No ESPN before school.
That's what his mother told him when the Reggie Bush highlights got in the way of Mitchell Tinsley eating breakfast before attending kindergarten.
So it's not exactly a surprise to Veronica Bruce some 20 years later that football has consumed her son so much that he made it his profession. Now she and her family tune to ESPN Monday at 8 p.m. to watch Tinsley's latest venture with the Bengals in their preseason game in Washington against his old friends with the Commanders as he bids to stick in the Bengals' elite wide receiver room.
"He knew all of Reggie Bush's stats. He was a huge fan of Jerry Rice. We're talking when he was five, six years old," Veronica Bruce says. "I knew nothing about football. He's a scholar of the game."
Bruce says now she knows "just enough to be dangerous," about the game, but don't let her kid you. Her son says she sounds like a scout. And she can tell you that dating back to Hutchinson Junior College in Kansas, this is his eighth straight new offense. That ability to adapt, she says, reflects his intelligence.
Plugged in to the Bengals.com app and other outlets buzzing with Tinsley's acrobatic training camp, she hasn't dropped anything, either.
Just on Saturday, her phone blinked with another one of his catches. A confounding grab of quarterback Jake Browning's Hail Mary about to be picked off by one of two defenders sandwiching Tinsley in the air.
Somehow, he came down with it. That was a few periods after he swiped a leaping end-zone fade off a helmet for a touchdown. He's been a walking video clip as he heads to Washington with a hand reaching in for a spot on the Opening Day 53-man roster.
There is tough, veteran competition laced behind Ja'Marr Chase, Tee Higgins, Andrei Iosivas, Charlie Jones, and Jermaine Burton. Not only is there Tinsley in his third year in the league with two NFL games to his credit, but also sophomore Isaiah Williams, a veteran of last season's Bengals' playoff push, and Kendric Pryor, who has been around three years while playing one game.