Cincinnati Bengals: Analyzing the wide receiver position

A.J. Green will be coming back healthy to lead the wide receivers for the Cincinnati Bengals, but new additions could take the group to new heights.

The Cincinnati Bengals have one of the most dangerous receiving weapons in the entire league on their roster in A.J. Green. However, he’s spent the offseason to this point recovering from injuries that stifled his 2016 season. Talent doesn’t stop there, however, as the Bengals have added plenty of talent through the draft.

Stuck in the doldrums of the offseason, we’re going to go in-depth at each position on the depth chart. Having already looked at the quarterbacks and running backs in stripes, I continue forward with the players tasked with catching passes.

Here’s how the wide receiver position looks for Cincinnati right now:

Wide Receivers

*A.J. Green (100 targets, 66 receptions, 964 yards, 4 TDs)
Brandon LaFell (106 targets, 64 receptions, 862 yards, 6 TDs)
*Tyler Boyd (81 targets, 54 receptions, 603 yards, 1 TD, 1 Fumble Lost)
*John Ross (N/A)
Josh Malone (N/A)
Cody Core (27 targets, 17 receptions, 200 yards)
Chris Brown (N/A)
Alex Erickson (8 targets, 6 receptions, 71 yards)
Jake Kumerow (N/A)
Karel Hamilton (N/A)
Monty Madaris (N/A)
Alonzo Russell (N/A)

* = expected starter | 2016 statistics in parentheses

Since being picked up in the first round of the 2011 draft, Green has been one of the best receivers across the entire league.

It’s natural to compare him to his draft-mate Julio Jones (what with the two being so dominant and only coming off the board two picks away from each other), but expand that to other big-name players who entered the league around the same time and you see just how well he stacks up with the best the league has to offer.

*prorated amounts are shown in parenthesis for Green/Jones, since they have 6 seasons while the others have 7. Includes calculations for games they would be likely to miss for injury based on prior history.

That’s some heavy company Green is surrounded by, and even before making prorated inferences into how things may look if they all played the same number of seasons he compares favorably with any of them.

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This has been done despite what is clearly the most limited quarterback situation out of any of those players. Andy Dalton isn’t a scrub, but those other guys have gotten to spend most of their careers with players on a distinctly higher tier of quarterbacking ability and prowess than Dalton has been able to provide.

Ben Roethlisberger, Tony Romo, Matt Ryan, Peyton Manning; even accounting for injury issues (Roethlisberger, Romo) or age-initiated decline (Manning) factored in, those players offered a level of quality Dalton can only dream of reaching.

Still, Green has been right up there with them all, and it wouldn’t be crazy to discuss him as being the best of the group. One man cannot make a receiving corps, however, and it bears out in Cincinnati’s passing statistics during his career.

Stats from ESPN

2013 was Green’s best season so far in his career, but this was also the beginning of what was their best skill position grouping in his tenure. Beyond him, they had Marvin Jones and Mohamed Sanu entering their second seasons, as well as Tyler Eifert beginning his career. 2015 saw Eifert return after missing basically all of 2014 to have a 13 TD season, and the Jones/Sanu combo was great paired with Green.

Those other years clearly had something missing beyond him. 2011 had Jerome Simpson and Jermaine Gresham as the No. 2 and 3 options behind Green. 2012 was the first year for both Sanu and Jones, who were slowly incorporated into their plans. 2014 saw the team have to rely upon Gresham over the middle (due to Eifert’s injury) with little success.

We saw much of these negative aspects take place this past year.

Sanu and Jones left in free agency, and Eifert again missed significant time to injury. Green was spectacular as usual before a late-season injury (prorated stats across 16 games: 160 targets, 105.6 receptions, 1541.8 yards, 6.4 TDs), but those around him couldn’t carry the secondary weight of the offense. LaFell was the limited second option he’s always been, Boyd was brought along slowly (remember that for later), and the only other notable impact in the receiving game came from the return of Eifert after eight games.

Going into 2017, there are reasons to expect a jump in production, but we shouldn’t get too expectant of an immediate rise in effectiveness.

Green shouldn’t have anything holding him back after recovering from his injury issues, but the players who were already in place may see a boost in production — namely Boyd. As with most rookies for Cincinnati, he wasn’t given a huge amount of trust early in 2016; that should change in 2017. Marvin Lewis has already mentioned how he should’ve looked to get more out of Boyd earlier in 2016 (per cincinnati.com), and of the guys who were on the 2016 roster he stands to pick up the biggest jump in responsibilities.

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The drafting of Ross and Malone (along with Lewis’ sentiments about Boyd’s rookie year) would seem to point to a smaller role for LaFell to get their upside involved immediately and hopefully take the passing game to a level closer to 2015 levels. I’m hesitant to believe that, however.

During his entire tenure with the team (going back to 2003), the Bengals have rarely put rookies into big roles regardless of talent. For every Dalton or Green, there are plenty of examples of young players who maybe should have bigger roles but instead found themselves relegated to sitting on the bench and watching for most of their first years.

There are really two routes to go here for the Bengals.

One: they follow the same path with their young players we’ve always seen them do. This would see the three main players from last season (Green, LaFell, Boyd) hold onto the top positions and get the vast majority of snaps. Green should do well as usual, LaFell would be decent, and Boyd would see a bigger role. Ross and Malone would compete with someone like Core for #4 receiver snaps in certain packages, and the others would be injury call-ups.

Two: they put these rooks firmly in the mix from the start. Green’s spot is unchallenged, but all else would be up for determination. Ross was brought in expressly to give a deep threat outside this offense has lacked without Jones; replacing a good chunk of LaFell’s snaps with him could take the offense to a new level.

Boyd wouldn’t necessarily be affected by that determination; about half of his snaps in college came from the slot, and he was rated sixth-best among rookies for his yards per route run in the slot by Pro Football Focus in 2016. Malone could also take some snaps from LaFell outside while being insurance for Ross (if his much-discussed injury problems follow him from college).

Next: NFL 2017: Quarterback depth chart power rankings

They probably begin the year on the first route, but if Lewis really wants to live up to his thoughts following last season, this team needs to make the necessary moves to get on that second path pretty quickly.