The Cincinnati Bengals are playing with fire as Week 1 gets dangerously close. They do not have a competent backup offensive tackle to spell the likes of Orlando Brown Jr. or Amarius Mims if either of them goes down, which is dreadful news for oft-injured quarterback Joe Burrow.
I mean shoot, Brown can barely get the job done at left tackle as it is. Or at least that's where his career trajectory and discouraging pass protection lapse in the preseason opener would suggest.
We're entering full-blown Hakeem Adeniji, Isaiah Prince, and Jackson Carman territory here, Who Dey Nation. That's the caliber of tackle Jalen Rivers and Cody Ford have proven to be.
Jalen Rivers and Cody Ford are unacceptable Bengals swing tackle candidates
How the Bengals personnel department was content to stroll into training camp with Cody Ford as the default swing tackle is beyond me. Ford has never been good at that spot. He can barely function as a guard.
Second-year fifth-round pick Jalen Rivers was so bad at right guard in 2025 that Ford has taken his spot there, and the Bengals are scrambling by sticking Rivers at left tackle. That pair got plenty of run in the Bears preseason game, and guess how they fared? Not very well!
Ford registered a 0.0 pass blocking grade from PFF on 30 such snaps. Rivers surrendered multiple pressures and looked utterly overwhelmed against Chicago's backups.
Wanna know what Zac Taylor had to say about the swing tackle "competition" after watching that pathetic display? He wasn't exactly effusive in his praise:
"I think that's still pretty open. I think that there's guys we're still looking at, and I wouldn't say that there's any decisions that we made there. [...] If a backup tackle's got to go in the game, and we want to keep playing the way that we play, just got to be all trusting in the game. And so I there's plenty of competition there, and we’ve still got two weeks to go with it."
Taylor used words like "trust" and "consistency." Both of those attributes are lacking in Rivers and Ford.
It's to the point where Javon Foster is probably the best option. Cool, except that the Jaguars couldn't wait to get rid of him last offseason despite selecting Foster in the fourth round of the 2024 draft.
I'm sure everything is fine!
Bengals' best trade partner has zero incentive to help them
I believe with 100% conviction that the two best teams in the AFC this season will be the Bengals and the Houston Texans. Because of that, I can't see a world where Houston willingly helps out Cincinnati with this five-alarm swing tackle fire.
It's such a bummer, too, because the Texans have ex-Bengal Trent Brown as the perfect fit. If Cincinnati's brass paid enough compensation-wise, they might even convince Houston to move off 2024 second-round pick Blake Fisher.
There's a world in which Trent Brown and Fisher could even be better starting options than Orlando Brown Jr., which makes a trade all the more unlikely.
So who've we got to look forward to? Another ex-Jaguar in Cam Robinson? Someone else? I'm sure I don't know!
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