100 Questions: Fantasy Football 2024 (Cincinnati Bengals)

As we head toward the start of the 2024 NFL and fantasy football season, FTN Fantasy editor-in-chief Daniel Kelley is asking (and attempting to answer) the 100 most pressing questions in fantasy football. This is 100 Questions. Today: The Cincinnati Bengals.

It’s a neat trick, especially given some the cursed history of the franchise, that the Bengals had a disaster year last year, lost their franchise quarterback, saw their defense take a massive step back. And with that disaster season that was a huge disappointment to all concerned, they finished … 9-8.

Yes, the Bengals have gotten to a point where the season can be seen as a total mess and they still finish over .500. That’s Steelers-y, only it’s happening to the Bengals, the franchise that didn’t make it out of the Wild Card Round even once between 1991 and 2021, that finished third or fourth in the division five straight years 2016-2020. The franchise isn’t the class of the league or anything now, but the fact that expectations in Cincinnati have changed so dramatically is huge news.

The Questions

23. How Much Do We Trust Joe Burrow?
24. Do the Bengals Still Have 2 WR1-Caliber Receivers?
25. What Do You Do with This Backfield?

100 Questions for 2024: Cincinnati Bengals

How Much Do We Trust Joe Burrow?

ACL tears used to be career-altering, with guys never getting back to what they used to be. In the last few years, though, we’ve had to completely alter our expectations of what an athlete can do in his recovery. That happened because the doctors and trainers and even athletes have studied the injury and the recovery and kind of cracked the code on how to get back.

Achilles ruptures used to be a death knell. A player tore his Achilles and you wouldn’t ever see him look like himself again. In the last few years, that has changed. D’Onta Foreman came back from his tear and ran for 1,905 yards and 4.3 yards an attempt across three different teams the last three years. Aaron Rodgers supposedly almost made it back inside the same season. J.K. Dobbins is talking up his recovery like he’s Christian McCaffrey. Again, doctors and trainers and athletes know what to expect from the injury and have started to crack that code.

When doctors get to treat an injury over and over and over, they get really good at figuring out how to bring a star back from that injury. Baseball pitchers have fine-tuned Tommy John recovery down to an absolutely science. But when it’s a new injury, there’s a lot more to figure out. And Joe Burrow’s wrist injury last year (yes, I looked up how to spell “Scapholunate”) is more or less unique among athletes who throw the ball. Maybe that’s nothing! But it scares the crap out of me. Add in Burrow’s history of slow starts to seasons (he’s averaged 16.7 fantasy points per game in Weeks 1-4 in his career — mid-range QB2 numbers — compared to low- to mid-20s in the midseason), and he’s as risky a pick as any top-10 QB this year.

Given Burrow’s upside, there’s certainly an excuse to draft him, even at his current ADP/popular ranking of QB8. But given the mystery of his wrist and how he’ll fare, if you’re drafting before we see much of the preseason, Burrow is one of the only QBs in the top 10 or so of drafts that I would say you need to draft a complement for. Because there’s a chance we see Burrow in preseason and have to pivot our expectation of the entire season right away.

Do the Bengals Still Have 2 WR1-Caliber Receivers?

The biggest appeal of the Bengals when they took their first strides into the ranks of the upper-caliber teams was “We have an elite 1.01 quarterback and two top-flight receivers.” Joe Burrow, Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins was maybe the best 1-2-3 punch in the NFL. Higgins’ first three years were incredibly consistent:

Yes, 2021 was his best year, owing to roughly the same numbers but in two fewer games, but ultimately, this was the line of a guy who was either a high-end WR2 or a WR1 stuck behind an even better WR1. (Which, hi, Ja’Marr.) But let’s look at that career again with 2023 included:

Was Higgins’ down 2023 a product of injuries (Burrow’s or his own), or is he transitioning from what he was into more of a back-end WR2? That’s a crucial question to answer in fantasy drafts, because a Higgins that is still what he was in 2021 could be a season-maker.

So, some information: Our FTN Fantasy consensus rankings have Higgins as the WR28. Our FTN Fantasy projections show him as the No. 29 receiver. The Underdog ADP tool says WR29. And all of those setups roughly believe in Burrow, which, if you look up a few paragraphs, I do not do nearly as much. In other words … tread very lightly with Higgins, because there’s more floor than ceiling at this point.

What Do You Do with This Backfield?

The Bengals moved on from the expensive and aging Joe Mixon this offseason, but instead of trying to splurge (there were a lot of big names at running back on the market this offseason), they settled right away from Zack Moss, signing the former Colt to a two-year deal in the evening on the first day of the legal tampering period. And that was basically it at the position for the offseason, with UDFAs Noah Cain and Elijah Collins the only other additions.

And no shade to Moss, who was a perfectly fine fill-in for Jonathan Taylor last year en route to career-highs in carries (183), yards (794) and touchdowns (5), but I can’t imagine a team with designs on competing like the Bengals wouldn’t roll into the season relying on him to be the bell cow. And given the other options are five-year veteran Trayveon Williams and three-year Chris Evans — who have combined for 595 rushing yards in their collective eight seasons — that tells the Bengals are ready for last year’s fifth-rounder, Chase Brown, to take on a much heavier workload.

Brown didn’t get a lot of work as a rookie — 44 carries, 15 targets — but he was wildly efficient with that work, with five runs of 10-plus yards in those 44 carries and 4.5 yards per route run as a receiver that was more than double the next best running back with at least 10 targets (yes, small samples abound).

Moss is likely to get the majority of the carries in Cincinnati this year. The low-upside, workaday, plodding yards. He’ll average 10 PPR points per game without having a single 20-point game and finish at something like RB30. And if that’s what you want, great. There’s some value in there. You have some injury risks as starting fantasy backs, having a relatively safe floor as the fill-in/bye week replacement isn’t too bad. But Brown is going to get the receiving work, the explosive plays. Tyler Boyd is gone, and the tight end (Mike Gesicki) is there to do work in the end zone. For the dumpoffs, the short targets, the Bengals are going to look to Chase Brown. Some games he’ll crash and burn. But even if he’ll have fewer scrimmage yards than Moss (good chance), he’ll probably triple or even quadruple the veteran in targets, and his ceiling will be double Moss’ in a given week. And for my money, that’s the profile I want to target.