The Cincinnati Bengals are returning all five offensive line starters for the first time in years, and Joe Burrow has called the group the best he’s had in Cincinnati. On Wednesday, analyst Warren Sharp of Sharp Football Analysis ranked that same unit No. 28 in the NFL, per a report from Jay Morrison of Bengals On SI. Both things can be true, and the gap between them is the most important question of Bengals camp.
Sharp’s case is built on last season’s numbers, not a projection of decline. Cincinnati ranked 28th in pass block win rate in 2025, allowed the third-most total pressure and second-most non-blitz pressure in the league, and posted the seventh-shortest time-to-sack. Running backs averaged 3.9 yards per carry behind the primary five of Orlando Brown Jr., Dylan Fairchild, Ted Karras, Dalton Risner and Amarius Mims. “I think they can play better than this in 2026,” Sharp wrote, “but just rolling back 2025 would result in another bottom-10 result.”
The counter-argument, as Morrison notes, lives in the splits. The line improved noticeably in the second half of the season as Fairchild settled in as a rookie and a first-year position coach found his combinations, and the season-long numbers carry the residue of the three-game Jake Browning stretch after Burrow’s toe injury. ESPN’s run block win rate metric had Cincinnati 10th. The front office believed the trajectory enough to run it back: barring injury, the Bengals will open the season with the same five linemen who finished the previous one for the first time since 2010. That is either well-earned continuity or an unexamined assumption, and the schedule will not wait to find out — two of the first three games come against the defensive fronts in Houston and Pittsburgh. Protecting the franchise quarterback is the entire premise of this roster, so the answer matters more here than it would almost anywhere else.
On the fantasy side, this is the tension baked into every Bengals draft pick. Burrow’s elite ceiling and Ja’Marr Chase‘s target volume survive average protection, but the pressure profile Sharp describes is what produced the 2025 injury disaster, and the 3.9 yards per carry behind this line keeps Cincinnati’s running backs in the volume-dependent tier. Draft the passing game with confidence; treat the run game as a show-me situation.
