The Cincinnati Bengals seemed to receive rave reviews across the board for their performance in the 2023 NFL draft.
That’s an idea reflected in a compilation of NFL draft grades for the Bengals.
It also shows up in an annual look at NFL draft grades from 29 different evaluators. The yearly exercise, compiled by René Bugner, grabs nearly 30 different draft grades for each team, then totals them into a spreadsheet sorted by the best overall grades.
There, the Bengals land in the top 10 with a 3.22 grade, the highest belonging to Philadelphia at 4.12.
Notably, the only evaluator to give the Bengals worse than a B- for their performance was the New York Post, which threw the Bengals a C- for their efforts.
A look at the graph:
🏈🧑🏻🎓 I´ve compiled 29 evaluations of the 2023 NFL draft and totaled the team grades.
Here is the spreadsheet. Sorted by GPA for all 32 teams.
I also sorted the 29 evaluations by GPA. From left (soft graders) to right (hard graders).
Thanks to all who give out grades every year! pic.twitter.com/lEvqCkViCT— René Bugner (@RNBWCV) May 25, 2023
Overall, the helpful exercise re-illustrates the point that the Bengals had a strong showing in the draft, even if one can’t truly judge a class until three-plus years later.
Seeing it in this context compared to the rest of the NFL, though, re-affirms that the team’s strategy that has produced an annual contender continues to work.
