Here the Bengals go again. They have now had five cracks at building a championship roster around Joe Burrow since drafting him No 1 overall in 2020, and have fallen short all five times. Entering year six, it\u2019s already starting to feel like Burrow is this generation\u2019s Dan Marino or Philip Rivers, an all-time great quarterback let down by the franchise around him.<\/p>\n
After going 4-12 in Burrow\u2019s rookie season, Cincinnati made the Super Bowl, lost, returned to the AFC title game the next season, and then lost there. Burrow missed almost all of his fourth season with an injury, but put forth the best season of his career<\/a> statistically last year \u2026 before the Bengals surrendered it, finding novel way to give up close leads early in the season and failing to reach the playoffs despite winning five straight games to close it. In a league where 44% of teams make the postseason, it was almost impressively bad.<\/p>\n After the unlikely Super Bowl run, the outlook in Cincinnati was rosy. In Burrow, they had the NFL\u2019s most valuable building block: a franchise quarterback who could elevate average players into difference-makers. Behind Burrow, they had Ja\u2019Marr Chase, one of the game\u2019s best receivers, a young pool of offensive playmakers and a deep and talented defense. They even had the league\u2019s most prolific young kicker<\/a> \u2013 and had oodles of cap space and draft picks to build on their success.<\/p>\n But championship windows are finite<\/a>. Rather than using the Super Bowl run as a launching pad, they instead committed countless team-building sins: wasting draft picks, misallocating free-agent dollars, continuing to leave Burrow vulnerable behind a porous offensive line, and sticking with a group of coaches who have proven not to be needle-movers.<\/p>\n This offseason, they doubled down on mistakes, retaining the core of last year\u2019s roster and making only one significant change to their coaching staff, and retaining head coach Zac Taylor, who is now entering his sixth season alongside Burrow. No team has won its first Super Bowl with the same quarterback starting for the same coach for five years. The franchise had a chance to aggressively retool. Instead, it messed around on the margins. Now it feels increasingly like the window has shut on this version of Burrow\u2019s Bengals.<\/p>\n Maybe that\u2019s worrying too much. Burrow is at the apex of his powers. When he has been healthy, the Bengals\u2019 offense has been a juggernaut; they could play blindfolded and finish with one of the league\u2019s best passing attacks; Chase and Tee Higgins, the team\u2019s dynamic receiver duo, are nowhere near 30; they have one of the game\u2019s best pass-rushers in Trey Hendrickson; and they\u2019ve gone toe-to-toe with the league\u2019s best over multiple postseasons.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the spin from Cincinnati, anyway. But multiple end-of-year losses can warp a team\u2019s self-perception. They think they are closer than they truly are \u2013 especially in the AFC, where even getting to the Super Bowl requires climbing over teams quarterbacked by Lamar Jackson, Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Justin Herbert, and CJ Stroud. This season, you can add Bo Nix and the Broncos, Trevor Lawrence and the Jags, and Aaron Rodgers and the Steelers<\/a>\u2019 2020 All-Pro roster to that list.<\/p>\n Ja\u2019Marr Chase and Tee Higgins comprise one of the best wide receiver combos in the NFL. Photograph: Icon Sportswire\/Getty Images<\/p>\n The Bengals will no doubt point to their record in one-score games last season, a notoriously unreliable way to judge a team\u2019s record. Curb the bone-headed mistakes, and a nine-win team suddenly looks like a division contender. The team\u2019s under-the-hood figures painted them closer to a fringe contender rather than a playoff afterthought, but those figures were propped up by one player: Burrow.<\/p>\n Everywhere else, things were a mess. The offensive line remained a sieve. The run game was a non-factor. A once-ballyhooed defense fell off a cliff. Even the special teams unit, once a calling card, fell to the bottom of the league\u2019s standings. There has been little to suggest things will turn around this season, because so little has changed.<\/p>\n The Bengals seem to be taking the rationalist\u2019s view \u2013 that if they keep hammering away at the door, eventually they will break through. But the Bengals are not the only nearly men of the past half decade. They\u2019re thinking the same thing in Buffalo \u2026 and Baltimore \u2026 and San Francisco. Compared to those other contenders, the Bengals\u2019 offseason renovation was paltry. They failed to upgrade crucial positions and became bogged down, again, in contract disputes with their own players.<\/p>\n This year, owner Mike Brown managed a two-for-one. \u201cThey would rather win arguments than win games.\u201d First-round pick Shemar Stewart said during his holdout. Despite settling Stewart\u2019s contract, the team is still in another standoff with Hendrickson, who has requested a trade for the second successive offseason. Hendrickson, who led the league in sacks last season, is the team\u2019s only difference-maker on defense. Yet the Bengals can still not come to terms with the edge-rusher on a pay increase with only one year left on his deal.<\/p>\n Brown is the kind of billionaire who might think that prices at Dollar General are a bit steep. He refuses to make wholesale changes to his coaching staff, wary of paying out existing contracts. He employs both the smallest coaching staff and scouting department in the league. That may sound trivial, but it adds up. Run by an old-school owner with an outdated mindset, the franchise has stuck, resolutely, to drafting players from college football\u2019s powerhouses, refusing to mine the ground for slept-on gems in football\u2019s outskirts. Only two of the team\u2019s last 30 top-150 picks have played outside college football\u2019s power-five (now power-four) conferences.