Cincinnati Bengals: Final 53-man roster cut predictions for 2018

With the 2018 preseason essentially in the books, here’s who could make the final 53-man roster for the Cincinnati Bengals.

It has been a long August, but it is finally coming to an end. In a couple weeks, the NFL regular season will finally begin. With the preseason finishing up, we have just one more event waiting to happen, and it is essentially here as well: the official 53-man roster cutdown. By 4:00 p.m. ET on Saturday, Sept. 1, we’ll know who has made every team’s roster to enter the regular season.

All the information needed to make these decisions has almost certainly been made by the time you read this. All that’s left is for teams — including these Cincinnati Bengals — to make their decisions official.

With that deadline fast approaching, here are some final predictions for who will survive the roster cut-down (and who will not). We start of course with the quarterbacks.

Quarterbacks

* = starters; + = make roster

*Andy Dalton, +Jeff Driskel, Matt Barkley, Logan Woodside

As with every year since he was selected in the 2011 draft, Dalton is yet again the unchallenged starter for Cincinnati. Unfortunately, he’s coming off perhaps the worst season of his career. He managed to fall under 60 percent completion rate for the only time since his rookie year (59.9), threw for the fewest yards of his career (3,250), tossed double-digit interceptions for the fifth time (12), and had the worst QBR grade we’ve seen from him for a season (45.7).

With improved blocking expected this season though (the biggest issue behind the offense’s struggles in 2017), he’ll hopefully be able to play much closer to the level he showed during his career-best 2015 season.

Behind him, there is major change from last season. Gone is former multi-season No. 2 quarterback A.J. McCarron. Driskel and Barkley have been in a battle to take his place all offseason. Judging strickly by preseason production, it would seem Barkley has an edge (through three preseason games, he led the offense to three more scores than Driskel (7 to 4) in fewer chances (10 to 14).

Barkley has already proven the limits of his abilities when it comes to actually playing in games which matter though (1-5 as a starter; 59.8 completion percentage on 266 pass attempts with eight touchdowns and 18 interceptions). Driskel has forced the team to keep him around for multiple years despite McCarron’s prior presence as the undisputed top backup.

With the latter now gone to Buffalo, Driskel is the player remaining who offers the most upside should Cincinnati need to call on someone if Dalton goes down. He may not save a team over a long stretch, but he could possibly step in and be effective for a few games here or there — something Barkley has tried and failed to do in his previous stops.