{"id":562319,"date":"2026-04-03T14:27:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T14:27:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/562319\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T14:27:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T14:27:07","slug":"kyle-dugger-excited-for-chance-with-bengals-after-rough-two-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/562319\/","title":{"rendered":"Kyle Dugger excited for chance with Bengals after “rough two years”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Safety Kyle Dugger signed with the Bengals this week and he\u2019s looking forward to the chance to rediscover his top form in Cincinnati. <\/p>\n

The 2020 second-round pick was a starter throughout his time with the Patriots, but an ankle injury limited him in 2024 and offseason surgery hurt his adaptation to a new defense after head coach Mike Vrabel was hired in 2025. Dugger played sparingly over the first five weeks of the season and was traded to the Steelers at the middle of the season. <\/p>\n

Dugger started all nine regular season games he played for the Steelers, but didn\u2019t start their playoff loss to the Bills before moving on to the Bengals as a free agent. After signing his new deal, Dugger said his ankle now feels back to full strength and that leaves him with a positive outlook about what the 2026 season will bring. <\/p>\n

\u201cFresh start and a new opportunity<\/a>. I\u2019m excited for it,\u201d Dugger said, via the team\u2019s website. \u201cIt\u2019s been a rough two years. I\u2019m thankful where I am.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Bengals also signed Bryan Cook this offseason and the two safeties will be part of what the team hopes will be a turnaround from two rough years of their own on the defensive side of the ball. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Safety Kyle Dugger signed with the Bengals this week and he\u2019s looking forward to the chance to rediscover…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":562320,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-562319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562319","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=562319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562319\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/562320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=562319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=562319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=562319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}