The Bengals’ offensive line didn’t just hold up in Sunday’s 33-27 win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. It looked like a group that might be turning into one of Cincinnati’s real assets.
That’s a sharp contrast to the way the unit was viewed entering the 2026 season. Even with every starter back from a promising 2025 campaign, the line got brushed aside by outside evaluators, with one analyst ranking it among the five worst offensive lines in the NFL.
On Sunday, Joe Burrow got the kind of protection that lets an offense breathe. He spent most of the day with a clean pocket, took only one sack, and needed that steady wall in front of him as Cincinnati finished off the win.
The numbers backed up the eye test. As of Sunday evening, Pro Football Focus had the Bengals at a 76.3 pass-blocking grade against Tampa Bay. That mark would have stood as one of the team’s better pass-blocking performances over the last two seasons, with only three games graded higher in all of 2025 and just one in 2024.
At the center of that performance was right tackle Amarius Mims, who kept making his case as a major reason for the line’s rise. The 18th overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft out of Georgia put together the best pass-protection game of his career.
Mims played 38 pass-blocking snaps and didn’t surrender a single pressure. PFF gave him an 84.5 pass-blocking grade, a number that would have ranked sixth among all offensive tackles in the NFL over the course of last season.
He also did it against a matchup that mattered. Mims spent most of the afternoon blocking Buccaneers first-round pick Rueben Bain Jr., a player who had been a popular mock draft target for the Bengals this offseason before they traded the 10th overall pick for Dexter Lawrence.
Bain never made much of a dent. He finished with a 40.1 PFF grade and no pressures, a quiet day against Mims and a big reason Cincinnati’s line walked away from Sunday looking a lot different than the skepticism that greeted it before the season.
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