Lions' D.J. Reader: 'Super tough' to leave Bengals but I don't see being top-three player at DT changing

D.J. Reader lands in Detroit with confidence despite the bittersweet feelings he leaves behind.

After overseeing a turnaround with Cincinnati that spanned four years, two torn quads and a Super Bowl berth, the defensive tackle might not have always intended to leave, but he's still capable of looking back with pride.

"It's super tough, but things happen in free agency, and whether it's upstairs going in a different direction or, you know, I did get injured a couple times there," Reader said of his Bengals departure Monday on The Jim Rome Show. "They may see it a certain way and I see it different. Who's to say who's right. I'm always gonna feel like I'm right, and they're gonna feel like they're right. It was super tough to leave something that you built, but there's comfort in knowing that I left it in a better place than where I found it. So I had to find comfort in that part."

When Reader arrived in Cincy in 2020 after spending his first four years in the NFL as a Texan, the Bengals were coming off a 2-14 campaign, their fourth consecutive losing season after five straight years of AFC wild-card exits.

He was one of the team's big free-agent gets, with the catalyst for change offensively coming in the form of the 2020 NFL Draft's No. 1 overall pick, quarterback Joe Burrow.

Reader would tear his left quad five games into that first year, while Burrow would last 10 contests before suffering a torn ACL. The injuries contributed to another losing season, this time 4-11-1, but it remains the last time the Bengals finished under .500.

Both Reader and Burrow returned in 2021 to lead Cincinnati to a surprise berth in Super Bowl LVI and a trip to the AFC Championship Game the following season.

The two were again injured during a