The Bengals’ offensive line should not be this poor considering how much money they spent on it.
Go back to February of last year. The Cincinnati Bengals had lost the Super Bowl, and the offensive line was largely to blame for it. Seven times, including on the game’s last play, Joe Burrow was sacked.
After a little more than two months, the Bengals set out to ensure that their offensive line would never again cost them a major victory like a Super Bowl. On the first day of the legal tampering period, it began with Ted Karras and Alex Cappa signing as free agents. While Karras could have played centre or left guard, the Bengals chose to use him at centre. Cappa was brought in to man the right guard position.
La’el Collins, the most anticipated of the three free-agent additions, was the last to join the revamped offensive line. Dallas had released Collins, and the Bengals made sure he didn’t get out of Cincinnati without committing to play for the stripes.
La’el Collins, the most anticipated of the three free-agent additions, was the last to join the revamped offensive line. Dallas had released Collins, and the Bengals made sure he didn’t get out of Cincinnati without committing to play for the stripes.
Although Cordell Volson was selected by the Bengals in the fourth round, they most likely didn’t anticipate that he would start, as he defeated the underwhelming Jackson Carman to take the starting left guard position. On the offensive line, Jonah Williams was the lone returning starter.
We finally got to see how this new-look team would function as a unit in the first two games of the season, and it didn’t go well. 13 sacks were applied to Burrow in the first two
We finally got to see how this new-look team would function as a unit in the first two games of the season, and it didn’t go well. The Bengals lost both of their opening two games despite forcing Burrow to sack the quarterback thirteen times.
But from Weeks 3 through 7, the offensive line performed significantly better. We can now see that a large portion of that may be due to the defences not being as strong, as Cleveland completely destroyed this unit in Week 8 by sacking Burrow five times.
The Bengals paid for a good o-line and have gotten anything but
Pro Football Focus’s Sam Monson ranked all of the offensive lines, and the Bengals came in at number 27, which indicates that Monson believes Cincinnati’s offensive line is the sixth worst in the entire league. This comes after the team used their entire offseason budget of $74 million to acquire three offensive linemen. It’s just not acceptable.
I understand that it will take some time for this new unit to chemistry, but after eight weeks of play, they still don’t appear to be getting much better. This team may improve significantly in the future, but they certainly didn’t look like that in the lopsided loss to Cleveland.
No Bengals offensive lineman had a run-block grade higher than 68.0, as noted by Monson in his report, which also helps to explain theissues with the run game. At least last year when the pass-blocking was atrocious, the run-blocking was solid. They could create running lanes and help Joe Mixon dominate even when protecting Burrow proved to be too much of a challenge for them.
