Bengals fans are celebrating today with the news that even while paying quarterback Joe Burrow $55 million a year, Cincinnati still found a way to work out lucrative deals to keep both of its elite receivers in Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins.
FOX Sports’ Jordan Schultz broke the news that Chase is now the highest-paid non-quarterback in NFL history, making $40.25 million a year, and Higgins got a massive deal paying $28.75 million a year. The Bengals are investing $124 million a year in those three, ensuring an exciting, high-scoring offense will be the core of the Bengals’ identity for the next four years.
But do they remember how the 2024 season went?
Burrow had what would often be an MVP season, leading the NFL in touchdown passes (43) and passing yards (4,918) and … Cincinnati didn’t even make the playoffs. Time and time again, a porous defense cost the Bengals games where they scored enough to win. Let’s take 33 points as a line — for the rest of the NFL in 2024, teams that scored at least 33 points went 79-7, winning at better than a 90% clip. The Bengals went 3-4 in such games. No other team in NFL history has ever lost four such games, and only two in the past 35 years have even lost three.
The Bengals fired defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo, who took the same job with the Colts, and Cincinnati replaced him with former University of Miami head coach Al Golden, who worked as the Bengals’ linebackers coach in 2020-21 before spending the last three years at Notre Dame.
Aside from that change, they’ve done little to address a glaring weakness that limited their success last season, at the expense of fortifying their prolific offense. They may still be able to re-sign edge rusher Trey Hendrickson, who led the NFL with 17.5 sacks last year and has made the Pro Bowl in each of his four seasons in Cincinnati.
But what to help him out? They signed defensive tackle T.J. Slaton from the Packers to a two-year, $14 million deal, and added linebacker Oren Burks from the Eagles to a two-year, $5 million contract. Burks had 25 tackles in Philadelphia’s four playoff games, but he’s never started more than five games in a season. Edge Sam Hubbard, a six-year starter, retired at 29, and they’ve yet to re-sign corner Mike Hilton, another free agent.
So any hope of real improvement on defense — on being able to hold good opponents under 30 points — will rely on Golden’s coaching and impact from rookies. The Bengals don’t pick until No. 17 overall in next month’s draft, so they’ll get a starter, perhaps Georgia safety Malaki Starks or Alabama linebacker Jihaad Campbell — but likely nothing transformational.
Can an NFL team win with just a prolific offense? Last year’s Bengals were one of 36 in league history to both score and give up at least 400 points. Of those 36 teams, only 10 made the playoffs, and six of those lost in the opening round. Two more lost after a single win. The best examples of success with a porous defense are the 2016 Falcons — Matt Ryan wins MVP, but Atlanta’s defense famously blows a 28-3 Super Bowl lead on Tom Brady and the Patriots — and the 2008 Cardinals, who had three 1,000-yard receivers with Kurt Warner but gave up a last-minute score to lose to the Steelers in the title game.
If you like scoring — not just offense, but both teams going up and down the field — then the 2025 Bengals should be a team for you. If Burrow stays healthy, they’ll be every bit as good on offense as they were last season, but will the defense be any better? In combined points, both scored and allowed, the Bengals had 906 last year, 15th-most all time, with the help of a 17th game.
Only two teams in NFL history have topped 1,000 combined points in a season, and they’re a warning for these Bengals. The 2000 Rams, fresh off a Super Bowl championship with the Greatest Show on Turf, set an NFL record with 1,011 combined points, but they lost in the first round to the Saints. The other team might be close to this year’s Bengals: The 2013 Broncos saw Peyton Manning throw for an NFL-record 55 touchdown passes and 5,347 passing yards, but they lost the Super Bowl 43-8 to the Seahawks.
Of course, a Super Bowl appearance, even a loss, would validate Cincinnati’s offensive spending spree. It would be a successful near-miss of a season and a reminder of 2021, when the Bengals lost the Super Bowl to the Rams in the first season together for Burrow, Chase and Higgins.
The schedule ahead for Cincinnati does its defense no favors. The Bengals have four games against last season’s top three scoring offenses, hosting the Lions, facing the Bills on the road and getting two games against the Ravens. They’re on the road against three more top-10 offenses in the Packers, Vikings and Broncos, and will play host to two young quarterbacks likely to make solid improvements in the Bears’ Caleb Williams and the Patriots’ Drake Maye.
So it’s huge for the Bengals to have locked up Burrow, Chase and Higgins through 2028, but they do so at the neglect of their defense, which might mean another long year of 38-35 losses that are great for fantasy football owners, but bad in the standings.
Greg Auman is an NFL Reporter for FOX Sports. He previously spent a decade covering the Buccaneers for the Tampa Bay Times and The Athletic. You can follow him on Twitter at @gregauman.
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