<\/p>\n In fairness, that philosophy has led the Bengals to string together deep rosters in the past, particularly during Marvin Lewis\u2019 tenure as head coach. But the team\u2019s recent anemic draft record has left them lagging behind other contenders \u2013 and they\u2019ve missed opportunities to select impact players, particularly along the offensive line, due to that small-school bias.<\/p>\n Brown\u2019s penny-pinching has exacerbated the issues caused by their draft record. The Bengals routinely carry the lowest dead money total in the league, a tactic teams use to push cap burdens into the future to improve the roster now. The Bengals\u2019 championship window, with this core, is this season. If ever there was an offseason to put all the chips in, this was it. Brown dipped his toe in the water, but balked at major surgery.<\/p>\n On the coaching side, the only significant change was swapping out defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo for Al Golden, the team\u2019s former linebackers coach. They\u2019re banking on running the same squad back and a new coach inspiring an about-face. There is talk of \u201cinternal growth,\u201d a neat verbal tick that typically means: \u201cwe\u2019re unwilling to spend money, we\u2019re capped out, or we\u2019re unwilling to admit our draft failures\u201d.<\/p>\n The Bengals were aggressive about retaining Burrow\u2019s buddies, though. After beating the Cowboys last year, Burrow used his time at the podium to issue a thinly veiled threat to his front office<\/a>. Bring back my guys or else. Burrow, pointedly, did not mention Hendrickson. The Bengals acquiesced, signing Higgins to a four-year contract worth $31m a year and re-upping Chase on a deal that made him the highest-paid non-quarterback in the sport. The signal was clear: they\u2019re winning or going down on Burrow\u2019s arm. In a vacuum, those decisions made sense; both Chase and Higgins are excellent players. But in context, the deals mean that roughly 35% of the team\u2019s salary cap this season is tied up in the quarterback and two receivers, making it tough to upgrade other areas of the roster this offseason.<\/p>\n Trey Hendrickson has been Cincinnati\u2019s most important defensive player. Photograph: Kareem Elgazzar\/AP<\/p>\n A smart franchise would have said no to Burrow. They would have let Higgins walk, taken the inevitable fire-storm on the chin, and reinforced their offensive line or improved their defense. The Bengals don\u2019t need an electric second receiver to win. It\u2019s a luxury. Burrow is good enough to turn so-so options into viable second bananas. But Cincy spent the offseason caving to Burrow\u2019s demands. That\u2019s great news for the fantasy crowd \u2013 not great for parade planners.<\/p>\n In summary: The Bengals\u2019 offseason work boiled down to re-upping household names, throwing Anarumo under a bus, and hoping recent draft misfires would kickstart their careers under new leadership.<\/p>\n Some of that reasoning is sound. The Bengals\u2019 defense was a disaster under Anarumo last year. They couldn\u2019t rush the passer. They couldn\u2019t cover. Anarumo\u2019s greatest strength is creating distinctive, one-off gameplans that confuse opposing quarterbacks. But the foundations of last year\u2019s group were so shaky that no amount of schematic voodoo could cover the holes. The Bengals finished in the bottom third in the league in pressure rate, pass-rush win-rate, and defensive run efficiency. Strip Hendrickson out of those metrics, and they fall to the bottom of the pile. Even the Panthers \u2013 the 2024 Panthers! \u2013 had a more effective four-man pass-rush than the Bengals.<\/p>\n The gameplan is to offset the pricey offensive stars by getting young or cheap players on defense. But the execution has been bungled. Cincy wound up fielding the most expensive defensive line in the league last season, pouring cash and draft picks into trying to engineer a four-man pass-rush that could complement Burrow\u2019s bomb\u2019s away offense. To do that, they cheaped out on the secondary. When that pass-rush fell on its face, the entire defense was exposed. Outside Hendrickson, only one player (BJ Hill) had more than 20 pressures last year. The Bears, Saints and Jets, all five-win teams, all had at least four players notch 20 pressures.<\/p>\n Other than ticking off Henderson, the Bengals have done little to improve their pass-rush for this year. They drafted Stewart in the first round, a developmental pass-rusher who missed the early part of training camp. Their only free-agent addition was TJ Slaton, an early-down run stuffer. They allocated more resources to fixing their linebacking corps than addressing the pass-rush needs.<\/p>\n And now, the team\u2019s title hopes again rest on the right shoulder of their quarterback. That\u2019s no bad thing. Burrow finished last season fourth in the RBSDM composite, which measures the value of a play and how much the quarterback can be deemed responsible for the value. No single quarterback was more valuable to their team last season. Last season, however, proved that won\u2019t be enough. There isn\u2019t another level for Burrow to ascend to. Even at his best, he couldn\u2019t carry a lackluster roster to January by himself.<\/p>\n This will no doubt be the millionth consecutive year the Bengals preach diversifying the offense, and the millionth consecutive year in which they run one of the league\u2019s three most predictable offenses. Throughout Burrow\u2019s time, they have struggled to efficiently run the ball or tie the run game to play-action. When they put the ball in Burrow\u2019s hands in the gun, they\u2019re effective. Everything else is a risk. The Bengals were dead last with 3.7 yards per play and 29th with a minus 18.1% DVOA from under-center formations in 2024, according to FTN. Unless Burrow is playing point guard, the Bengals struggle to move the ball. In 2025, that\u2019s no way to build a sustainable offense.<\/p>\n The hope is that they can squeeze one more season out of that offensive ideology while Golden patches something together on defense. If Hendrickson is traded away<\/a>, the whole plan could cave in before the season even kicks off (though there is hope that won\u2019t happen, with Hendrickson reporting to training camp on Wednesday even as he says he won\u2019t participate fully until a deal is done)<\/p>\n