Cincinnati Bengals

Seventy-six percent. Best in football. The Bengals turned red-zone trips into touchdowns at the highest rate in the entire league — and still finished six and eleven. Here's how Joe Burrow's mid-season injury rerouted the year, and the one number on defense that explains everything that went wrong. Six and eleven. Missed the playoffs. Fourth in the AFC non-playoff pecking order. For a team built around Burrow and Ja'Marr Chase, this was the year Cincinnati got muffed by the side of the ball they couldn't fix.

The team-level split is wild. The offense finished at minus eight point nine total expected points added — league average, nineteenth. Fine. The defense? Plus one hundred thirty-four point four expected points added allowed — and on defense you want that number deeply negative, so plus one thirty-four is a five-alarm fire. Twenty-ninth in the league. Thirteenth percentile. The offense itself was boom-or-bust in the truest sense — forty-five on the Dolphins, thirty-seven on the Cardinals, forty-two in a shootout loss to the Bears, but also three points in Denver, ten in Minnesota, and a zero-point home shutout against Baltimore in Week Fifteen. The one steady thing all year was third down: forty-five point four percent, fifth in the league, eighty-eighth percentile. They moved the chains. They just couldn't stop anybody.

Now let's talk about the passing offense. Cincinnati threw it six hundred and eighty times for minus eighteen point two total passing expected points added — twenty-fourth in the league, twenty-eighth percentile. Two hundred forty-nine yards a game through the air, thirty-six passing touchdowns, but twenty-four offensive turnovers — and that's the story. This was a two-quarterback season that played out exactly the way you'd fear, and after Week Ten the math collapsed. Same Ja'Marr Chase throughout — one hundred twenty-five catches, fourteen hundred and twelve yards, thirty-two percent target share, a true number-one. The Week Fourteen loss in Buffalo is the snapshot: Burrow throws a short right to Chase at the Bills thirty-three, Cincinnati up three in the fourth, Christian Benford jumps it, sixty-three yards the other way, touchdown. Game over. That one play swung expected points by more than ten. The passing offense wasn't muffed by talent. It was muffed by who was throwing it.

Now let's dig into the rushing offense — and the quiet bright spot of the year. Plus seven total rushing expected points added, seventh in the league, eighty-first percentile. A top-ten run game by efficiency. But the volume number gets weird: four point two yards per carry, twenty-ninth in the league, thirteenth percentile. Ninety-three rushing yards a game. How do you square top-ten efficiency with bottom-five yards per carry? Chase Brown. Two hundred thirty-two carries, one thousand and nineteen yards, four point four a clip, six rushing touchdowns, and seventy-eight point three rushing yards over expected — meaning he produced seventy-eight yards more than an average back would have on the same carries against the same fronts. He carried the unit. Steady floor week to week, and a real reason Cincinnati was the best red-zone team in football.

Next up, the pass defense — where the season died. Cincinnati allowed plus ninety-four point zero expected points added through the air, and remember, on defense you want that number deeply negative, so plus ninety-four is catastrophic. Thirteenth percentile. Thirty-three passing touchdowns surrendered, four thousand one hundred seventy-five passing yards, two hundred forty-five a game. Thirty-five sacks, twenty-fifth in the league. The one thing that kept this unit from being historically bad: twenty-one takeaways, thirteen interceptions and eight fumble recoveries, sixty-sixth percentile — actually above league average. But the per-play number tells you the truth. Plus zero point one six expected points added allowed every dropback. That's not a unit that takes the ball away enough to outrun the damage. They got muffed every Sunday.

And the run defense was somehow worse on a percentile basis. Cincinnati allowed plus forty point three expected points added on the ground — thirteenth percentile, same as the pass defense. Twenty-five hundred and seventeen rushing yards allowed, one hundred forty-eight a game, eighteen rushing touchdowns surrendered, zero point zero nine expected points added allowed per carry. Opponents ran on this defense and it worked every week. No game-by-game lift, no stretch where the front got right — a flat-line bad. The rule was three and a half yards a pop, the chains moving, another long touchdown drive on the scoreboard. Fix the front seven, and you have a playoff team. Don't, and you have another six and eleven.