Some people are fans of the Cincinnati Bengals. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Cincinnati Bengals. This 2024 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.
Your team: The Cincinnati Bengals.
Your 2023 record: 9-8, which earned you fourth place in a division featuring future jet-ski salesman Kenny Pickett. You might glance at this record and assume Joe Burrow’s injury happened early in the season. You are dead wrong, amigo. This season was smothered in its crib well before the football gods spun the wheel on which of Burrow’s candy-glass body parts would shatter this time around. Allow me to stuff you in a tire and roll you down memory lane.
The Bengals entered Week 1 freshly anointed by the media as Super Bowl favorites (an annual tradition around here), only to get shellacked on the road by the Cleveland Browns. They kept things civil enough in the first two quarters, scoring zero points but holding the Browns to a mere field goal, until the final seconds before halftime, when a visibly checked out Deshaun Watson mailed in a touchdown to set the tenor for the rest of this slopfest. Fans were promptly treated to a BOGO deal on divisional losses the following week, with the Bengals falling short against the Ravens at home. That’s the only discount you’ll ever wring out of the Paycor Stadium experience. Mike Brown is gonna Venmo request you for the paper towels you used in the bathroom.
Any optimism you people gleaned from a win at home versus the Rams was quickly stamped out with a Week 4 dickpunch from a Tennessee Titans outfit led by Ryan Tannehill, who would lose the starting job only weeks later to a Hollister mannequin fished out of a dumpster behind a Nashville mall. The Bengals shook their keys in your face with four straight wins after that, lulling you into a blissful stupor (alarmingly easy to do) before whipping you back to consciousness with a three-game skid featuring—you guessed it—two more divisional losses! Somewhere in this melee, Joe Burrow died and the Bengals trotted out Jake Browning, which is just a name that someone plucked out of a 60-person bcc list on one of your work emails.
Circling the drain down the stretch, these Bengals eked out an overtime win against the Jags and a one-legged Trevor Lawrence. They followed this up with a pair of wins against dead-in-the-water Colts and Vikings squads, which breathed just enough life into this bloated corpse to allow Cincinnatians to belch out their playoff aspirations over steaming heaps of skyline chili. Even a loss to InfoWars correspondent Mason Rudolph and the Steelers didn’t quite slam the car door on WHO DEY nation’s fingers. You’ve seen this movie, Cincinnati:
Patrick Mahomes is, once again, a corporate suit who marches into your Rust Belt town right around Christmas and hands your dad a pink slip at the steamboat yard. The familiarity of it all must feel like a warm blanket at this point. Wrap yourself in it and indulge in its nostalgic embrace, because this stuffed shirt is here to keep things business as usual:
Your coach: Every suburban history teacher who puts on a movie for the class while he draws up plays for the JV basketball team.
Zac Taylor has precisely one more season of Super Bowl appearance goodwill before Robbie from Kenwood calls into WCKY-AM demanding Urban Meyer as his successor. This replacement-level dweeb fell ass-backward into Joe Burrow and a stable of talented wideouts that are already splintering off like parts of a space shuttle re-entering Earth’s atmosphere. He’s been carried around in a BabyBjorn strapped to defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo’s chest for so long, you’ve all forgotten he’s but a distant step-cousin in the McVay coaching family tree. Fear not, Cincinnatians, you’ll never see him again when he’s run out of town after his meal ticket snaps another licorice ligament. SPEAKING OF…
Your quarterback: A handsome vending machine for season-ending injuries—accepts cash AND cards!
We’ve reached the stage in Joe Burrow’s career where his hair is the biggest story from training camp, because the Bengals are desperate for a bit of levity to distract you from the ugly reality that they just paid 275 mil for a Gucci tracksuit stuffed with dead cicada husks. I bet you have a Google alert for the word “tweak” this time of year, just to track in real time the new and exciting ways Burrow’s body will eventually fail you at the most crucial time of the season. Thrilling!
