Transcription
After five straight losing seasons, the Bengals seemingly turned the corner with Joe Burrow in his sophomore season. A trip to the Super Bowl in 2021 was followed by a 12-win season and a trip to the AFC Championship in 2022. And it seemed like the Bengals were on the precipice of a dynastic run through the AFC North, stacking back-to-back first-place finishes. But the last two years, they finished just one game over .500, and they did not make the playoffs, and they finished in third or fourth place in the AFC North in both years.
Last year, Joe Burrow did his best to carry the Cincinnati Bengals despite a career-high pressure rate. Burrow had a career year in development, career-high accuracy, career-high completion rate, career-high third-down conversion rate, and his lowest interception rate since his rookie season. And yet, the Cincinnati Bengals won only nine games and missed the playoffs.
Ray, what does this team need to do in this draft to get back on track? We've seen such great things from Joe Burrow over his short NFL career—it really isn't a very long career yet; it seems like he's been here forever, but it's not really that long of a career—but they need to get back on track badly after they set the bar pretty high those first couple of seasons. Uh, what do they do in this NFL draft? The answer is very simply: on defense.
So that was one when we were debating kind of what teams we were going to talk about. It is tough because, you know, obviously Rich writes up the offense; I write up the defense for each of these teams. And on offense, you can make some cases for what the Bengals need, but really this is this is defense, and they have six draft picks. I most of them are going to have to be spent on defense because if you look at it, you could make an argument that at every level of this defense, they need a starter now. Perhaps they look at quarterback; they obviously made a defensive coordinator change; they did that for a reason. You could you could say they look at quarterback; they've spent a lot of draft capital there; maybe they think coaching was the issue; we're going to see some guys take some steps forward. You could also, you know, say that maybe they're fine at safety, even though Geno Stone is, you know, going into a contract year; wasn't wasn't particularly great his his first season with the Bengals either. Was that a coaching issue? So maybe you put the secondary aside; I still think they have needs there, but then you look at the rest of rest of this roster; they need at least one starter along the defensive line. They have to keep Trey Hendrickson because behind that, you're not excited about anything that's there. You know, they didn't hit on Miles Murphy; that hasn't worked out; that's actually a kind of a a story of this defense; it's just not really hitting on some of these early draft picks. You know, Germaine Pratt, it seems like he's gone; the new linebackers coach I I don't even think mentioned him a couple days ago when he was talking about the linebackers, so he's gone. They probably need a linebacker, and then, like I said, I think they need help both, you know, at cornerback and at safety as well. And so, like, this defense just needs a massive influx of talent, and they only have six draft picks. How are they going to do that? I I'm not sure.
Despite all of that, despite how bad the defense was last year, maybe Al Golden comes in, and, you know, he's able to get more out of this defense than what they did last year. They still probably should have been a playoff team; you know, they they lost a couple a couple games they probably shouldn't have; should have been a playoff team; that's how good Joe Burrow is; that's how good this offense can be. But if they want to reach the levels that you were talking about, that Super Bowl trip, they just they have to get better on this side of the ball; they need more talent on this side of the ball, and I'm a little bit worried that they think too much of what happened last year was on Lou Anarumo and on the defensive coaching staff, and they don't see some of these needs as as big as I think they probably are.
That's a great last statement there because I 100% agree. We we talked for several years about the adjustments and the tricks and the second-half change-ups that Lou Anarumo would bring, especially when playing against Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs, to try to foil some of the things that Andy Reid and Mahomes were doing there. Uh, and we viewed Lou Anarumo in very positive light, and they then they get rid of him. And if he's the scapegoat and they don't realize the lack of talent that they've got there on the defensive side of the ball and try to address it quickly enough, then we're going to be in a similar situation next year because I don't think like Al Golden is suddenly a massive improvement over what Big Lou was bringing this team.
But Rich, you look at the offensive side of the ball, and as Ray mentioned and I did as well, this is the Joe Burrow show. Uh, what does Joe need around him to really try to maybe outscore teams by an even larger degree if the defense still is a little bit of a problem in 2025?
Yeah, I think these first two teams we touched upon, too, like that's something to talk about that the coordinators are—you know, Mike McDaniel's not a coordinator, but he's obviously running the offense—that no matter how good these guys are, you still need players; you still need players to to to make things work. And you know, something can make a you know, offense fall apart or defense fall apart very quickly, even one that was successful. The Bengals on offense, I'm I'm really just begging them not to fall in the trap of using premier capital on a running back, right? Like like I'm with Ray, like everything Ray talked about—like this team needs to get better defensively because, you know, in the AFC playoffs, you have to stop Patrick Mahomes; you have to stop Lamar Jackson; you have to stop Josh Allen; you have to stop probably multiple of those quarterbacks to get to a Super Bowl. Uh, and this that defense just needs so much help, so I'm begging them to not, you know, fall into the trap of saying, "Well, what if we just added another playmaker on offense?" You know, you have Chase Brown for for dirt cheap for two years; he showed that he could carry a high workload and be a productive back down the back half of the season. Now you don't want to give him 96% of the backfield touches again, like he had over the span, but you already had Samaje Perine as like a veteran guy to come in and play in passing downs if you need to. They still have Zach Moss hanging around if you want to use a late day three pick on a running back for insurance; by all means, do it, but that premier capital just don't fall into that trap. And then they have to find a way to continue and been try since the in the Burrow era; they've got to find a way to try to continue to get this offensive line right, too. Burrow was so good and was able to overcome it; a lot was just volume and game scripts that the Bengals played in; like they don't want Joe Burrow leading the NFL in pass attempts every year, even though they want to be an aggressive passing offense. Uh, they the only offensive lineman that starter that they have that's younger than 29 is Jonah Williams; and the other starters that they have really were subpar last year. I mean, they can get out of Orlando Brown's contract as early as this year; Cordell Volson's going to be a free agent after the season; like this is a team that definitely still needs to address and calibrate the offensive line as they move on as well. So please Bengals, don't use an early pick at a running back. I do think there's there's a comment actually here though, I think from my high Luke that says, "There's so many good runners in this draft, right?" Yeah, if they used a day three pick on one of those like bruising guys, I think that we're fine about it, but yeah, first of all, don't ruin all of the Chase Brown Dynasty shares that I have, please Bengals; he's wonderful; just let him cook. But also, yeah, to that point, like recognize recognize where the issue is, I hope, and and really and really move things in that direction.