{"id":17233,"date":"2025-05-02T06:29:13","date_gmt":"2025-05-02T06:29:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/17233\/"},"modified":"2025-05-02T06:29:13","modified_gmt":"2025-05-02T06:29:13","slug":"bengals-improvement-plan-in-2025-nfl-season-joe-burrow-al-golden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/17233\/","title":{"rendered":"Bengals improvement plan in 2025 NFL season? Joe Burrow, Al Golden"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"play\"<\/p>\n

Zac Taylor speaks about Cincinnati Bengals 2025 NFL draft picks video<\/p>\n

Cincinnati Bengals head coach Zac Taylor speaks at a press conference after Bengals make all their picks for the 2025 NFL Draft.<\/p>\n

Ask columnist Jason Williams anything \u2212 sports or non-sports \u2013 and he\u2019ll pick some of your questions and comments from his inbox and respond on Cincinnati.com. Email:\u00a0jwilliams@enquirer.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Message: There was a lot of hype going into the offseason. It\u2019s huge the Bengals got contract extensions for (Ja\u2019Marr) Chase and (Tee) Higgins. But the Bengals did very little in free agency and their draft has been widely criticized. Looking at this coming season, I can\u2019t help but wonder: Are they going to be any better?<\/p>\n

Reply: The Bengals haven\u2019t done nearly enough to confidently say they\u2019re going to be a playoff team. This turned out to be an offseason built on hope rather than going all in to try to join the AFC elite.<\/p>\n

What a disappointment for Bengals fans, but no one should be surprised.<\/p>\n

The Bengals\u2019 puzzling draft strategy and haul of new players is exactly what you\u2019d expect from an organization that has a skeleton scouting department. Its free agency haul is exactly what you\u2019d expect from an organization that hates spending money on players who don\u2019t play quarterback and wide receiver.<\/p>\n

Bengals signing Dax Hill Bengals decide to exercise 5th-year option on Dax Hill<\/a><\/p>\n

Bengals draft analysis Surprise pick? Best value? Bengals finalize 2025 draft class and here’s what we learned<\/a><\/p>\n

Ownership has put more pressure on the understaffed player evaluation department by tying up so much money in Joe Burrow, Chase and Higgins. The Bengals must build their defense through the draft, and, well, good luck with that.<\/p>\n

Cincinnati needed a sure-thing, Day 1 starter on the defensive line with its first-round draft pick \u2013 especially in a draft where the Bengals had only six picks and with so many holes to fill on defense. The Bengals needed a guy who can sack the quarterback.<\/p>\n

Instead, they took a project in defensive end Shemar Stewart<\/a>, a guy who rarely sacked the quarterback in college.<\/p>\n

The Bengals passed on better defensive line prospects such as Oregon defensive tackle Derrick Harmon and Marshall edge rusher Mike Green. But of course, both Harmon and Green were good enough for AFC North rivals Pittsburgh and Baltimore to draft.<\/p>\n

Go look at what the Chiefs did in the draft. They have stars Chris Jones and George Karlaftis on the defensive line, and yet Kansas City still used two of its first three picks on defensive linemen.<\/p>\n

Win in the trenches. Win a Lombardi Trophy.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the Bengals did nothing in free agency or the draft to improve at safety, where Cincinnati has been woeful ever since it let Jessie Bates leave town in 2023. The Bengals wasted a sixth-round draft pick on a running back when they have three veterans already at a position they don\u2019t value.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the one position the Bengals improved this offseason is at linebacker, though they used a second-round pick on South Carolina\u2019s Demetrius Knight Jr.<\/a>, whom they probably could\u2019ve gotten in the third or fourth round. They got two linebackers in the draft and signed veteran Oren Burks, who won a Super Bowl ring in Philadelphia.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, the Bengals seem to be going into the 2025 season banking on these two things happening:<\/p>\n

\u220e Outscoring opponents with Burrow, Chase and Higgins. How\u2019d that work out last season?<\/p>\n

\u220e New defensive coordinator Al Golden magically fixing the defense. Fantastic coach, but he\u2019ll only be able to do so much with a defense that still has massive holes and is mostly void of talent besides Trey Hendrickson.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zac Taylor speaks about Cincinnati Bengals 2025 NFL draft picks video Cincinnati Bengals head coach Zac Taylor speaks…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17234,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2053],"tags":[2338,2345,247,265,825,228,1574,2120,3534,227,256,2296,8409,8417,324,321,19,7,2339,8886,8884,8633,1573,1577,248,267,330,88,6,15,4779,8887,320,333,8410,245,338,325,9,266,8885,2978],"class_list":{"0":"post-17233","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cincinnati-bengals","8":"tag-al","9":"tag-al-golden","10":"tag-american","11":"tag-american-football","12":"tag-american-football-conference","13":"tag-bengals","14":"tag-burrow","15":"tag-central","16":"tag-chase","17":"tag-cincinnati","18":"tag-cincinnati-bengals","19":"tag-cincinnatibengals","20":"tag-columnists","21":"tag-columnists-opinions","22":"tag-conference","23":"tag-content","24":"tag-draft","25":"tag-football","26":"tag-golden","27":"tag-higgins","28":"tag-jamarr","29":"tag-jamarr-chase","30":"tag-joe","31":"tag-joe-burrow","32":"tag-national","33":"tag-national-sports","34":"tag-negative","35":"tag-news","36":"tag-nfl","37":"tag-nfl-draft","38":"tag-oh","39":"tag-oh-content-sharing-bengals-central","40":"tag-opinion","41":"tag-opinion-content","42":"tag-opinions","43":"tag-overall","44":"tag-overall-negative","45":"tag-sharing","46":"tag-sports","47":"tag-sports-news","48":"tag-tee","49":"tag-tee-higgins"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17233\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}