For two straight years, the defense of the Cincinnati Bengals held the team back and out of the playoffs.<\/p>\n
Late last season, Joe Burrow indicated that he wasn\u2019t happy with the franchise\u2019s state of affairs.<\/p>\n
Then, Duke Tobin made what seemed like a ridiculous claim that he has always been \u201call in\u201d.<\/p>\n
Well, now, for the first time, it actually looks like it, thanks to the trade for New York Giants All-Pro defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence. And one can\u2019t help but think that a lot of it has to do with the guy throwing the ball.<\/p>\n
Giving up the 10th overall pick for a veteran player is a big move for most franchises. But for the Bengals, it\u2019s earth-shattering.<\/p>\n
They do, after all, really love their NFL Draft picks and rarely even move up in the Draft, as they don\u2019t like giving up even late-round picks.<\/p>\n
So this move must\u2019ve really hurt, but Tobin and company knew there was no quick fix in the Draft, leaving them with no option other than adding a player of Lawrence\u2019s caliber.<\/p>\n
With Burrow approaching 30 years old and the injuries piling up, the Bengals know using PR spin about the salary cap or selling fans on the potential of underperforming younger players just won\u2019t cut it anymore.<\/p>\n
So this trade is huge, not just because of what it can do to transform the defense in 2026, but for the new precedent it has set for a franchise that has historically been far too passive in its roster building.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For two straight years, the defense of the Cincinnati Bengals held the team back and out of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":869848,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2053],"tags":[228,227,256,4226,2296,7,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-869847","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-analysis","12":"tag-cincinnatibengals","13":"tag-football","14":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116431053784050215","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869847","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=869847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869847\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/869848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=869847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=869847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=869847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}