With the Cincinnati Bengals desperate to get the No. 10 pick off the board next Thursday, one would think they couldn’t take a risk as big as taking Tennessee cornerback Jermaine McCoy in the first round.
McCoy missed the entire 2025 season with a torn ACL. After what happened with Seamus Stewart in 2025, not to mention Cedric Ogbuye and John Ross becoming busts after tearing their ACLs in college, the Bengals can’t risk drafting McCoy at No. 10, right?
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As if the stakes weren’t high enough, we now have a report on potential issues with McCoy’s knee ahead of next week’s draft.
Tony Pauline of Essentials Sports wrote the following about McCoy:
“I’m told red flags were raised after the team believed McCoy had a degenerative condition in his knee. But, of course, since there is no central body to manage physical conditions, each team’s medical opinion differs.”
Now, the Bengals drafted Ja’Marr Chase, who didn’t play in 2020 after opting out as COVID-19 severely impacted the college football season. But that’s different. Chase is healthy. He just doesn’t want COVID-19 to cast a dark cloud over the entire country. The choice turned out to be great.
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This is different. We’re talking about a player with a torn ACL. The Bengals have drafted players like this before, and most of them have been terrible.
The devastating injuries a player can suffer. McCoy could be a great player, which is great for him. But there’s too much uncertainty and too much risk with the Bengals drafting him. If they even made the playoffs with a good defense in two of the past three seasons, they would have reason to believe, at least from my perspective, that they would take a chance on him.
The Bengals are not in this position. They need a proven, injury-free player.
