Pinpointing where exactly things went wrong for the Cincinnati Bengals in 2023 isn’t as easy as it appears.

The obvious choice is Week 11 at the Baltimore Ravens, when quarterback Joe Burrow tried to throw the ball on the sideline but couldn’t because a ligament in his right wrist popped. But it was just one of many issues that derailed Cincinnati’s hopes of making a deep playoff run for the third straight season.

One could go back to the beginning of the offseason, when safeties Jessie Bates III and Vonn Bell signed with other teams in free agency, leaving a big void in the Bengals’ secondary. Another inflection point occurred when the Bengals were unable to find a viable starting tight end in free agency.

And of course, there were the injuries that put Cincinnati off on a bad foot from the beginning.

“It was a weird year,” Burrow said on Jan. 8, one day after the Bengals ended the year with a 9-8 record. “Never really felt like we really reached our potential to what we were.”

An ailing quarterback
Things seemed doomed from the second practice of training camp.

That day, Burrow arrived wearing a compression sleeve on his right calf. During team drills, Burrow suffered a strained right calf when he rolled right on a pass play. Not only did Burrow miss more than a month of practice, but he was limited for the first several weeks of the season.