Bengals Among Bottom Three NFL Teams in Financial Efficiency Midway Through 2025 Season

CINCINNATI — The Bengals have heavily mismanaged their financial resources this season, and the numbers bear that out in vivid detail. Spotrac released a Financial Efficiency Ratings mark for each NFL team through Week 9, and Cincinnati is 30th in the NFL, ahead of only the Cowboys and Vikings.

No member of that trio is projected to make the playoffs as Cincinnati maximizes just 13.3% of its resources. The team they faced in the Super Bowl a few years ago is all the way at the top as the Rams get ready to make another run at the playoffs after losing in the divisional round last season.

These two organizations have gone in opposite directions since that fateful February night, and that was a Rams team that invested heavily in future draft resources to win that title. Even with less resources, they know how to draft well on a consistent basis, and the Bengals do not.

It's led to coaches having to answer questions meant for the director of player personnel, Duke Tobin.

"My experience with Duke has just always been very approachable and open to input, and wanting to hear your opinion," Offensive coordinator Dan Pitcher said this week. "You sit up there in draft meetings and you never feel like it's, 'Hey, we got this guy figured out, what do you think? There's none of that. It's if you did work, did you evaluate him? Great. You evaluate him. What do you think? How does he fit us? How would we use him, really listening and factoring that into the process? So as a coach, that's really all you can ask for.

"There are a lot of factors that come into making decisions. I haven't come up on that side of it. In my early career, I got a lot of respect for those factors. And no decision is easy, and there's a lot of competing elements at play. So like I said, I got nothing but respect for those guys, and I've appreciated working with them."

The Bengals' draft process with Tobin is not working, but they haven't changed much on that front in two decades.

Check out the full FER below:

Spotrac's Financial Efficiency Ratings through 9 #NFL Weeks, led by the Rams & Seahawks, with the Bengals, Vikings, and Cowboys bringing up the rear.

This metric analyzes a team's Combined AAV spending versus various production efficiency ratings. pic.twitter.com/D9H21NVNeY
— Spotrac (@spotrac) November 4, 2025

For more on the Bengals, subscribe to our YouTube Channel and watch the video below as part of our in-depth coverage of the team. Prefer to listen? Check out Cincinnati Bengals Talk on Apple, Spotify, and Amazon Podcasts.

Make sure you bookmark BengalsTalk.com for the latest Bengals news, exclusive interviews, insight, film breakdowns and so much more!

Also, check out the podcast, Locked On Bengals, wherever you get your podcasts.

Apple: bit.ly/BengalsApple

Spotify: bit.ly/BengalsSpotify

YouTube: bit.ly/LOBengalsYouTube

-----

Follow us on X: @BengalsTalkSI

Like Our Facebook Page

Follow on TikTok