An NFL Players Association survey this offseason revealed players were not satisfied with the old locker room that had received minimal upgrades after Zac Taylor’s arrival in 2019 but needed overhauled. The players gave the Bengals a “D” grade for their locker room.
Taylor said Monday when asked about the new locker room, the project ended up being “more than anticipated.”
“It’s unbelievable,” Taylor said. “Players are going to love it. Logistically it is going to be very helpful. For guys in the training room and going to meetings and their stuff. For them to get it done as quickly as they did, I originally thought it was going to leading into the first week of the season or the end of August. Hats off to everyone involved to get it done in July, which is unbelievable.”
Bengals Director of Strategy & Engagement Elizabeth Blackburn said the organization began the design process in January and that was finalized in late March or early April.
The renovation project included new, state-of-the-art lockers, upgraded restroom facilities, and an open design with higher ceilings that help maximize the original football-shape footprint to enable team connectivity.
Each locker stands at 10 feet, 4 inches tall with charging stations in the seating area and in the safe and lighting throughout. There are nine drying fans throughout the locker, including in a cutout for the player’s helmet and above that where shoulder pads and other items can be stored, as well as a patented quick dry compartment that accelerates drying time for cleats, gloves and other gear.
To incorporate the Bengals tradition, each locker includes a “Paul E. Brown” laser-engraved signature on lift-up footlocker storage compartment, the old leaping tiger logo is inside the safe and “Established in 1968″ inside the overhead compartment.
Next to Joe Burrow’s locker is a built-in mini-fridge and microwave to replace the appliances he had on a wooden stand previously.
“I’m surprised that that’s already gotten so much coverage,” Blackburn said. “We tried to make it very sleek. I’m sure you all kind of know we try to approach, obviously, football is the ultimate team sport. We want to treat the team as a collective and all the players equally. But, you know, he had some appliances there, so we built them in to clean it up and tried to actually de-emphasize it. But of course, everybody already noticed.”
Blackburn said the main things she wanted was for the locker room to look “modern, cool, clean, connected,” and player input was “huge.”
While the organization does take seriously player input, which is revealed publicly through the NFLPA surveys, in-person player feedback with the football operations staff had more impact on the locker room upgrade than the NFLPA survey, Blackburn said.
“(Equipment manager) Adam (Knollman) and (director of operations) Jeff (Brickner) are very plugged in and have great relationships with our team to make sure we knew what features were missing, what we needed to add,” Blackburn said. “I would say the charging plugs were, like, top of the list, so we really hit that one hard. … We went with the chair out of the locker. A lot of new lockers, you’ll see have it built in. But it’s not as useful to get to your stuff, so we really came at this with great player input to make it useful, as well as a great upgrade in design.”
A locker room renovation was always on the to-do list, Blackburn said, but other projects, such as the weight room and other football spaces, were addressed first. She did not share what comes next on the list.
“I’d say we’ve had it on the list, and we’ve looked at it for several years,” Blackburn said. “You know, you’re always balancing the trade-off of, it’s an inconvenience, when do you do it? When is kind of the trade-off of, where’s the technology and are the benefits worth the inconvenience short term? And we finally felt like this offseason was the right time to do it.”
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