The Cincinnati Bengals are favored to win 15 of their 17 games during the upcoming NFL regular season. Cincinnati is coming off a year where they missed the playoffs for the third consecutive season. They finished with a losing record of 6-11, good for third place in the AFC North. The Bengals have had two major issues that have hindered them during this stretch.
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The first is that their defense has fallen off a cliff compared to the level of play they sustained in 2021 and 2022, when they ranked among the top 10 units in the league in both seasons. That defense was the driving force behind their back-to-back AFC Championship Game appearances. Since then, however, the unit has struggled significantly. The second issue is quarterback Joe Burrow’s availability.
Burrow has established himself as one of the most talented quarterbacks in the NFL. But he has also become one of the league’s most injury-prone players. Through his first six seasons, he has missed significant time due to injury in three of them. The Bengals have invested nearly all of their resources into the offense at Burrow’s request. They have made sure to keep the league’s best wide receiver duo intact with Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins.
Despite the lack of talent on the defensive side of the ball, Burrow has recently expressed optimism about the roster Cincinnati has assembled for 2026. He even compared this team to the 2019 LSU Tigers team that he and Chase played for. That comparison seems unrealistic considering that LSU went undefeated, won the national championship, and is widely considered one of the greatest college football teams of all time.
Meanwhile, the Bengals will likely not even be the best team in their own division this season, even with a healthy Burrow. If Burrow is unable to stay on the field again this year, conversations about a potential rebuild could intensify, with rumors of the Bengals trading key players for future draft picks becoming louder. The future of this era of Bengals football could be heading toward an uncertain and disappointing conclusion.