What's new that sucks: Offensive coordinator Brian Callahan skipped town for a head coaching gig with the Titans, where he’ll be fired on the tarmac in 2026. In his place is Dan Pitcher, plucked from the in-house scrum of lackeys and given a year’s supply of Sean McVay’s hair gel to summon the offensive guru vibes (it won’t work). The Bengals quietly released what’s left of A.J. McCarron, which wouldn’t make news on any other team, but backups are guaranteed a primetime start around here so it’s best you learn who’s who in August. Undrafted QB Rocky Lombardi rolled into Cincy on a Greyhound fresh off his ninth senior year at NIU to join the likes of Jake Browning and Logan Woodside in the QB room. These men will somehow see regular-season snaps by Thanksgiving.
Wideout Tee Higgins is here to circle this toilet bowl one last time on the franchise tag before fucking off to L.A. to be overpaid by the Chargers. RB Joe Mixon got traded to the Houston Texans, where he’ll enjoy lower taxes and virtually zero laws against shooting teens on your own property. The front office redeemed a few Southwest airline points for TE Mike Gesicki, whose limbs arrived in separate boxes with a complimentary Allen wrench for assembly.
Bengals brass read the dismal NFLPA report card and decided to gussy up the locker room:
Mood lighting! Wi-Fi! Scintillating! No good deed goes unpunished around here—Mike Brown is gonna steal every catalytic converter in southwest Ohio to pay for it.
What has always sucked: Star wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase revived his annual preseason sullen pissbaby routine, this time refusing to say Patrick Mahomes’s name in an interview. This schtick is well beyond its sell-by date, growing more pathetic with each Lombardi trophy Mahomes adds to his mantle. To Chase’s credit, it’s only the second-most tiresome wide receiver grudge we’re all subjected to year over year. Chase is due a massive contract any day now, which will lock all of us in for several more years of this guy listing his grievances Arya Stark-style after each divisional-round loss (there will be many).
Just when you think things are on the up-and-up, some fresh hell awaits around every corner in this gauntlet of a conference. You might get your lick back against Mahomes in the playoffs over the next decade, but C.J. Stroud is waiting for you in the parking lot with a crowbar to finish the job.
This team crawled out of the primordial muck after decades of abject mediocrity, lucked into a gifted quarterback and his stud college receiver, beat Mahomes when it mattered, and made it all the way to the mountain top, only for Aaron Donald to make you smell his fingers before the blue and yellow confetti rained from the sky. That was your one chance at a Super Bowl ring and you fucking blew it. Joe Burrow is the finest quarterback in Bengals franchise history, and in the end all you’ll have to show for it is a lonely AFC title trophy named after the guy who founded your most hated rival.
What might not suck: Rookie OT Amarius Mims is the size of a fucking glacier, and a much needed addition to the rotation of turnstiles on the offensive line. This will buy Joey B an extra half-second before he’s running for his life on every snap. Exciting!
HEAR IT FROM BENGALS FANS!
John:
There's a great scene at the beginning of the new (very good) Pete Rose documentary on Max that perfectly encapsulates the Bengals. On the occasion of their recent Super Bowl berth, ol' Cincinnati Pete spends a couple minutes singing the praises of the Bengals, of Joe Burrow, of the city of Cincinnati itself, how much the town means to him and how great he thinks that team was. Then the director asks him who he actually bet on, and Rose laughs and says the Rams. And he was right to. I hope he won a million dollars.
I love southwestern Ohio with all my heart and soul but fuck Mike Brown and the franchise he owns, for as long as he's alive to own it.
Will:
Before arriving at the stadium for the 2023 home opener, I saw a mom chain smoking outside a parking garage while yelling at her son, “Calm the fuck down!” She was wearing an old Vontaze Burfict jersey with the nameplate duct taped and Sharpied over with “Wilson.” It might be the perfect encapsulation of our fanbase. Nobody’s even trying to break our curses since it’s our whole identity at this point.
Last year in an interview, Mike Brown used a metaphor that compared his players to a sty of corn-fed hogs. I shudder to think about how he talks about us fans in private.
When I am buried, I’m instructing my loved ones to watch the entirety of the Ram’s 75-yard Super Bowl winning drive and toss a barrage of yellow flags into my grave at the exact moment Logan Wilson is penalized. That’s when my soul really left my body anyway.
Paddy:
I'm British and back in 2012 at the Olympics in London I got talking to a couple of Americans for quite a while about their trip and sports in general. The subject turned to the NFL and they were surprised to hear that this drunk northerner from Yorkshire* supported the Bengals. They were Dolphins fans. They gave a condescending laugh and just walked away. The Bengals are that embarrassing that fucking Dolphins fans looked down on us.
