12-10-2022, 10:40 PM
2020 is going to be hard to beat. I was also born in the 80s, so I don't have an in person memory of the early generations of the Bengals.
My thought going in was 1980 may still be held as the best for now since that was the year we drafted Anthony Munoz, but I looked at the other players in that draft and there was only one other player that spent more than 3 years with the Bengals (and he seems to have been a back up for the majority of his career). 5 of the players didn't even have wikipedia pages haha.
1969 looks like it could have been an outstanding draft because they got Ken Riley, Bill Bergey and Greg Cook, who The NFL Network NFL Top Ten series named the #1 One Shot Wonder in NFL history. He won the Rookie of the year award and looked like a franchise QB before being injured and, since it was 1969, the medical technology wasn't what it is today, so his career ended after a brief comeback attempt 3 years later.
1971 looks similar to the 1980 season where we got an outstanding player (Kenny Anderson) but not much else. Vernon Holland was a serviceable player, but never an all pro or pro bowler or anything.
2006 was a draft that delivered a lot of regulars, including our likely 2nd Hall of Fame Lineman in Whitworth. Rucker, Peko, Joseph and Brooks all made impacts in the NFL as well. But Burrow transcends all of these, let alone the other players we got from 2020.
2001, I think, is probably going to end up being the runner up to 2020 in the long run. They got Chad Johnson, Rudi Johnson, Justin Smith and TJ Houshmandzadeh from a single draft. The only thing that holds that class back is it never resulted in any real success, whereas 2020 obviously did.
My thought going in was 1980 may still be held as the best for now since that was the year we drafted Anthony Munoz, but I looked at the other players in that draft and there was only one other player that spent more than 3 years with the Bengals (and he seems to have been a back up for the majority of his career). 5 of the players didn't even have wikipedia pages haha.
1969 looks like it could have been an outstanding draft because they got Ken Riley, Bill Bergey and Greg Cook, who The NFL Network NFL Top Ten series named the #1 One Shot Wonder in NFL history. He won the Rookie of the year award and looked like a franchise QB before being injured and, since it was 1969, the medical technology wasn't what it is today, so his career ended after a brief comeback attempt 3 years later.
1971 looks similar to the 1980 season where we got an outstanding player (Kenny Anderson) but not much else. Vernon Holland was a serviceable player, but never an all pro or pro bowler or anything.
2006 was a draft that delivered a lot of regulars, including our likely 2nd Hall of Fame Lineman in Whitworth. Rucker, Peko, Joseph and Brooks all made impacts in the NFL as well. But Burrow transcends all of these, let alone the other players we got from 2020.
2001, I think, is probably going to end up being the runner up to 2020 in the long run. They got Chad Johnson, Rudi Johnson, Justin Smith and TJ Houshmandzadeh from a single draft. The only thing that holds that class back is it never resulted in any real success, whereas 2020 obviously did.
![[Image: oN5QAdY.png]](https://i.imgur.com/oN5QAdY.png)
