CINCINNATI -- Bengals tight end Tyler Eifert never gets tired of discussing his hair.
It’s short in the front and now approaching his shoulders in the back. It has gotten long enough to hang out of his helmet.
Some call it business in the front and a party in the back. Others call it the Tennessee Waterfall or the Billy Ray Cyrus. His parents have called it multiple things, none of them very nice.
Eifert just calls it his mullet, and he is immensely proud of it.
“That’s what I had in college, the hair out the helmet. It’s swaggy. It’s a good look,” Eifert said in April, when the Bengals first reported for offseason workouts.
Eifert’s parents haven’t quite come around yet, even though he has started to get his mother to see his side of things. Neither of his parents liked the shoulder-length hair he sported at Notre Dame, either. His dad used to call him daily in college just to tell him to get a haircut.
“She always said, ‘You’re so cute, you’re so good-looking, why do you have to ruin it?’” Eifert said of his mother. “But now when people talk bad about the mullet, she has my back. ... She’ll say, ‘Actually, he’s pulling it off.’ So at least she has my back, but to my face she says she doesn’t like it. ...
“She does say I have nice hair, though.”
Type the word “mullet” into the Twitter search bar on Eifert’s account, and it’ll come up with 45 results since December, when he began to grow it out. He uses the hashtag #teammullet and has given regular updates on its progress on his social media accounts and through the media, and his fans and teammates have eaten it up.
"Feeling the power of the mullet more and more everyday!" Eifert tweeted in March.
It has gone over particularly well with the other tight ends, a close-knit group who regularly go to dinner at each other's houses and celebrate each other's successes, including haircuts.
“I think it’s sick,” teammate C.J. Uzomah said. “I think it’s awesome. I’m growing my hair out because of him. I figured if he’s doing that, I’ll have the big afro. ... I think it looks very Tyler. ... He’s my boy, and I love him. That is him to a tee. I think it looks very funny, but it’s awesome that he’s doing it, for sure.”
Eifert is going to grow it out until he feels like stopping, presumably when the joke wears off, whenever that might be.
“I don’t really have a plan,” he said. “I’m just rolling with it.”
What’s less clear is why he did it. Eifert has never seemed to care about what people think of him, but he has said half-jokingly that growing a mullet would get reporters to stop asking him about his injured back.
“That’s not actually why,” Eifert said. “I saw coach [Mike] Gundy, who just cut his hair. That’s who inspired it. I saw him in a press conference last year, and I thought ‘That’s pretty sweet.’”
Eifert later said he saw a story about former Brazilian soccer player Ronaldo, who cut all of his hair except for a small patch on his forehead before the 2002 World Cup. Ronaldo admitted in 2018 that it was an attempt to get everyone to discuss something other than his leg injury.
Eifert has happily entertained the mullet questions all spring and summer, but he knows as well as anyone that there is exactly one way to stop the injury questions: Prove he can stay healthy.
Maybe that’s where the power of the mullet comes in. Eifert is going back to his college roots, pointing out that he never got hurt in college when he had long, flowing hair.
If Eifert can stay healthy, there’s no telling what he might be able to do. He was once on his way to being considered one of the best tight ends in the NFL. He caught 13 touchdown passes and made it to his first Pro Bowl in 2015, the last time the Bengals made the playoffs.
That’s when everything went wrong. An ankle injury sustained at the Pro Bowl turned into an ordeal that lasted through the summer. Then, when he was finally getting ready to play, a back injury pushed back his debut. Eifert played in just eight games in 2016 before going on IR with season-ending back surgery.
He made it only two games into last season before it was decided that he needed back surgery again, the third of his career. That’s not to mention the gruesome elbow injury in the 2014 season opener that derailed his entire season.
Eifert has patiently gone through rehab again and again, answering questions about everything from his toughness to whether he should hang up his cleats. It’s no wonder he’d rather stick to a more lighthearted topic, and these days, that’s mostly what he gets.
If one were to watch Eifert on the field now, it would be impossible to know what his body has been through. Almost every one of his catches against the Panthers was a contested catch on which he had to drag defenders with him. On one play, Eifert jumped high in the air for the ball and held on to it with a defender trying to slap it away, landing hard on his back for a 20-yard gain.
Fans might have held their breaths, but Eifert popped back up easily.
“That was a crazy catch,” Bengals quarterback Andy Dalton said. “For him to go up and catch it over him like that is what he’s done and what’s made him so good. I wouldn’t necessarily say that was the moment I thought, ‘He’s back.' But that’s what he can do. For me, it’s just giving him the chance to make those plays by putting it in a good spot where he can make it. With the other guy’s hand in there, I don’t know how he came down with it. But that’s what he does.”
Clearly, Eifert has no hesitation about getting hit. The only indication that he was ever injured is the daily injury report that always lists: Tyler Eifert (back) -- full participant. For him, the more important stat is 11 catches for 141 yards, currently third on the team.
“There are obviously times with the injuries he’s had that he’s been down,” Dalton said. “But he’s pushed through it. He’s been great and has done everything he can to get back to playing well and to the level he was before he got hurt. I think it shows with what he’s been able to do.”
If he can put together more days like the one against the Panthers, when he caught six passes for 74 yards, Eifert won’t be getting many questions about his back anymore. And if the Bengals' offense goes as far as its potential this season, maybe he’ll have the hair to thank.
“I hope he keeps it the entire year,” Uzomah said.