3 Bengals who won’t be on the roster after training camp
By Kristen Wong
Bengals’ training camp cut candidate No. 2: Jeff Gunter, DE
The Bengals’ pass-rushing corps in 2023 looks electrifying. As one of the most highly touted training camp positional battles this summer, the defensive end unit is the most competitive it’s been for years, and Cincy will have to make excruciating choices on who to keep and who to cut.
Apart from roster locks Sam Hubbard and Trey Hendrickson, the rest of the depth chart faces a squirrely climb up the totem pole.
Joseph Ossai, Cam Sample, Myles Murphy, Tarell Basham, and Jeff Gunter are all players who weren’t on the team before 2021, putting them on somewhat level ground. Yet whereas Ossai arguably boasts higher production in recent years, Sample, Murphy, Basham, and Gunter all trail slightly behind, along with a few other stragglers on the backend of the chart.
Assuming the Bengals roster five or six edge-rushers, some veterans and/ or youngsters are going to get the axe. Cincy used a draft pick on 2022 seventh-rounder Jeff Gunter, but Gunter also got injured for a stretch of his rookie season.
In 2022, Gunter appeared in 10 games and recorded one tackle, and he was more often used on special teams. This season, with a jacked-up defensive end unit chockful of players with valuable skillsets, Gunter may bring less to the table.
With Gunter getting a slow start to his NFL career, the Bengals may choose to give 2023 first-rounder Murphy and veteran Basham spots on the active roster instead. The tortoise does not, in fact, win this race.