Bengals Defender Named Team's Biggest X-Factor Ahead of 2026 Season

ESPN's Mina Kimes had The Draft Network's Brentley Weissman on "The Mina Kimes Show Featuring Lenny" this week, and they broke down all of the top X-Factor players for each AFC team.

Weissman had the Bengals' end of things and landed on newly added safety Bryan Cook as his pick. Neither host was allowed to pick a quarterback or coach for the exercise.

Time To Cook?

Bengals safety Bryan Cook speaks to the media during a press conference at Paycor Stadium in Cincinnati on Thursday, March 12, 2026. | Albert Cesare/The Enquirer / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Cook just inked a three-year deal in March to return home and play for the Bengals.

"I love Bryan Cook as a player, but it's also more about who he's replacing," Weissman noted. "Geno Stone was awful last season. I mean, truly terrible. The Bengals allowed the most explosive 20-plus yard plays on defense in the NFL. A lot of those plays were long run plays, and that was directly because of Geno Stone's missed tackles last year in 2025. He missed 17 tackles. That's unacceptable. Took poor angles to the football, just really not a good player as your last line of defense, Bryan Cook coming in, look, he's not Kyle Hamilton or anything like that, but what he provides this defense is a good, reliable player in both coverage and run support, takes good angles with the football, good open field tackler, and for me, like that improvement over Stone is going to yield major differences in this defense.

"He had just five missed tackles all of last season, compared to Stone's 17, like that's pretty crazy. So, I think Bryan Cook playing and being a serviceable, stable presence in the back end is going to really help this unit, because the front four is fantastically better, like dramatically improved. Boye Mafe, Cashius Howell, Dexter Lawrence, I think that unit's going to hold its own. The question remaining for me was the back end, but with Bryan Cook being that guy who played in the box as well as a force player in run support to me is going to go a long way in this defense, taking a few steps in the right direction, because that's all they need, you know offensively what the team is, so if the defense can kind of hold its end of the bargain, they can compete for the division, so I think Bryan Cook to me is really important to the success of this team."

Cook should be a much more sound tackler in space this coming season than Stone ever proved to be in two seasons with the Bengals.

He's a part of a massive defensive overhaul that doesn't need to result in this unit going from bottom three in the NFL to top five overall to contend for a title. Joe Burrow won 10 games and the AFC North with the 17th-best scoring defense in 2021 and won 12 games the next year as the league's sixth-best scoring defense complemented his offense.

A top-half defense should put Cincinnati in firm AFC North contention, while a top-10 unit would make them the clear favorites. All that growth continues this week and beyond during offseason workouts.

Check out the full show from Kimes and Weissman below:

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