Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends. That would be NFL football, the game we all live and die for. The Olympics and Leagues Cup matches and Reds drama and trips to the beach got us through the baking months, but thankfully pigskin is almost back.
The period of off-field inaction is over, and we’re back to the game itself. Sure, it remains the off-brand supermarket cola version that is the preseason, but that just means the Real Thing is on the horizon, so close we can see the steam rising from the smokestacks.
Once again I will be charting the highs and lows of the Cincinnati Bengals (hopefully mostly the former) as we embark on Year Five of the Joe Burrow Era (where has the time gone?). Last season, of course, held far too many lows, as Burrow missed the second half of the season with an injured wrist after a slow start due to a calf strain gave way to five games of MVP-level ball that boosted our collective hopes. When Burrow went down, it seemed the season was lost with him. But some excellent play by backup Jake Browning and some outstanding coaching by Zac Taylor and his staff resuscitated hopes, only to come up just short of the postseason.
In the end the Bengals finished 9-8 against a fearsomely difficult schedule—indeed, the eighth-most difficult since the 1980s, according to the metrics we use at FTNFantasy.com (formerly Football Outsiders, an analytics company for whom I’ve written for many moons). That was a pretty good show of strength in the face of adversity, and the outlook entering 2024 is thus optimistic based on two fronts: Burrow is back, and the schedule is that of a last-place team, with the fifth-easiest projected slate by those same aforementioned metrics.
Burrow has now failed to make it through half of his NFL seasons, and keeping him healthy and upright is of paramount importance. He gained some extra self-defense weight in the offseason while rehabbing his injured wrist, and the A-1 “thank goodness” news out of the spring and summer camps is that he appears to be throwing the ball with no ill effects.
Obviously, Burrow returning to form is the most important element to a successful season, especially now that he’s signed a lucrative extension that fully kicks in (cap-wise) next year. That makes 2024 incredibly important in the big scheme of things. It’s the reason why Tee Higgins was franchise-tagged and not traded, and we have to see the recent draft focus on defense—eight of the top 10 “premium” picks over the last three drafts have been on that side of the ball—pay dividends, as it did for Kansas City in 2023.
One of the top draftees not on defense was first-rounder Amarius Mims, a mammoth (6-foot-8, 340 lbs.) right tackle out of Georgia. He’s an immensely gifted prospect, albeit one with fewer snaps under his belt due to injury and the conveyor belt of talent in UGa these days. The fervent hope is that Mims, at long last, locks down the right side of the line, which has been a hope-and-cope position in Cincinnati since the days of Willie Anderson.
Initial reports were most promising. The single best thing beyond Burrow looking like Burrow this summer was the play of Mims, who looked every inch (and ounce) the model of a nimble yet ultra-powerful tackle. So the fact that he has an injured pectoral muscle and will miss the remainder of August, at the very least, is crushing.
Taylor called the issue “extremely minor” and said the team was merely being extra cautious, but we all know how these “minor” injuries turn into serious ouchies around here. And since Mims came in to the pros with injury concerns, it’s a grim sign that he can’t even make it through his first training camp without going down. Hopefully we’ll look back at this from the perspective of an outstanding rookie year and laugh it off. But precedent prevents that.
New free agent right tackle Trent Brown is thus the apparent Week One starter. If he makes it that far, that is. He’s another monstrously-sized specimen (6-foot-8 and 360 lbs.), and when healthy he’s been highly effective. Alas, the accent is on the “when healthy” part of that sentence. Brown has missed 30 games over the past five seasons, and at age 31 he’s only getting more brittle.
The key to a successful 2024 on the O-line may well be how many games Mims and Brown can go and whether they’re injured at the same time. Cincinnati’s depth up front is porous—like most teams, to be fair—and the last thing Burrow needs is to be dodging unchecked pass rushers while the likes of Cody Ford and Jackson (Oy Vey) Carman are on the field.
In other camp news, we all expected that once Higgins came in and squelched thoughts of making noise about his contract the wideout noise would die down. Enter Ja’Marr Chase! Uno wants a new deal and is almost sure to get one. In the meantime, however, he is “holding in” by showing up at camp and not practicing. He has no real leverage, and few doubt he will answer the bell when the season arrives.
Indeed, Chase may just be avoiding the sweltering and monotonous portion of practice because he can. But it’s a distraction no one needs in the wake of the Higgins (and, to a lesser degree, Trey Hendrickson) financial squawking.
Let’s see: Franchise QB coming off injury, star wideouts in contract disputes, first round draft pick already hurt…. Yes, it’s been a great offseason so far! We haven’t even delved into the fact that Cincinnati’s defense took a powder in 2023, dooming the team even before the Burrow injury. They allowed 23 more 20-plus-yards plays than the year before, missed 48 more tackles, and were near the bottom in almost every run defense metric.
It took a village to be that bad. The D-line was gashed even with the great (and now departed) D.J. Reader up front. He’s been replaced by free agent Sheldon Rankins and third-round pick (also banged up) nose man McKinnley Jackson.
The linebackers took a large step backward after a superb 2022. And we all want to forget about the horrific secondary play, particularly at safety. Indications from camp seem to be that newly imported free agent Geno Stone and returning prodigal safety Vonn Bell have steadied the back end, while Dax Hill, who was out of place as a deep safety in 2023, has turned heads in his more natural cornerback spot.
Merely by improving the tackling and communication so that the defense isn’t caught out of position so frequently should make for a better showing this season, even if the talent isn’t remarkably upgraded. It will be on defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo to get the unit back to the 2022 levels or at least in the ballpark. Here is where those top picks—Hill, end Myles Murphy, d-backs D.J. Turner and Jordan Battle, and this year’s second-round tackle Kris Jenkins—must make an impact. Last season’s defense was almost completely dependent on Hendrickson to create havoc—no team in the NFL had a greater gap in efficiency between plays with and without pass pressure. They need other contributors, badly.
Speaking of coordinators under pressure, there’s a new OC in town! Dan Pitcher moves up after Brian Callahan took the head job in Tennessee, giving the former QB coach a chance to tweak the offense in his image. This won’t be a wholesale remodel, of course—Pitcher has been in the system since Taylor arrived. But with five usable tight ends and as many as eight quality wideouts and at least two running backs all worthy of some playing time, it will be a different challenge from the simple Chase/Higgins/Tyler Boyd/Joe Mixon “try and stop us” approach in the previous few seasons. How Pitcher organizes his personnel groups and keeps the offense from being predictable based on who is playing on any given snap will be a critical component to the coming season.
Just how does it look like said campaign will play out? We will examine that a bit more closely on the eve of kickoff, when next we meet.
Robert Weintraub heads up Bengals coverage for Cincinnati Magazine and has written for The New York Times, Grantland, Slate, and Deadspin. Follow him on Twitter at @robwein.
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