Who's laughing now? Probably still them because my boy Joe Burrow** will get injured when our new O-line collapses on top of him and we're shit for the remaining 12 games
*Tip to Drew when he's doing one of his funny British accents. It's not pronounced -shire, it's -shuh. Also fuck you to you and Roth from every Brit who listens to your podcast.
**I also support LSU for some fucked up reason
Bryce:
The annual Bengals WYTS brings with it a litany of well-earned hatred towards Skyline/Gold Star Chili. What rarely comes forth is the Queen City's direct proximity to Kentucky and its bloated bourbon industry. And believe you me, watching this team for over 30 years tests your ability to "drink responsibly."
Having no good prior excuse to watch the Bengals as long as I have, finally living in the neighbor state has has earned me the privilege of directly accessing the homer commentary of Dave Lapham. His three decades of experience in the job has extended his exultative vocabulary from "Yeah baby!" to "C'mon, yeah baby!" Because I'm an illogical being, I eat this up like manna from a L.A. food truck. Even though the aforementioned "chili" connection quite analogously warns me of the quality of what I'm actually consuming.
Mike Brown speaks at a rate that makes Joe Biden look like an auctioneer and, unlike Biden, has no sense of when to leave the room. Everyone complains about the camera being on Taylor Swift during Chiefs games. What Bengals fans probably hate is that she actually looks not-out-of-place after less than a year. Meanwhile, Mike Brown grows up in football and shows up for the Super Bowl like it's holding up his visit to a farm equipment expo.
Joe Burrow showed up to training camp looking like the original Stan. You might remember this character that was in a particularly toxic relationship, not having reliable people around to keep him stable and ending up in a reckless crash. Stan, on the other hand, really liked Eminem a lot.
There is a hospital room where my wife and I spent time with our daughter in the first 72 hours of her life. It was also the same room I had the sad fortune of informing my wife one of our (admittedly many) beloved pets died. It was the same room my parents met their only grandchild; 51+ years into their marriage. And it was also the same room I watched the Bengals lose the 2022-23 AFC championship game.
Whenever I think of that room.....the game comes into my mind first. This team turns minds and hearts to sod (bluegrass sod, even).
Andy:
All signs point to 2024 being a great year for the Bengals compete for a Super Bowl (easy schedule, Tee Higgins on the franchise tag, Burrow’s money still reasonable). Unfortunately, Mike Brown is the only ancient owner who doesn’t care about getting a ring before he dies. No swings for the fences, no salary cap shenanigans. Every Bengals fan would gladly take 5 years of shittiness for one ring. Mike wants 6 years of competing for playoff spots instead.
Chris:
My team can't even protect their quarterback in fucking training camp.
Matthew:
After Burrow’s hand surgery, I read a news story (which I can no longer find) that said he and team medical staff went looking for other quarterbacks who’d suffered a similar ligament injury and came up completely blank, as in it had never happened before to a QB.
as a lifelong bengals fan I recognized this meant one of two equally probable “on-brand Bengals” things: either their newly resigned quarter-billion dollar franchise quarterback had just suffered a potentially catastrophic freak throwing hand injury for which there was no previous precedent, or the medical staff he’s working with is so inept they couldn’t find a decent recovery plan using Google. Neither seemed out of character for this team.
Chris:
I went to the week 18 game. I bought the tickets before Burrow's injury. The tickets would have been half the price if I had waited a week.
The guy sitting in front of me took a bite of his Skyline coney and immediately went "fuck, they forgot the hot dog." I enjoy Skyline, but the idea of a hot dog bun filled with nothing but Skyline chili is a disgusting thought I cant get out of my head.
This city is filled with shrines to Pete Rose even though he has spend the last 40 years being an asshole to every person who lives here. Meanwhile the only legacy that remains of Joe Morgan is the shitty run-down Honda dealership in the suburbs that bears his name.
I've waited my whole life for the Who Dey chant to die off but it never will.
The stadium plays "I don't want to work" after every Bengals score, which is both annoying and frustratingly appropriate for the organization.
Submissions for the NFL previews are now closed. Next up: Los Angeles Rams.
