Could the Cincinnati Bengals have had a much better offseason? Methinks not.
Joe Burrow is raving about the front office's team-building strategy, which was more like "strategery" before this calendar year. The defense is way better. The offense is running it back with every starter from last year (not a bad thing!).
What's not to like? That's the prevailing sentiment amongst execs across the league anyway.
Jason La Canfora's reporting reveals radical reversal of Bengals' league-wide perception
FanSided's Jason La Canfora hammered out his latest column and featured a bounty of insider information from NFL executives. All of it to do with none other than Burrow and the Bengals.
Peep this quote from an anonymous GM, regarding Burrow and the defensive reinforcements Cincinnati supplied him with this offseason:
“The last time they had a defense, he almost went to the Super Bowl...and the year before, they probably should have won the Super Bowl. There’s no reason for him not to have a huge year.”
Yeah, if Burrow didn't have such brutally bad offensive lines in either of those years — nay, a single additional competent blocker in front of him on either unit — we could be looking at back-to-back Super Bowl champs.
As it was, the Bengals lost 23-20 to the Rams in Super Bowl LVI, and by the exact same score at Kansas City in the subsequent AFC Championship Game. That's how fine the margins are in the National Football League. Three full seasons later, Cincinnati has not returned to the playoffs.
Here's the expert opinion of another GM re: the 2026 Bengals, via La Canfora:
“I love their offseason. They might be the team to beat in the AFC.”
Some awesome stats here in this passage from JLC as well, which point to just how great Burrow is when he's firing on all cylinders — and how he tends to peak when it matters most:
"If the Bengals can actually avoid the September doldrums for once, Burrow has always been a strong finisher. He is 24-13 in November, December and January in his regular-season career with 84 touchdowns to 24 interceptions and a 104 rating (best of anyone in the NFL with at least 30 starts in those months since Burrow entered the league in 2020). We know he’s a closer, and, eventually, it would seem they wouldn’t start a season having to chase the rest of the AFC."
The beginning of that blurb is the key. Cincinnati's early-season struggles seemed to be put to bed in last year's 2-0 start. Alas, that Week 2 win over the Jaguars was the ultimate Pyrrhic victory, as Burrow went down with his unicorn-awful turf toe injury. By that I mean, one of the very few of such ailments that required surgical intervention to repair.
When last the Bengals had a losing record, it was Burrow's rookie season. That, too, was cut short by a major injury, that time to his knee.
What did Cincinnati do? Capitalized on the fifth overall pick by selecting Ja'Marr Chase. What did the Bengals do this time around? Traded the 10th pick in the draft for All-Pro nose tackle Dexter Lawrence.
As much of a bummer as the Trey Hendrickson saga was, Lawrence is the force multiplier this team needed. He can impact the pass rush and help rescue the league's reigning 32nd-ranked run defense. That's far different than Hendrickson, who's a pure pass rusher off the edge.
Haters can make up all the excuses and rationalizations as to why the Bengals won't be a juggernaut this season. Even acknowledging some fandom bias here, I can confidently predict that this is a 13-win team if Joe Shiesty stays on the field for 17 games.
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