‘The Athletic Football Show’ previews the 2026 Cincinnati Bengals

“The Athletic Football Show” is previewing all 32 teams before the start of the 2026 NFL season. Below are select quotes from the show’s preview of the Cincinnati Bengals. The quotes are edited for clarity. You can watch the whole preview on YouTube and in the embedded video below, or listen to the full AFC North preview wherever you get your podcasts.

Robert Mays on what excites him most about the Bengals: I think this is potentially the most complete Bengals offense we have seen. They’ve never finished higher than sixth in EPA per play since Joe Burrow’s been there. Burrow has never finished in the top five in EPA per dropback ever. It’s the sacks. Even in the years they were really good, he’s taking 50 sacks in a season. They’ve always been right on the doorstep of being this overwhelming force. They’ve never quite gotten there because either they’re taking a decent amount of sacks or the run game just doesn’t have the oomph.

Last year, they were a really successful running team in the back half of the season. The offensive line, I think you can make an argument, is as good as it’s been since Burrow got there. You have two homegrown guys that you feel good about among that group for the first time ever, with Dylan Fairchild and Amarius Mims. The run game is higher quality and more consistent. I do think you can get to a place where you can convince yourself this is the best plan and collection of pieces we have seen for this team offensively, even including when they were going to AFC Championship Games and the Super Bowl.

Derrik Klassen on what he’s watching the first month of the season: How much of this offense really is new? How much of it is under center? Are they motioning guys a little bit more? Does the run game add some more stuff to it? When they got under center (last year), they actually could be explosive. When they were a shotgun run team, they really weren’t. They were pretty efficient, but they were not explosive. And when they got under center they had a 9.2 percent explosive run rate, which was top five in the NFL.

Part of that is, I think it was a change-up that teams just weren’t respecting or ready for because they did it at the second-lowest rate in the NFL. Teams that can go under center and run the ball, that is a little bit more of, ‘We are running on our terms and we get to decide how this goes.’ I have a little bit more reservations about their ability to actually get there and tie that into the passing game. I think it’s something that is necessary for them to get over the doorstep from consistently great to elite and actually defining offensive football in the NFL.

Dave Helman on what’s keeping him up at night: I think we’re going to know by Week 2 or Week 3 whether what they did on defense worked. What’s keeping me up at night is that we’ll know in September that it didn’t work and we’re doing the same (thing) all over again, hoping that the Bengals can score their way to the playoffs.

I like Boye Mafe for the contract that he got. I think Bryan Cook is an underrated signing. I even like Kyle Dugger. I thought he did some good stuff for Pittsburgh last year. I don’t think any of this holds up the way that it needs to if Dexter Lawrence isn’t exceptional. Holding him to the 2024 standard before he got hurt is crazy because he was on an unbelievable tear, but he needs to scratch that sort of level if this is going to work at all.

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