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Drew Sample injury is the cherry on top of Bengals’ disastrous 2019 draft class

It bad.

By Jason Marcum
Cincinnati Bengals Introduce Zac Taylor Photo by Joe Robbins/Getty Images

The Bengals’ 2019 draft class has been nothing short of an unmitigated astonishingly disastrous failure this year.

To recap:

  • Jonah Williams (Round 1) is on PUP and may not play this season
  • Drew Sample (Round 2) has rarely played this season
  • Germaine Pratt (Round 3) is clearly a raw prospect not ready for significant snaps
  • Ryan Finley (Round 4) looked very shaky in his first NFL start (but he did help get Andy Dalton to the bench so could be considered a tremendous pick)
  • Renell Wren (Round 4) has seen sparse playing time
  • Michael Jordan (Round 4) has been one of the worst starting linemen in the NFL this year in his brief time starting
  • Trayveon Williams (Round 6) does not have a single touch
  • DeShaun Davis (Round 6) isn’t even on NFL practice squad
  • Rodney Anderson (Round 6) is on IR with his second torn ACL in two years
  • Jordan Brown (Round 7) is now on the Jaguars’ practice squad

So of course, given the Bengals’ exquisitely bad luck/maybe just a tad bit of incompetence with literally anything that involves running an NFL franchise, it’s somehow getting worse.

On Sunday, Sample suffered a high-ankle sprain that could end his season, which will include a whopping five catches for 30 yards from a player selected 52nd overall this year and widely viewed as the biggest reach of the entire draft.

It really does take a special kind of bad to be winless in the middle of November, but this draft class certainly fits the bill, which is a big reason why the Bengals have been unable to taste victory in 2019.

The amazing thing is Zac Taylor has been infinitely more willing to play rookies than Marvin Lewis ever was, yet somehow is getting about the same level of production as even Lewis’ worst rookie classes (Tyler Kroft and Josh Shaw in 2015 contributed about as much as this entire class has so far in 2019, if not more).

At this point, the lone bright spot ‘could’ be if Williams is able to come off PUP and play for a few games in December, hopefully showing he’s more than capable of being a franchise tackle on either side.

We can only hope.

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