Bengals and Titans Offseason Previews
The NFL's cheapest team and its least interesting team are carpooling in our offseason preview series.
This is the latest installment in an ongoing series of offseason previews. The Bengals and Titans have been lumped together because there is not much to say about either of them.
Cincinnati Bengals Offseason Preview
2025 Season in a Nutshell
Joe Burrow’s injury hamstrung the Greatest Offense Money Could Buy. Trey Hendrickson’s “injury” crippled the Weakest Defense Quarters in a Cupholder Could Buy.
Coaching Situation
Zac Taylor not only kept his job but retained his entire staff, including coordinator Al Golden, whose defense ranked 30th in the NFL in DVOA. LinkedIn Premium accounts are expensive, folks.
Quarterback Situation
Joe Burrow: young, gifted, rich, successful, utterly miserable.
State of the Roster
Burrow, Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins would dominate the rest of the NFL in a 3-on-3 tournament.
Otherwise, the Cadillac offensive line the franchise built for Burrow in 2022-23 has started to rust through, Hendrickson is a risk to toss a match over his shoulder on his way out the door in free agency, and there’s only a sprinkling of young talent (cornerbacks Dax Hill, DJ Turner and DJ Ivey, mostly) worth mentioning on defense.
Cap and Draft Stuff
The Bengals have $57 million in paper cap space and few in-house free agents (Joseph Ossai, primarily) to spend it on. Hendrickson will probably accept an “anti-hometown discount” from some other team to escape at this point.
The Bengals may not have much actual cash to use to pay signing bonuses due to last year’s Chase and Higgins extensions: the Brown family are paupers by NFL standards, and all of that guaranteed bonus money is locked in escrow (or already in the receivers’ bank accounts). Even when the Bengals have extra dough, they prefer to cry poor and pretend that they don’t.
The Bengals will select 10th, 41st and 72nd in the first three rounds of the 2026 draft. They don’t have a fifth-round pick.
One Thing the Bengals Should Do
Trade down in the first round. The Bengals are likely to end up just out of range of drafting Rueben Bain, Arvell Reese or David Bailey, the three defenders likely to make an immediate difference. Trading the 10th pick to some receiver-needy team would allow them to stock up on defensive help at multiple positions.
In Summary
Rebuilding should be easy for the Bengals: draft every defensive player who isn’t nailed down, tidy up the offensive line a bit, win half of the shootouts they lost in 2025, reach the playoffs. Unfortunately, the Bengals retained all of the decision makers who make everything harder than it should be.
Tennessee Titans Offseason Preview
2025 Season in a Nutshell
Brian Callahan began glitching and attempting 64-yard field goals in Week 3. Callahan got fired and replaced by someone even more nondescript. Mike McCoy, maybe? Let’s go with Mike McCoy. The Titans spent the next three months successfully not forfeiting any games.
Coaching Situation
Robert Saleh is the new head coach. Brian Daboll and Gus Bradley are the new coordinators. It’s the kind of coaching staff the Madden video game AI assembles for your division rival in season seven of Franchise Mode.
Saleh, Daboll and Bradley were a combined 54-124-1 as head coaches of the Jets, Giants and Jaguars. This isn’t a coaching staff; it’s midnight on Tuesday at the sort of corner bar that only has Old Milwaukee on tap and Glen Campbell on the jukebox.
Seriously, look at these guys. They look like the sales team at a failing pre-owned Buick dealership. They look like the results when you set your dating app preferences to “male gym teachers nearing retirement:”
(I kinda like Saleh. But dear lord, this is an uninspiring staff.)
Quarterback Situation
Cam Ward has been adopted by disillusioned Herbert Hive expatriates. You can count on seeing one Ward highlight – often a throw across his body into the middle of the field at the end of a recess scramble – come across your feed per week, captioned with some ball-knowing assertion like: “Wait until this guy gets some help.” So ignore the 55 sacks, low rate stats and Justin Fields-like DVOA: Ward will be failing to score touchdowns in first-round playoff exits before you know it!
(I kinda like Ward. But you gotta sift through a lot of mud to find the tiny flakes of gold.)
State of the Roster
Jeffery Simmons, Joey Slye, Chimere Dike, some decent offensive linemen and approximately 45 guys you have either never heard of or thought dropped out of the NFL after the 2023 season. Heck, I needed to name-drop the kicker and return man just to pad out that list!
Cap and Draft Stuff
The Titans have $105 million in cap space. If they didn’t, someone would have to start an embezzlement investigation.
The Titans pick 4th, 35th and 66th in the first three rounds of the 2026 draft. They have the luxury of selecting the Best Available Athlete™ with the fourth pick.
One Thing the Titans Should Do
Cut Calvin Ridley, who dropped a bunch of early-season passes, disappeared from the game plan for a few weeks and then broke his right fibula.
Ridley’s cap figure is somehow $26.5 million; the Titans can get most of that back by making him a post-June 1st cap cut. Ridley’s a first-ballot There’s Always Something With This Guy Hall of Famer. He’s the perfect player for the Bills to sign to much fanfare in mid-October, then get frustrated with and deactivate by mid-November.
In Summary
The trick to writing 32 of these previews is to slack off on a few of them to conserve time/energy/bandwidth. That’s what I did here. But that’s what the Titans deserve. This is the team that slacking built!
The Titans will probably draft a wide receiver, raid some playoff rosters for journeyman defenders (at premium wages) and generate some “Oh look out: Ward has some help and Saleh’s gonna fix the defense” buzz from folks who aren’t really paying much attention. Then, if everything breaks right, they will finish in third place in the AFC South.
