Cincinnati’s Paycor Stadium - Source: Unsplash
Dohnte Meyers' Long Journey to the Cincinnati Bengals
Somewhere south of Chattanooga, sometime after midnight, a receiver who'd never taken an NFL snap was driving through the dark toward a throwing session nobody had asked him to show up for. Joe Burrow had texted, wondering if Dohnte Meyers was around.
He said he could be, even though he was almost 500 miles away in Atlanta. He got in his car anyway, because at some point in the two years since he'd paid $100 to try out for the Saskatchewan Roughriders, Meyers had learned that the difference between a career and a tryout receipt usually comes down to what you're willing to do when nobody's watching you do it.
Little was expected of Meyers, but he showed up anyway, and after stealing the show in training camp, he now lines up alongside Ja'Marr Chase and Tee Higgins as WR3 in the NFL's most stacked receiving room. In fact, it's a receiving corps that online betting sites feel has a very real chance of ending the year with its first-ever Super Bowl championship. The latest odds from 7signs online sportsbook currently list the Bengals as a +1800 fringe contender for the Lombardi, not quite as short as the +600 favourite Rams, but by no means out of contention.
So, how did the CFL star become a starter on a Bengals roster that genuinely expects to compete for the Super Bowl this season?
The CFL Tenure
Nobody hands you a professional football career for $100. You have to go earn the rest of it, and Meyers spent two years doing exactly that after going undrafted out of Presbyterian and Delta State in 2023. Saskatchewan liked what it saw enough to sign him to a futures deal that November, days after the CFL season ended, and then football did what football does to guys trying to climb: it made him wait. A broken hand shelved him to open the 2024 campaign, practice squad reps instead of game reps, watching from the sideline while the season he'd been promised started without him.
He came back in 2025 and made sure nobody could tease him out of a job twice. Sixty-five catches on 87 targets, 1,056 yards, eight touchdowns, four separate 100-yard afternoons across 15 games — a West All-Star season that helped push Saskatchewan to the top seed in the division. He made one of the signature plays of the West Final. Then the Roughriders won the Grey Cup, and Meyers walked away from his CFL career with 89 catches, 1,405 yards, and nine touchdowns over 19 games, plus enough work in the return game to remind everyone he'd play special teams if that's what it took.
The Training Camp Call
Cincinnati signed him to a reserve/future deal in January, the kind of transaction that gets a single line in a transactions column and nothing else. He walked into an offseason program where the depth chart already had Andrei Iosivas, Colbie Young, and Charlie Jones on it, along with Mitch Tinsley — established NFL bodies, guys who'd already survived a cut or two of their own. Meyers had none of that history. What he had was a text from his franchise quarterback and a decision to make about whether he was going to treat it like an invitation or an inconvenience.
He drove through the night. Burrow noticed. "That's the kind of guy he is," he said later. "He's had a great camp. He's quick, shifty, understands what we're trying to do. He's played a lot in the CFL. He comes over here and hasn't played a lot in the NFL, but he's got a lot of reps under his belt." That's not the kind of thing a three-time Pro Bowler says about a body on the roster bubble. Chase was saying similar things before most of the building had even clocked Meyers' name — "Dohnte's been making plays with the Ones."
Forty-two yards from scrimmage and an 11-yard punt return in a 16-14 preseason win over Detroit followed, and by the time the roster came down to 53, Zac Taylor wasn't hedging anymore. Meyers had earned it, over and over, in front of the people who make that call for a living.
The Bengals' Defensive Rebuild
Meyers making the roster was one thread in a much bigger story about a franchise that decided caution wasn't working anymore. In April, the Bengals uncharacteristically pulled off a draft week blockbuster, sending the No. 10 overall pick to the Giants for defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence — the first time in the common draft era that Cincinnati had ever traded a top-10 pick for a player. They didn't stop there, signing Lawrence to a one-year, $28 million extension on the spot.
Duke Tobin put words to what the front office was feeling, saying they were confident in "the positive effects he and the other players we have acquired this offseason" would have on the roster. Bryan Cook came in at safety, Boye Mafe on the edge, Jonathan Allen up front — a defence getting rebuilt with real conviction, not spare change, finally built to match an offence that had been carrying this team alone for years.
The Week 1 Win
Then Week 1 happened, and the investment cashed out immediately. Tampa Bay fumbled on three straight first-half possessions, and Demetrius Knight Jr. turned the first one into a 27-yard touchdown return. Cincinnati sacked Baker Mayfield four times. Late in the fourth quarter, Boye Mafe beat All-Pro tackle Tristan Wirfs clean off the edge for a strip-sack that put the game away. "We've gotta know who we are as a defense, and you felt it today," Mafe said afterward. "It wasn't just one person. It was the whole room."
Burrow finished 25-of-35 for 254 yards with a touchdown and a pick, with Chase Brown and Mike Gesicki both finding paydirt. And Meyers — the guy who drove through the night, the guy with a Grey Cup ring and a $100 tryout receipt in his past — hauled in an 18-yard gain late that helped Cincinnati bleed the clock on Tampa Bay's rally. It won't show up in anyone's highlight reel, but it could be the start of something special for one of the CFL's finest recent exports.