Cincinnati Bengals: Best quarterbacks in team history, No. 5
By Kenn Korb
Starting the countdown of the best quarterbacks in Cincinnati Bengals history, we begin with the fifth-best signal caller for the franchise.
The Cincinnati Bengals are undoubtedly preparing to try and get back to the playoffs in the 2018 NFL season. However, we’re in the middle of summer when that plight is largely taking place on paper. Minicamps are over and training camp is still a ways down the road.
In the height of this time of year, it’s a perfect time to look back at the history of the league and the Bengals specifically. We’re going to be doing this in many ways, but we’re starting with a look back at the best quarterbacks in the history of the franchise.
After looking at some interesting players who missed the top five, we now make our way to the countdown, starting with one Jon Kitna.
5. Jon Kitna
Kitna probably wasn’t expected to be much when he joined Cincinnati. He went 18-15 in his starting chances over four years with Seattle, accumulating 49 touchdowns against 45 interceptions to go with an underwhelming 58.2 percent completion rate and an average of under 200 passing yards per game.
His 1999 season hinted at a useful player though — he helped produce a winning record in 15 games (8-7) behind 3,346 passing yards and a 23-16 touchdown-interception ratio — and the hope had to be that he may help his new team overcome the malaise which the team flailed in throughout the 1990s.
Kitna would not become the savior for an organization in dire need of one, but he turned out to be a decent bridge to the team’s next attempt at a franchise quarterback. There were clear lowlights in his first two seasons as the main starter for Cincinnati (a league-leading 581 pass attempts paired with an awful 53.9 completion percentage and a 12-22 TD-INT ratio in 2001; improved numbers but a 2-10 record as a starter in 2002), but he was still a marked improvement over anyone the team tried to line up under center in the decade prior to Kitna’s signing.
What came next is an untimely confluence of events for Kitna’s legacy with Cincinnati. Due to yet another pitiful record after the 2002 season, Cincinnati was in line for a new coach and the No. 1 pick in the 2003 draft. That year, Marvin Lewis is brought in as head coach before Cincinnati uses that top overall pick on a new quarterback: Carson Palmer. Then and there, Kitna’s future heading the team was essentially over.
Normally, that would be the end of it, but Cincinnati decided to do what we rarely see anymore regarding highly-drafted signal-callers: they groomed their new guy for an entire season before letting him on the field. This gave Kitna one more year to show off his abilities as a starting quarterback with the team; in it, he turned in the best season of his career.
In 2003, Kitna started all 16 games for Cincinnati (the first time he was the starter for every game in a season). In those games, he managed to lead Cincinnati to a non-losing record for the first time since 1996 and only the second time since 1990 behind the best play of his career to that point.
His 62.3 completion percentage, 3,591 passing yards were the highest marks he achieved in those areas at that point in his career. His 15 interceptions were his lowest in a season where he started at least 10 games, and his 26 touchdown passes were the most he ever achieved in a single season.
Next: NFL 2018: WRs with best chance at 2,000 yards
He never had the physical tools or ceiling as a player that Palmer had, but his play in that 2003 season do leave questions as to how he may have performed if he were given more than one year as the starter under Lewis. In Kitna’s first two years with Cincinnati, this team was led by Dick LeBeau, who has long been a legendary defensive coordinator but quickly proved awful as the head honcho (12-33 in three years). Give Kitna someone in Lewis who could better lead and build a stable culture and the quarterback may have been able to prove himself good enough to build a winning squad with.
Of course, we’ll never know what could have been. Even so, what Kitna managed to accomplish in the little opportunity he was given is enough for him to be considered the fifth-best quarterback in the Bengals’ franchise history.