The Cincinnati Bengals are often hailed as a strong drafting team and the years of AFC North contention under the guidance of Marvin Lewis were proof enough.
But it sure doesn’t hurt to have some visual assistance and explanations from the advanced metrics side of things.
Over at Pro Football Focus, Timo Riske hailed the Bengals as one of the better-drafting teams, especially compared to the AFC North in the context of WAR (wins above replacement):
“Despite Ben Roethlisberger being the clear best quarterback of the division since 2006, the AFC North was still fairly competitive, with the Cincinnati Bengals and Baltimore Ravens giving the Pittsburgh Steelers a run for their money in many of these years. The draft success charts show us why, as the Bengals drafted really well and the Steelers found more busts than expected, even though they were really good at drafting wide receivers (4.8 WAR over expected).”
Some of the biggest hits of the AFC North in recent years in the percentile category belonged to the Bengals:
- Nedu Ndukwe (S, CIN, 2007, 7th round)
- George Iloka (S, CIN, 2012, 5th round)
- Marvin Jones (WR, CIN, 2012, 5th round)
A.J. Green, impressively, was one of the non-quarterbacks with a big impact.
Granted, this reputation has cooled in recent years as draft classes have failed to step in and replace others. Think, the Cedric Ogbuehi draft class. More recent first-round picks like Billy Price and John Ross have struggled to make a difference too. Depth and retention of drafts seems to have stalled, too.
All this does is once again prove the Bengals aren’t wrong for relying so heavily on the draft process and that their approach to it works, but there also needs to be a better complementary process via free agency.
That…and having a franchise passer like Big Ben can compensate for poor drafting.
