This highly successful iteration of the Bengals was built conservatively. Drafting Joe Burrow first overall was as safe a selection as any team could make. Ja’Marr Chase vs. Penei Sewell was a fun philosophical exercise, but you couldn’t go wrong with either.
Outside of the top five in the draft, Cincinnati’s strategy under Duke Tobin and Zac Taylor has been to target good citizens with a high floor, reliable if unlikely to become stars. The free agent signings of note—Hendrickson, Reader, Hilton, Awuzie, Bell, Karras, Cappa, Brown—were solid investments of good but hardly cap-busting money. Overall, the strategy has worked out extremely well.
But there’s comes a time when you gotta push your chips to the middle of the table if you want to win the jackpot, and Cincinnati did just that in last weekend’s draft. Looking ahead to a rapidly arriving future where Burrow and Chase will eat a gluttonous amount of cap space between them, the Bengals decided the time was nigh to try and find their next wave of key players, starting with tackle Amarius Mims, their first round pick at 18th overall.
Mims, as everyone knows after two months of exhaustive draft discussion, is unusually immense (6-foot-8, 340) and gifted but is equally unproven, having managed just eight starts at the University of Georgia football factory. He grew up about two hours south from where I am writing this, in Bleckley County, Georgia, where he was the proverbial big fish in a little pond (more accurately, a whale shark in a puddle). He was a major five-star recruit in the 2021 class and chose UGA over Alabama after an intense showdown/bidding war. That may explain the difference in tone between Kirby Smart’s take on Mims (“What does eight starts matter? Would you rather have someone who started 27 games and played against nobody, or somebody who played against first-round draft picks every day in practice? I know which one I’m picking.”) and Nick Saban’s, who questioned Mims’ dedication when the Bulldog came out of the 2023 SEC Championship game after reinjuring his ankle.
Ah, the injury concern. The lack of snaps doesn’t bother me a bunch in this case, given Mims’ talent—as teammate and fellow NFL draftee Sedrick Van Pran said of him, “You don’t need 1,000 reps when you have his gifts from God.” But Mims is a huge fellow with apparently fragile underpinnings. He required tightrope surgery on his bad ankle, the one that kept him from starting most of last season after playing behind NFL tackles in 2022. There is a fair history of reoccurrence and compounding injury after tightrope (which fellow UGA stars Brock Bowers and Ladd McConkey also had). Then Mims pulled up lame at the combine. Especially given Cincinnati’s history with first round picks and injury, I will be watching his every snap with breath tightly held.
There were other players the Bengals could have drafted, a cornerback or edge rusher perhaps. But given that Mims has top 10 talent and that generally players with his traits are difficult to come by without being on a crappy team, this was a gamble well worth taking. If it makes you guys feel better, it was widely rumored around Pittsburgh that the Steelers were going to take Mims if he was still there at pick 20, and reports from Kansas City indicate the Chiefs were hot to trade up and grab him. If the big fella plays to his ability and stays healthy, Cincinnati will have an elite tackle on a rookie deal, an advantage almost as crucial as having a great QB who comes cheap.
Mims was hardly the only dice roll, however, though second-round pick and defensive tackle Kris Jenkins from Michigan is a classic Bengal: smart, safe, solid. But in the third round, the team took wide receiver Jermaine Burton from Alabama, who was a borderline first round talent but fell victim to those pesky two words, “character concerns.” Much was made of his attending six programs across his high school and college career, though that’s overblown—another Georgia kid, Burton transferred to IMG Academy in Florida in order to play with a top team, then got homesick, tried to transfer back but was ruled ineligible, and wound up in California. He had issues with the UGA staff when he enrolled in Athens but played well after transferring to Bama, though Saban noted Burton “needed to keep his emotions in check.”
Anyone who watched the SEC closely knew Burton as the real deal—he was hung out to dry by quarterback Jalen Milroe early and often in 2023 and responded with a multitude of acrobatic grabs. He got into an incident when Tennessee fans stormed the field after beating the Tide—charges were dropped, and if that were Caitlin Clark or Kyle Filipowski Burton would have been hailed.
Personally, I love the pick; with Tee Higgins most likely elsewhere in 2025, the Bengals were in desperate need of an inside/outside wideout with big play ability. There is also something to be said for having a couple of spitfires in a locker room full of squares. Taylor’s desk pound and immense grin told the story—Burton profiles as someone likely to be better in the pros than in college ball. Still, it was a risk.
They kept coming. Additional third rounder McKinnley Jackson is a big hombre, which the Bengals desperately need at defensive tackle, but he underperformed at Texas A&M. Fourth rounder Erick All could be a sensational receiving and blocking menace at tight end, but he missed one year with spinal surgery and tore his ACL last season. Sixth round tight end Tanner McLachlan is 25.
Meanwhile, Cincinnati didn’t pick a running back despite making all 10 of their draft choices, leaving them without a big back. New addition Zack Moss and second-year speedster Chase Brown top out at 215 pounds, where Joe Mixon was closer to 225. Nor did they select an interior offensive lineman, save for their final pick, Matt Lee, who was a steal at that spot and could eventually start at center, but he can’t back up at guard. Last year the starting five somehow got through all 17 games without getting hurt. A repeat is highly unlikely, and depth remains a concern.
The Bengals had a clear plan for offseason improvement: Get bigger, get faster, and stop giving up giant chunks of yards on defense. Free agent signings Mike Gesicki (tight end) and Geno Stone and old friend Vonn Bell at safety are aimed at keeping the explosive plays in the plus column, while new defensive tackle Sheldon Rankins is a speedy, penetrative-style player. The idea is to recapture some of the Home Run Derby feel of 2021 while not seeing the backs of so many opponents jerseys, as happened last season. The addition of Mims, the two new D-tackles, and Rankins also improved their talent along the line of scrimmage; there was so much talk about the “trenches” before the draft I thought the Bengals were relocating from the AFC North to the Western Front.
As the draft proved, there was also an impetus on gunning for high-end talent in order to restock the larder for the coming years. If in a couple of years Mims is swallowing up Myles Garrett and T.J. Watt, Jenkins is outmuscling new Steelers center Zach Frazier, Jackson is knocking Tyler Linderbaum into the backfield, and Burton & Co. are making defenses pay mightily for concentrating on Chase, then we’ll look back at this draft as a foundational one for the next Super Bowl run.
There are a lot of “ifs” in there, no doubt. Let’s hope fortune really does favor the bold.
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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