The Cincinnati Bengals had a rough 2024. A season removed from losing quarterback Joe Burrow mid-season, hopes were still high that they could make a deep run in the playoffs like in 2021 and 2022.<\/p>\n
That didn\u2019t happen. You could blame 2024 on a lot of different things. They didn\u2019t get the benefit of the whistle, the ball didn\u2019t bounce their way as often, Evan McPherson had an off year, or the defense couldn\u2019t stop just about anyone.<\/p>\n
What could change to get over 10 wins?<\/p>\n
That is the question. On paper, you won\u2019t find too many changes to Cincinnati\u2019s roster. Some off-field issues aren\u2019t as prevalent, though.<\/p>\n
Last season, Ja\u2019Marr Chase \u201cheld-in\u201d for a new contract. He missed a vast majority of training camp, returning to the field a few days before the start of the season. This will be Burrow and Chase\u2019s first healthy offseason together in the league. You can also throw Tee Higgins in that, as he now doesn\u2019t have a contract issue looming either. That trio being able to practice this whole time and hit the regular season running will hopefully help stop any slow starts.<\/p>\n
McPherson is sort of an underrated area that could really push the Bengals over that 10-win mark. There were a handful of games where missed kicks directly led to losses instead of wins. We know now that he was dealing with some soreness that eventually led to him tearing his abductor muscle in December. If he can return to form, that would be huge.<\/p>\n
General bad luck is something every team deals with. It seems Cincinnati was caught in several situations where the refs would throw flags when you\u2019d never see them thrown, and then in those same situations, not receive the flag to benefit in the same situations. This extends beyond just ref calls. Passes bouncing off hands or fumbles just bounce perfectly to the other team. Things you can\u2019t really control. Those who watched last season will tell you that it was absurd the number of times the ball just didn\u2019t bounce the Bengals\u2019 way.<\/p>\n
What do you think? Can the Bengals get over that 10-win mark?<\/p>\n
FanDuel Sportsbook<\/a> is holding a Flash Sale on Tuesday, August 26 where you can get profit boost tokens around various futures markets throughout the day. The markets will be split up throughout the day, but they will include odds to win the Super Bowl and hypothetical Super Bowl matchups, odds to make or miss the playoffs, win totals, division winners, and player milestones. Head over to FanDuel Sportsbook<\/a> on Tuesday to take advantage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Cincinnati Bengals had a rough 2024. A season removed from losing quarterback Joe Burrow mid-season, hopes were…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":310449,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2053],"tags":[228,227,256,17728,2296,7,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-310448","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cincinnati-bengals","8":"tag-bengals","9":"tag-cincinnati","10":"tag-cincinnati-bengals","11":"tag-cincinnati-bengals-odds","12":"tag-cincinnatibengals","13":"tag-football","14":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115076468037037764","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310448","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=310448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310448\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/310449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}