Bengals Beat: The Multitude of Problems Bengals Face, And Why There’s Little Hope – Or Desire – Of Fixing The Dysfunction

CINCINNATI — There’s a long held belief in the NFL that you shouldn’t blame the players for being put in bad positions.

That is certainly true for the 2025 Cincinnati Bengals. And we’re seeing the catastrophic problems that happen when the bosses don’t know which players to build around and then the coaches don’t know how to coach them up to be in the right positions on the field.

It’s a double-whammy that is at the heart of an organization that has battled football personnel dysfunction for decades, not years. Yes, the Bengals get the obvious picks right. They draft Joe Burrow, Andy Dalton, Carson Palmer, A.J. Green, Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins. Most NFL teams that read a draft preview guide and faced with the same options would get those picks right.

But it’s the later-round picks and free agents that have failed this organization. And the fan base that has been clamoring for a adequate-sized scouting department with an actual general manager get proved right again. The Bengals are an abject failure when it comes to roster building. They can’t build a defense. They struggled for a decade to get the offensive line right and still have questions about how their interior line will work out years from now.

The Bengals sit 3-5 after Sunday’s 39-38 choke job to the Jets but still only a 1.5 games behind the first-place Steelers in the AFC North. The season is not over by any stretch. But this isn’t about the standings. Sunday’s loss underscores a much deeper issue that’s been around since 1991: The unwillingness of the franchise to do whatever it takes to build a functional and competent football front office.

Sunday, of course, the focus was on the defense. They allowed 502 total yards to a winless Jets team that didn’t know who their quarterback was going to be 48 hours before kickoff. The tackling was atrocious again. Eight weeks in and the Bengals can’t figure out how to bring a ball carrier to the ground. Yes, Breece Hall is a Pro Bowl caliber running back. But the Bengals made him look like Barry Sanders Sunday, running for 133 yards on 18 carries.

Remember, this Jets offense was without top receivers Garrett Wilson and Josh Reynolds on Sunday. The Bengals allowed Justin Fields to complete his first six passes on the day and 21-of-32 on the day for 244 yards and a touchdown. The Bengals concept of bringing in TJ Slaton to complement Kris Jenkins and BJ Hill has failed badly in the first eight weeks, as the Bengals still haven’t found a way to consistently stop the run. On the edge, Trey Hendrickson is the only one capable of getting to the quarterback and he got hurt Sunday late in the first half and re-injured his hip. Myles Murphy and Joseph Ossai haven’t stepped up into any meaningful role and the Bengals are bottom five in pass rush win rate in the NFL.

First-rounder Shemar “measureables” Stewart hasn’t reached any type of potential, in part because of an ankle injury. Jordan Battle and Geno Stone have been serviceable but nothing more. Battle mysteriously stopped without hitting Fields on a safety pressure Sunday on New York’s first touchdown. The linebackers are a mess because they’re learning on the fly and shooting the wrong gaps. Logan Wilson and Cam Taylor-Britt have been benched at different times. Josh Newton is a backup/rotational corner. Dax Hill and DJ Hill have progressed nicely.

Former defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo was fired as the scapegoat after last season. Al Golden now knows the problems Anarumo had in getting mediocre talent to play every down in the NFL. Golden was hailed as the guy who could get first and second-year players to play at a different level. Turns out in the NFL, it’s a little more challenging than that when the starting talent isn’t on your roster, and you’re hoping they rise to the occasion instead of knowing they can.

The players aren’t the primary problem. The people drafting and signing them and deciding they can stand up under the rigors of NFL competition is the problem – a huge problem. Without fixing this and creating a functional front office, the Bengals have zero chance of sustaining success. Again, as has been noted in this space countless times, the Bengals have reached the Super Bowl three times and in each case, the team has reverted to mediocrity (or worse) within three seasons of that appearance. The Bengals have never been committed to or capable of building a front office that sustains long-term success.

The Bengals have some pieces on defense but a functional NFL team committed to winning with a franchise quarterback like Joe Burrow would find a way to bring in veteran pieces and leaders to build around so the entirety of the defense doesn’t fall on rookies like Demetrius Knight Jr., Barrett Carter and Shemar Stewart. They all look like they could have potential but all have been exposed because the front office did a horrific job of giving them support. And the leaders they thought they had around them like Logan Wilson, BJ Hill, TJ Slaton, Geno Stone and Trey Hendrickson have either been hurt or fallen off the cliff in terms of performance and production.

