Duke Tobin Details Benefits of Extra Scouting Help Bengals Are Receiving This Offseason

INDIANAPOLIS – Long under fire for the size of their player personnel department, the Cincinnati Bengals hired three new people to the staff last summer.

The Bengals brought in Josh Hinch and Tyler Ramsey as scouts and Trey LaBounty as a scouting research analyst.

And while the process is far from finished as the league convenes for the NFL Scouting Combine, Bengals director of player personnel Duke Tobin shed some light on what the three new additions have brought to the department in the last nine months.

“I thought that Josh and Tyler really added a lot this year, and I'm getting very comfortable with how they work and how they see the game,” Tobin said. “Both of them had experience coming in. I still didn't know exactly what I was getting. Seeing them work this year, seeing their reports, their thoroughness, they fit right in the group.”

“And so that extra layer that we've gotten, I think we needed,” Tobin added. “That's why I did it. And I think the support from the data team of Sam Francis and Trey LaBounty and Tyler Gross have elevated our efficiencies. I'm always looking for efficiencies in scouting.”

Hinch’s previous experience came with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and New England Patriots, while Ramsey worked for the Carolina Panthers and Seattle Seahawks.

LaBounty had less experience, working as an analytics intern with the Buffalo Bills in 2024.

All three had NFL experience, and Tobin treated them that way.

Bengals Moving Away From Less-is-More Philosophy in Scouting Department

The Bengals added three hires to their player personnel department and the extra help is paying off. — Feb 24, 2026; Indianapolis, IN, USA; Cincinnati Bengals general manager Duke Tobin speaks at the NFL Scouting Combine at the Indiana Convention Center. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images | Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

“I would rather have the guy watching the player than doing the grunt work on the back end of it and typing in the who all is going to the Senior Bowl database and ranking, comparisons and all that kind of stuff,” he said. “I want the guys doing what they're paid to do and doing what their talent says they should do, which is evaluating. So we're always looking for efficiencies, and we found that in our data team that Sam and Trey and Tyler have put together.

“We've got a pretty complex and robust scouting system now that we have built from the ground up over time, and they've elevated it to another level that gives us all the resources we want when our scout is looking at the guy, needs the comparisons, needs the background on the guy, needs everything to evaluate the guy correctly,” Tobin added. “I've been very pleased with the new additions that we've had.”

Tobin -- who spoke for more than an hour in two different media sessions, touching on topics such as Trey Hendrickson and adding to the defense, among others -- often has said he would rather have the right voices than more voices in what is the league’s smallest scouting staff.

He was asked if he still adheres to the “less is more” philosophy.

“Every organization comes down to very few voices,” he said. “They get input, but it’s going to be one, two, three, four voices that are really driving it. I trust the guys that we’ve got. You have to evaluate the evaluators, and I've done that and I like the fact that I know our evaluators, and I know how they look at players and how they grade, and I know what their grades mean.

“I want to be very comfortable with the opinions that I'm trusting, and you do that by working closely with people,” he added. “And the only way to work closely with people is to have a tight group, and that's the way I view it, and believe me, if I thought we had coverage lapses, I would fix that. We don't have coverage lapses. We don't have information gaps with these guys at all.

“Maybe we have too much information, but the decisions become very complicated with the amount of information that we have, adding complication to it that sometimes might lead you into the wrong decisions.”