The Bengals can still make a pretty loud case for themselves entering 2026. Joe Burrow is there.
Ja’Marr Chase is there. Tee Higgins is there.
The offense, on paper, has the kind of firepower that makes people start talking about January before the season even gets rolling.
CBS Sports still isn’t ready to put Cincinnati in the top tier of NFL rosters, though. In a ranking of the league’s top 16 rosters, Jordan Dajani and Tyler Sullivan slotted the Bengals at No.
- That put them just behind the Kansas City Chiefs and just ahead of the Dallas Cowboys.
The biggest reason for that placement was simple: the other side of the ball. Dajani and Sullivan pointed to Cincinnati’s quarterback room as its best unit, but they also tagged linebacker as the weakest position group and the pass rush as the roster’s biggest unanswered question.
That quarterback praise came with no shortage of confidence. “The Cincinnati Bengals have arguably the best quarterback room in the NFL," Dajani and Sullivan wrote.
Burrow’s resume explains why. He sits among the NFL’s top five quarterbacks in completion percentage, passing yards per game, and touchdown-to-interception ratio. His average of 34.7 touchdown passes over 17 games is the second-most in league history, trailing only Patrick Mahomes.
Then there’s Joe Flacco, the veteran backup who gives Cincinnati an experienced insurance policy behind a quarterback who has dealt with injuries. In his second start for the Bengals last season, the 41-year-old went off for 342 yards and three touchdowns without throwing an interception in a win over the Pittsburgh Steelers.
The offense goes well beyond the quarterback room, too. Burrow is again working with Chase, Higgins, and one of the deepest receiving groups in football. That kind of talent is exactly why Cincinnati can look so dangerous and still land outside the top 10 in a roster ranking built on the whole picture.
The concern, as CBS sees it, is a defense that struggled in 2025 and still has some proving to do. Linebacker drew the label as the team’s weakest area even though Demetrius Knight Jr. and Barrett Carter each piled up 106 tackles as rookies. Their production was real, but so was the growing pain that came with it.
Defensive coordinator Al Golden isn’t backing away from that group. “You guys know how I feel about them-love them. I stood on the table for them,” Golden said earlier this month
Knight added three sacks, seven passes defended, and two interceptions in his first season. Carter finished with four passes defended and an interception while taking on more responsibility in Golden’s defense.
The pass rush is the other major piece of the puzzle, especially after Trey Hendrickson’s departure. “We could put the entire ‘defense’ here, but the pass rush stands out," Dajani and Sullivan wrote.
Right now, Myles Murphy and Boye Mafe are listed as starters, with Shemar Stewart and Cashius Howell expected to get rotation snaps. Murphy, Stewart, and Mafe have combined for 29.5 career sacks, which makes the group intriguing but far from a finished product.
Hendrickson’s Cincinnati run set a high bar. He had 39 sacks over his final three seasons with the Bengals. Nobody is asking one player to swallow all of that production whole, but Cincinnati will need steady work from multiple defenders if this new-look front is going to hold up.
That’s where the Bengals’ ranking lives. The offense is good enough to carry real ambition. The defense, especially the young linebackers and the rebuilt pass rush, has to show it can keep pace if Cincinnati wants to move into the league’s elite class.
In Other News...
Bengals Practice Squad Decisions Just Put New Pressure On Roster Depth
After the waiver wire deadline passed, Cincinnati settled its 16-man practice squad and gave a clearer picture of how it wants to protect its depth heading into the season. The group includes Sean Clifford, Myles Hinton, Bralyn Lux, Kendall Milton and Russ Yeast, and it also reflects a front office still trying to build enough insurance around the roster for the long haul.
Hinton is the most notable addition from a depth standpoint after the Bengals claimed the second-year offensive tackle from Michigan off waivers to help shore up the tackle room. Beyond him, the practice squad is also a holding area for a few players who were part of the late-roster conversation, with some in line to help on special teams and others needing more time to develop before they can push for active-roster work. [Read more 🡒]
Bengals Practice Squad Could Bring Back Familiar Faces And A Few Surprises
The Bengals have trimmed to their 53-man roster, and now the attention shifts to how Cincinnati fills out its practice squad. With a projected 16 spots available, the setup opens the door for some familiar faces to circle back if they clear waivers, along with a few names the staff could decide are worth keeping close as the season approaches.
The next day or so will sort out whether those released players can return, and whether the Bengals make any outside additions before the waiver deadline passes. It is the kind of roster shuffle that can quietly matter later in the year, especially for a team trying to preserve continuity while also leaving room for a surprise or two. [Read more 🡒]
Bengals Just Took Another Painful Hit From The Jessie Bates Fallout
The Bengals roster shuffle took another sharp turn this week when McKinnley Jackson, a third-round compensatory pick in 2024, was waived after failing to crack the initial 53-man group. His path was already narrowing before the cut, with the trade for Dexter Lawrence and the signing of T.J. Slaton squeezing the room in the defensive interior and making every rep even more important.
Jacksons exit adds to the uneasy early return on Cincinnatis 2024 draft class, which has already seen several picks waived or fighting just to stay in the picture. For a team trying to stabilize its trenches and build around a few core veterans, the bigger concern is how quickly a young class can go from hope to uncertainty when the roster starts turning over this fast. [Read more 🡒]