It is time for the Cincinnati Bengals to build for the future and tank

It’s not like they are going to win the Super Bowl anyway. The Cincinnati Bengals should strongly consider tanking away the 2019 season.

Let’s be honest, the Cincinnati Bengals have been a team stuck in mediocrity for a long time. They were typically a solid team with Marvin Lewis as the head coach but were never legitimate Super Bowl contenders.

Lewis coached the Bengals for 16 seasons and had a respectable 131-122-3 regular season record with the team. The Bengals’ best season under Lewis was in 2015 when they went 12-4. However, they lost in the Wild Card round to the Pittsburgh Steelers. In fact, the Bengals were 0-7 in the playoffs during the Lewis era.

Cincinnati finally moved on from Lewis this offseason and hired a bright offensive mind to take his place. Zac Taylor was the quarterbacks coach for the Los Angeles Rams last season, learning under NFL wunderkind Sean McVay. If the Bengals can catch lightning in a bottle with Taylor as the Rams did with McVay, this thing is going to turn around quickly.

However, they cannot exactly count on that. Taylor is still an extremely unproven NFL head coach and the Bengals are obviously going to have to find some legitimate talent for him to work with. Whether Taylor ends up being a strong hire or not, the Cincinnati Bengals have a lot of work to do with their roster.

When it comes down to it, this team is not anywhere close to becoming legitimately competitive. The recent injury to first-round rookie offensive tackle Jonah Williams certainly does not help their chances this season. To help jumpstart their much-needed rebuild, the Cincinnati Bengals must strongly consider a complete teardown of this roster, starting with a legitimate tank in 2019.

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Andy Dalton has had a perfectly respectable NFL career. Dalton has been the Bengals’ primary quarterback for the last eight seasons and has proven to be a great value selection as a former second-round pick. However, Dalton has proven to be a mediocre NFL starting quarterback, at best.

In order to really jumpstart this rebuild, the Bengals need to find a legitimate franchise quarterback to build around. The best way to get that guy is to get an extremely high draft pick in the NFL Draft.

Between Tua Tagovailoa and Justin Herbert, there are clearly two potential franchise quarterbacks in the 2020 NFL Draft. Instead of continuing to stick in mediocrity, it time for the Bengals to bottom out and get Taylor a young and talented quarterback to work with.

In order to make this tank happen, the Bengals should consider trading away some of their veteran players. In particular, Dalton, A.J. Green, Geno Atkins and Carlos Dunlap stand out as guys who the Bengals should look to trade.

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Simply put, the Bengals need to start rebuilding around the younger players on the roster. Doing this with more draft capital and higher picks is only going to make the process easier. Cincinnati has a choice; they can continue to rot away as a mid-tier team or they swing for the fences and actually rebuild. To me, the decision is pretty obvious.

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