Not again.
The Cincinnati Bengals have had offensive line issues for all of Joe Burrow’s career, essentially. Burrow gets hit far too much, and after seemingly figuring out the tackle positions with Orlando Brown Jr. and Amarius Mims, the Bengals had some of the worst guard play in the league in 2024.
Heading in to 2025, Pro Football Focus doesn’t think the Bengals have done enough to address that. PFF has the Bengals ranked 31st in the NFL, only ahead of the Houston Texans. Author Zoltán Buday honestly only seems to be a fan of one of the Bengals’ starting linemen, center Ted Karras.
“The Bengals overhauled their guard pair with journeyman Lucas Patrick and third-round draft pick Dylan Fairchild,” Buday explained. ”However, the rest of one of the worst offensive lines in 2024 remained in place. The offensive tackles, in particular, will need to improve drastically. Left tackle Orlando Brown Jr.’s 58.2 PFF overall grade ranked only 66th among 81 qualifiers, while rookie right tackle Amarius Mims’s 57.8 mark placed him 67th.”
The Bengals clearly don’t value the guard position as much as other teams in the league, which has come back to haunt them seemingly every year in the Burrow era, and they didn’t necessarily go all in to fix that issue this season.
Fairchild is looking to be the starter at left guard, while Patrick will battle with Cody Ford for the right guard spot. This is the direction the line will go, so we are certainly hoping to see the unit surpass what Buday thinks they’re capable of.