In the wake of Sunday’s 39-38 meltdown to the previously winless New York Jets at Paycor, several problems have been exposed. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the Bengals organization has never shown a commitment to making the necessary improvements required to overhaul and change the way football business is done, and they’re likely not about to start now.

Paul Brown and son Mike proudly defended the way they do business as loyalty back in the day when they were supporting the likes of Sam Wyche and David Shula. But loyalty is a crutch for stubbornness and arrogance when you fail time after time after time, year after year after year to show you know how to build a competent roster around star players.

Personnel department:

Duke Tobin is not the general manager. The Bengals don’t believe in one because that would mean delegating responsibility of the roster to someone else. Tobin is responsible for the draft and it’s been an total and utter disaster the last five years, save the obvious exceptions of Burrow, Chase, Higgins, Chase Brown, Amarius Mims, Dax Hill and DJ Turner. When you’re the Bengals, you can’t miss on picks like first-rounder Myles Murphy, second-rounder Kris Jenkins and three third-rounders of the last three drafts, including McKinnley Jackson, Jermaine Burton, Jordan Battle and fourth-rounder Charlie Jones.

Scouting:

The lack of commitment to this area is well documented and it rears its ugly head when the aforementioned bad drafts and misses get discussed. The Bengals traditionally have had the smallest department in the NFL but expanded by three with the hiring of scouts Josh Hinch and Tyler Ramsey, and Trey LaBounty as a scouting research analyst. The Bengals either don’t have enough eyes scouring video and reviewing players or the ones they do have aren’t seeing players who project to the physical style the NFL demands, especially in the trenches.

Coaching:

Zac Taylor knows full well that, while he can beg and plead for players to “step up and make a play”, there’s zero excuse for coaching a game plan that allowed a 15-point fourth-quarter lead to evaporate and a 38-24 advantage to turn into a 39-38 loss to a quarterback who was about to be benched because his owner thought he was the problem. Sunday, Taylor and his staff were outcoached by Aaron Glenn and a Jets staff that was the laughing stock of the New York media midweek because he wasn’t going to give the Bengals the advantage of knowing who he was starting at quarterback Sunday. Turns out, he was spot on and it’s Taylor and his staff that were turned into a laughing stock of the NFL Sunday for losing to the only winless team in the NFL through seven weeks. The Bengals were gashing the Jets all game long until the final two drives when, with 7:48 left and leading 38-24, Taylor called three straight passes. It’s almost as if Taylor was embarrassed to put the game away with a running game and had to remind everyone that the Bengals can still throw the ball around the field. It was the crack of the door the Jets needed as the Bengals went three-and-out and Flacco got sacked on third down and left the game briefly when he was injured.

“Not acceptable,” Taylor said. “Humbling for us, certainly. (We) never got a chance to break that game open like we felt we were capable of. (We had) two opportunities at the end of the game there to close it out on offense, and defensively to get guys on the ground. (The) tackling wasn’t good enough. So, we’re not going to look at anything after that and say anything was good enough after that loss. (It was) humbling, and we’re really going to have to dig deep to bounce back next week.”

Why did the game slip away?

“I don’t know. I wish I had that reason for you. Someone’s got to step up and make a play. Someone’s going to (have to) make a point either way just to separate that game for us — create a turnover, getting on the ground, third down, win offensively explosive play in the game — just never happened for us. We just needed somebody to rise up and make a play. Someone just hold the fort down. I didn’t see enough of that today. I think someone needs to step up and lead the group. That’s what I’m waiting to see. Someone step up and lead the group and take some accountability over there, and get this thing going the right way.”

Ownership:

What all of the above really comes down to is how much tolerance is there for mediocrity. The Bengals ownership family of Brown and Blackburn have overseen the malaise of the franchise for decades. It goes through peaks where the team looks to be competitive and enjoys a modicum of success but the fans sense that it’s only temporary. There’s no long-term commitment to excellence, to coin a phrase from Al Davis. Until ownership decides they’ve seen enough and overhaul the football operation, there’s no reason not to expect more meltdowns like the one that left the entire Bengals locker room questioning themselves.