Bengals 2023 Position Review: Wide Receivers

Despite what the old Sewell meme might have you believe, it actually is important who Joe Burrow is throwing the ball to.

Despite what the old Penei Sewell meme might have you believe, it actually is important who Joe Burrow is throwing the ball to for the Cincinnati Bengals.

Key Players

• Ja’Marr Chase
• Tee Higgins
• Tyler Boyd
• Andrei Iosivas
• Trenton Irwin
• Charlie Jones

2023 Review

There were rumors of a potential Tee Higgins extension before the season started, but it never came to fruition. Higgins ended up having a disappointing season overall. He had some injury issues and only caught more than one pass in ten games all season. He finished the season with 656 yards and five touchdowns on 42 receptions.

On the other hand, Ja’Marr Chase did not disappoint. Joe Burrow’s college teammate caught 100 passes for 1,216 yards and seven touchdowns on the year and made the Pro Bowl if you’re into that sort of thing.

The third amigo, Tyler Boyd, ranked second in receiving for the team, hauling in 67 passes for 667 yards and two scores.

The Bengals drafted two wide receivers last year, and although both were Day 3 picks, they come with a lot of promise.

Charlie Jones didn’t see a lot of action on offense, although he was about a foot short of catching a long touchdown pass from Jake Browning late in the year. He did find the end zone, though, on a punt return in the team’s first matchup against the Baltimore Ravens.

It was Andrei Iosivas who made more of an impact on the offensive side of the ball. The Princeton heptathlete had 116 yards on 15 catches, but a whopping 4 of them were touchdowns. He had one less touchdown than Higgins on a third of the targets.

Iosivas garnered a lot of interest from Bengals wide receivers coach Troy Walters during the pre-draft process but was sold as a developmental project. The track star was leaps and bounds ahead of expectations and could be a major player for this team in the future.

2024 Outlook

Higgins is the big talk of the offseason, with everyone who knows the Bengals saying he will be franchised and all of the talking heads thinking they know Fa, fa, fa, fa, fa, fa, fa, far better and talking about his potential landing spots.

It’s most likely that he will be playing on the tag next season, but a tag and trade wouldn’t come as a huge surprise to me.

There has been a lot of talk about potentially drafting a Higgins replacement, but to be honest, I think they already have. Iosivas is an ideal replacement for Higgins, who can do a lot of the same things. The Ivy Leaguer has shown his smarts, developing quickly in his rookie season, and has a ceiling higher than your brother-in-law at the Pink Floyd Laser Show.

People have basically decided that this was Boyd’s last year in stripes, but I don’t know if that is necessarily true. The 29-year-old slot may not get the money he is looking for on the open market, particularly since every draft class seems to be loaded with wide receivers lately.

If the Bengals were contemplating trading Higgins, they might be more inclined to bring back Boyd and not have such a massive shift in pass catchers for their young quarterback.

The in-house option to replace Boyd is Jones, but as stated, he has a long road to travel. Jones has the versatility to play on the outside, which would give the team more flexibility to use Chase in the slot and create favorable matchups.