After this week’s 34-12 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers the Bengals fell to 3-7 on the season. With the Steelers now at 6-4 and the Ravens surging back to .500, the parade of losses has led to one inescapable conclusion: it’s draft evaluation time.
This is often a painful time for Bengals fans, and it’s understandable given the team’s past track record. For years we’ve all understood the team’s biggest need: a reliable pass rusher. In 2023 the man for the job was Myles Murphy, taken with the 28th pick out of Clemson. At the time, many media outlets graded the Murphy pick very highly. The praise made sense as he had the numbers at the collegiate level. He had 17.5 sacks and 37 tackles for loss in 38 career games. Murphy also recorded 66 hurries in his last three seasons.
That same sort optimism didn’t carry over to the Bengals 2024 first round selection, Shemar Stewart. He went 17th out of Texas A&M based largely off of his athletic and physical abilities. Yet, he started only 19 games for the Aggies during which he had 11 tackles for loss, 4.5 sacks, 13 quarterback hits, and 61 hurries. Those were hardly world-breaking numbers, and he was viewed as a “boom or bust” prospect. Reactions to the pick ranged pretty widely, largely because no one quite knew whether Stewart would be able to unlock the potential his physical gifts promised.
The Bengals also drafted two other rookies in 2024 who now start for them, Demetrius Knight Jr. and Barrett Carter. So it’s clear that the front office has at least tried to prioritize the defense in their draft approach. It’s not the commitment that’s been a problem, it’s the results.
Myles Murphy has just 5.5 sacks in 40 career games. Though it’s extremely early in his NFL tenure, Shemar Stewart has just six total tackles in five games, and is on the IR after a series of injuries setback his rookie campaign, that wasn’t helped by his contract holdout. Carter and Knight are some of the lowest rated linebackers in the game today. This has all culminated in a Cincinnati defense that is one of the worst statistical units in the past two decades of football.
Trey Hendrickson isn’t coming to save this defense. He has his own significant injuries to battle. His past contract issues have demonstrated that Hendrickson has been often frustrated with the front office and the Bengals way of doing business. With both his age and injury history becoming major factors puts his Bengals future even more in doubt than when the season started.
The mandate for Duke Tobin and the beleaguered Bengals scouting department is clear, but extremely difficult. In the upcoming NFL draft must pick the players who will form the core of a Bengals defense that can, as fast as possible, have an impact that elevates the entire unit to a level that can simply keep opposing teams from winning in shootout after shootout with Joe Burrow and the offense. As of now, the Bengals currently hold the eighth overall pick, and that could be even higher if Joe Burrow opts to take the rest of 2025 to get healthy. Ja’Marr Chase’s suspension in the upcoming game against the Patriots certainly won’t help Cincinnati’s chances of adding to the win column.
In recent years the team has drafted defensive players for fit, because of their college numbers, or because they have a high ceiling. By and large it simply hasn’t worked, likely for a variety of reasons. If Cincinnati takes any of these players in the upcoming draft, can they reverse those trends and give the offense a chance to finally see some complimentary football in the Queen City? Here are two draft picks who could do just that.
Caleb Downs, Safety, Ohio State
So much of the draft depends on the needs of the teams in front of you. As of now, several of the picks before the Bengals will be looking to draft a quarterback or improve their offense, and so there is a small chance that Caleb Downs could end up being the perfect fit for Cincinnati when their name is called.
Yes the Bengals need help rushing the passer, but they have already spent to first round picks to find help there. And Myles Murphy and Shemar Stewart could still develop into impact players to do just that. But the issues at safety, particularly with Geno Stone, can no longer be ignored.
Downs fixes so many of those issues almost immediately. He is a bruising and sure tackler which is something the current Bengals safeties have been patently unable to do this season. What’s more, he has excellent instincts in coverage, and can punish opposing ball carriers and wide receivers in equal measure. Downs lines up in multiple positions and provides a level of flexibility that you rarely see in collegiate players.
Downs is also a proven leader. He’s been named a captain in just his junior year. While it would take time to see those same qualities develop at the NFL level, he clearly has the ability to have a defense rally around the results he can bring to a game.
Ruben Bain Jr., Defensive End, Miami
Yes, the Bengals have expended years worth of draft capital on defensive ends so it’s hard to imagine doing so yet again. But it would be malpractice to ignore possibility of drafting Ruben Bain should the opportunity arise. He has the on-field production that absolutely justifies taking him early on, and he could legitimately solve so many of the Bengals pass rush issues very quickly, which is what this defense desperately needs.
He is so often double teamed and chipped that his numbers might not jump off the page (he has just three sacks), but the talent is clearly there, as nearly every evaluator has him as a top 5 pick. They recognize that although his numbers might not bear out the impact he has, that his film clearly demonstrates his skills are NFL ready and that he won’t be a project at the next level.
The Bengals are at the bottom of the league in sacks, they have just 14. Trey Hendrickson and potentially Joseph Ossai will be gone after this year. It’s unclear whether Myles Murphy can ever get over the top in terms of being a marquee pass rusher. Bain could be the guy to plug so many of those issues on day one in the orange and black, either if he falls to us, or we fall to the range when he may be available, which would likely mean then Bengals crash and burn for the rest of 2025.
Downs and Bain are just two examples of franchise changing players that could potentially be available for the Bengals in this draft. Neither may end up being available depending on our draft position, but they represent the big swings that we must take to fix our defense as quickly as possible. Most importantly though, no one pick is going to rehabilitate this defense. It’s going to take multiple picks, trades, and marked improvement from players like Shemar Stewart. To be fair the defense has some bright spots, such as DJ Turner and Dax Hill, but they are not nearly enough to get this unit to even a league average level. This defense is going to need a near complete rebuild and although the 2026 NFL draft is only a small part of that, it is probably the first and most important step in that process.
