Bryan Cook, the Bengals' new safety who learned his football in Cincinnati, officially signed on Thursday to spread what he knows to a secondary looking for some solid home cooking.
Cook looked right at home as he walked into Paycor Stadium Thursday morning with wife Jayla Thornton- Cook.
"Great. Little cold. But great," said Cook Thursday morning of being back home as he swung through the locker room for the first time.
You could say he was born to be a Bengal. He shares his Sept. 7 birthday with Bengals founder Paul Brown, was born 26 years ago in Cincinnati, and soon becomes one of six Greater Cincinnati players in club history to play a game for the Bengals out of the University of Cincinnati.
But all that's just a coincidence. Cook is here because he gives the Bengals defense what it needs most: experience, leadership and tackling.
"He's just a good, well-rounded safety. He brings good experience and versatility to the room," says Bengals safeties coach Jordan Kovacs.
"When you evaluate these guys, the first thing you look for is, how good of a communicator is he? Because from day one in this room, that's what we talk about. We're the quarterbacks of the defense. We have to be elite communicators, and that's one of the things that jumped off the tape."
Because Cook began as a wide receiver, he watched the Bengals' Chad Johnson ("Ocho," Cook calls him) and T.J. Houshmandzadeh while growing up in Mount Healthy. Now he's teaming with Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins, the tandem he helped the Chiefs best in the AFC title game his rookie year.
That's when Cook earned the first of his two Super Bowl rings during four seasons he started 47 games and three more in the playoffs as a key cog in defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo's battle-tested scheme in Kansas City.
"Those things will be invaluable when it comes to talking about leading in our room," Kovacs says. "They used him in a lot of different ways, which is encouraging. You're not just getting a strong safety, you're not just getting a free safety. You're getting a guy that can do all the jobs, which gives us some versatility and flexibility in the back end.
"He's very comfortable in coverage, and he's a very good tackler, which I thought was important. I felt that was one of the things he did really well when you look at this free-agent class."
Cook is an immediate antidote to one of the Bengals' biggest problems of last season, when they led the league in missed tackles.
He had the second-best missed tackle percentage (4.5) among safeties with at least 85 tackles when he missed only four, according to Pro Football Reference. The year before, Cook missed just five tackles when he made 78 tackles.