It’s hard not to look back at the Bengals’ 2021 draft and wonder what might have happened if Cincinnati had gone all the way in on Penei Sewell.
That thought is bound to set off alarms for Bengals fans, because the point here is not that the team should have taken Sewell instead of Ja’Marr Chase with the No. 5 overall pick. Chase has been exactly what a franchise wants from a top pick: a Triple Crown winner and, arguably, the best receiver in football.
The bigger idea is more ambitious than that. Cincinnati should have found a way to land both Chase and Sewell in that draft, maximizing Joe Burrow’s rookie-contract window with two premium pieces in place.
I had floated a version of that multiverse scenario before the 2021 NFL Draft, and I once took it even further by imagining a path that included Chase, Sewell, and Kyle Pitts. Now the focus is narrowed to Sewell alone, and to what it would have taken for the Bengals to move up from No. 5 to the No. 7 pick held by the Detroit Lions.
That interest in Sewell isn’t random. ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler is polling executives, scouts, and coaches on the top 10 players at each position, and Sewell sits at No. 1 on the offensive tackle list.
That lines up with the way he was viewed coming out of the draft, and with the way he has played since. Even as a rookie, he was already excellent.
The trade package I came up with would have sent Cincinnati picks that eventually became Jackson Carman, Dax Hill, Cam Taylor-Britt, Myles Murphy, and Jordan Battle. I even asked ChatGPT whether the deal was realistic, and the response was that it “resembles the scale of real top-10 trade-ups we’ve seen, and it’s built around the kind of assets NFL teams actually value: future firsts and second-rounders, not lots of late-round selections. If I were putting a number on it, I’d say there’s roughly a 75% chance Detroit at least seriously engages and has a legitimate chance of accepting this package, assuming there isn’t a competing offer that's clearly better and the Bengals are targeting a player they view as a true franchise cornerstone.”
That’s a number I’d take.
And if you’re comparing what Cincinnati would have given up to what those players have become, the case gets even easier. Would you swap Carman, who busted, for Sewell?
What about Cam Taylor-Britt, who flamed out and is off the team, Dax Hill, who might finally stick at his third different position, Myles Murphy, who showed some life in the second half of Year 3, and Battle, who has settled in as a decent starting safety? For the best offensive tackle in the sport today, that feels like an easy yes.
My own draft confidence has been pretty strong since I really started digging into the NFL Draft in 2020. The prospects I’ve felt best about are Sewell, Burrow, Derek Stingley Jr., and Caleb Williams. That’s a .750 hit rate so far, and Williams is now the new Madden cover guy, for whatever that’s worth.
There’s also a broader point here about Cincinnati’s 2021 offseason, which was still a major success even without this fantasy trade. The Bengals added Trey Hendrickson, D.J. Reader, Chidobe Awuzie, and Mike Hilton in free agency, and the Chase pick was the easiest call of the bunch because it reunited Burrow with his former LSU teammate.
The front office drifted back toward its old habits after that, but things changed when Burrow publicly wondered last season whether football was fun anymore. Since then, the Bengals have acted with far more urgency. They rebuilt the defensive line with Dexter Lawrence, Boye Mafe, Jonathan Allen, and second-round pick Cashius Howell, and they finally addressed safety with two-time Chiefs Super Bowl champ Bryan Cook after the position had been an issue since Jessie Bates left following the 2022 season.
So yes, there’s still room to daydream about what a truly aggressive 2021 might have looked like. But the bigger reality around 1 Paycor Stadium is a lot better now than it was a year ago, and even with Sewell thriving somewhere else, a Super Bowl breakthrough could still be in play.
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This time, Cincinnati may have a little more room to manage it. With Joe Flacco and Josh Johnson in the quarterback room, and with the coaching staff still intact and all 11 offensive starters back, the Bengals are in a better position to ease Burrows workload during 2026 camp without losing much continuity on offense. For a team built around its quarterback, that kind of stability could matter as much as anything else. [Read more 🡒]