it.
11:16And for him to have had another incident where he was driving carelessly, can you imagine?
11:22If someone died based on you driving, wouldn't you never, ever, ever, ever, certainly for the next two years maybe,
11:29you might want to lay low for a little while.
11:30Yeah.
11:31Like, let's, I don't know, not text and drive or whatever the thing is that you were doing.
11:35He had the same citation the following year.
11:39So that starts to get into maturity and learning your lesson and some of those things.
11:44But is that the other incident that this person's talking about?
11:47Is there another thing out there that maybe the teams know and the insiders know that they're not sharing?
11:52That's what I would need to know in terms to make my evaluation.
11:55If it's, again, if it's a, hey, you got a second traffic thing in two years and it's minor and
12:00it was, it was, you know, just the way the citation reads or whatever the letter of the law reads.
12:04Yeah, he was going 18 miles an hour or more above the speed limit in a 55.
12:09Okay.
12:10Yeah, you were 73 in a 45 and there was a cop and it was a trap and a whatever
12:14in a two-lane road in a weird county.
12:15And that's enough over that it's careless.
12:17Okay.
12:17I mean, I got one coming home at the middle of the night on St. Patrick's Day and when it
12:21went from 65 to 55, I didn't notice.
12:23And so you got to appear before the judge, reckless driving.
12:25Oh my God.
12:26Right?
12:27That's the thing.
12:28I remember just a few weeks ago when I forgot I was supposed to have my hearing that morning and
12:32I didn't.
12:33And I was like, oh, and you were wanting it.
12:34And I wanted it.
12:34There's a bench warrant for your arrest.
12:36Yeah.
12:36It wasn't actually, but that was my fear.
12:38I had to call Orange, Virginia and I was like, what the heck's going on?
12:41Are you guys looking for me?
12:42Do I have to come turn myself in and go to jail?
12:44They're like, you'll be fine.
12:45Just pay the fine.
12:46But I was, it was a crazy, it sounds insane, like how many over I was doing, but it was
12:51literally like a 45.
12:52I'm riding with traffic.
12:54We're all coming through this little area where it drops down twice in the span of like 300 yards.
12:59And I said to the cop, I'm like, what?
13:01I was doing that much?
13:02He's like, eh, don't worry.
13:03Everyone kind of comes through here at that speed.
13:05That's why we sit here.
13:06You know, one of those kinds of things.
13:07But it looks terrible.
13:09You could probably use the same words they use for Reuben Bain, I suppose, to your point.
13:13So that is the question is, first, do you think that this will hurt him?
13:19Again, will his draft stock be hindered by these two transgressions on the road, including the very, very serious incident
13:27from when he was 19 years old in 2024, when this young lady tragically died?
13:35800-636-1067, if you think this is going to affect him.
13:38And then the other question is, if you're a team, what do you need to know?
13:42And would this change how you feel about this player at all?
13:45Yes or no?
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