The Cincinnati Bengals’ 2025 schedule is out and, as expected, there are plenty of opportunities to get back to the playoffs for the first time since the 2022 season. One massive reason for the lack of playoffs in Cincinnati in that time has been how inept the team was early on in the season. In fact, in the Zac Taylor era, the Bengals are a combined 8-15-1 in the first four weeks of the season.
Of course, there are extenuating circumstances for most of the seasons. In 2019, the team was just bad and started off 0-11. Before 2020, Training Camp and all other activities had to deal with COVID-19. In 2021, Joe Burrow had to rehab from an obliterated knee. Oddly enough, the Bengals started off 3-1 en route to a Super Bowl loss. In 2022, Burrow had an emergency appendectomy, and they started 0-2 before winning the next two. In 2023, Burrow had that freak calf injury. Last year, Burrow had to work his way back from a wrist injury. That injury, if memory serves, was so bad that Twitter doctors and experts claimed he would never be the same again…only to lead the NFL in yards and touchdowns and win Comeback Player of the Year for the second time.
With a player such as Burrow, the team tends to go as he does. Even then, he’s not the only one struggling early on; Burrow wasn’t the one who missed what felt like 50 tackles in the loss to the four-win New England Patriots. Now, as we move to 2025, the Bengals have a prime opportunity to get off to a hot start. With a weak early-season stretch and a rough November-December stretch, Cincinnati has to get going quickly.
The Bengals Cannot Afford to Continue Early-Season Trend in 2025
It’s the NFL. “On any given Sunday” is more than just a saying that fans of bad teams tell themselves when facing off against a Super Bowl contender; any team can win any game. Last year, the Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles lost to the 8-9 Atlanta Falcons in Week 2. The Baltimore Ravens lost five games, and two were to the Cleveland Browns (3-14) and Las Vegas Raiders (4-13).
This year, the Bengals open up the year with a favorable four-game schedule:
- Week 1 @ Cleveland Browns
- Week 2 vs. Jacksonville Jaguars
- Week 3 @ Minnesota Vikings
- Week 4 @ Denver Broncos
Taking a step back, one remembers that the Vikings and Broncos made the playoffs last year. Even then, the Bengals look to matchup fairly well.
Week 1 at Cleveland will be more of a challenge than it likely should be. The “Locked on Bengals” podcast has repeated the phrase “Week 1 weirdness” over the last few seasons because you never know what you’re going to get in Week 1. Last year, it got weird as the Bengals lost to the Patriots. While it ended up foreshadowing what the defense would look like for the remainder of the season, the Bengals were a better team and were embarrassed at home.
In eight games against the Browns, the Burrow-led Bengals are 3-5. While not every loss was ugly — Burrow threw for 782 yards and six touchdowns while completing 67% of his passes in two meetings as a rookie — he’s had some clunkers. Even in three wins, Burrow hasn’t thrown for over 252 yards since that 406-yard performance in the Week 7 loss in 2020. The Browns do not look to be a contending team in 2025…but that doesn’t matter in this rivalry.
Follow that up with the home opener against the Jaguars. Jacksonville has a new coach and nabbed the two-way Heisman Trophy-winner, Travis Hunter, in the draft. Trevor Lawrence may be in a make-or-break season with plenty of fans falling for his job by year’s end. But the team has playmakers. Brian Thomas Jr. is a serious threat on offense, and the pass-rushing duo of Travon Walker and Josh Hines-Allen is underrated.
Don’t Trip
The next two weeks are winnable on paper. The Vikings are a prime regression-to-the-mean candidate in 2025 after replacing Sam Darnold with J.J. McCarthy. The first-round pick missed all of last year due to injury, and now, the Vikings believe he’s the franchise. Whether or not they’re correct likely won’t be determined in Week 3, but traveling to the house where Justin Jefferson plays football won’t be easy. Each of the last two times these two teams faced off, the game had to be decided by Evan McPherson field goals in overtime. In 2023, Tee Higgins was the hero with 39 seconds to go with his incredible body-contorting touchdown to tie it up.
The third road game in four weeks is a trip to Mile High. Last season, these two battled it out in one of the best games of the regular season. The Bengals came away victorious in a back-and-forth battle of teams fighting for their playoff lives, 30-24. It was the game that further solidified that Higgins was supposed to be in the long-term plans for the Bengals. He finished the game with 131 yards and three touchdowns on 11 catches.
On paper, the Bengals are expected to be better than all four early-season opponents. With even a marginal improvement on defense, it’s possible. The offense carried the team to a 9-8 record despite a bottom-10 defense. If the Bengals can manage even a league-average defense, 2025 can be a great year.
The first stretch of the season presents an opportunity for the Bengals to start hot. Taylor’s Bengals have notoriously been bad in the first month of the season, and that horse has been beaten to death. Ultimately, it’s even more critical because the second half of the schedule doesn’t let up.
Weeks 13, 14, and 15 will be a special challenge. At Baltimore (on Thanksgiving), at Buffalo, and at home against Baltimore again makes for a rough three-week stretch. Getting to Week 5 at 3-1 or 4-0 would make those three weeks significantly less do-or-die. They’ll be important, there’s no doubt about that, but another weak start would mean, again, every game from November on would be do-or-die.
Another slow start could very well signal another wasted season in Burrow’s prime.
Main Image: Katie Stratman-Imagn Images
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