On if his 19th season is his last:<\/p>\n
“I guess part of the reason that I’m happy to be here is I’m not necessarily looking at this as the end. I have no idea. Maybe it is, but I’m not looking at it that way. So I think that makes (the decision) a little bit easier, too. To just be somewhere where I really feel comfortable and try to help out in any way I can.”<\/p>\n
On the Bengals’ locker room being a factor in his return:<\/p>\n
“A close-knit group of guys. Anytime you’re in a locker room like that, it can hit you in a certain way. That’s kind of how this past year was for me. I was probably in the headspace to be able to kind of accept that a little bit just because of how crazy last year was for me. You kind of just start to open yourself up to certain things, and I think it just happened to be great timing and a great group of guys to kind of resonate with me and make me feel good about the situation.”<\/p>\n
On how the decision pretty much came down to wife Dana and head coach Zac Taylor:<\/p>\n
“My wife and I have been together for a long time (they have five children), and you can kind of read the room a little bit \u2026 You just look at each other and you talk about what’s going through your mind and you kind of see what her reactions are and she tries to read what my reactions are and I’m trying to see how I’m reacting to things as I’m saying them. Am I truly believing what I’m saying or am I just kind of half in it?<\/p>\n
But I think it goes back to talking to Zac. She knew that I talked to Zac and, man, it really sounds like they want you to come back. It’s not maybe exactly what you want, but that is a pretty good thing. I think that is a big part of it. <\/p>\n
On his kids riding the free-agency rollercoaster:<\/p>\n
I feel like this is the first offseason they’ve kind of rode it with me. Oh, you should go here. No, you should go there. No, you shouldn’t do this. Oh yeah, you should do that. What are you asking for, or what are they going to give you? \u2026 They were fun little conversations. You’re asking for too much, actually \u2026 My 12-year-old said he was sneaking out every now and then (at school) and checking his phone in the bathroom. ‘You didn’t sign anywhere. You told me you’re going sign somewhere by the end of the week.'”<\/p>\n
On being at last month’s Pro Bowl in San Francisco with Burrow:<\/p>\n
“We were getting ready to go get some dinner somewhere. The night gets away from me, and it’s like, ‘Dude, I’m like 41 years old. It’s 9:30. I’ve got to go to bed. It’s 9:30 on the West Coast, it’s like 12:30 at home \u2026 We were there for like two days, And I feel like we’ve all seen Joe in the media the last couple of days. He’s out doing his thing and having fun like a non-41-year- old. So I’m sure I’ll talk to him soon enough.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On if his 19th season is his last: “I guess part of the reason that I’m happy to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":546095,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[54639,181502,25679,399,6403,42454,1800,32304,829,398,396,397,99],"class_list":["post-546094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-54639","tag-2026-free-agency","tag-centerpiece","tag-football","tag-free-agency","tag-hobson","tag-joe-flacco","tag-latest-stories","tag-latest-news","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-ncaafootball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=546094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/546095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}