Cincinnati Bengals Veterans at Risk of Losing Their Starting Jobs

The Cincinnati Bengals open training camp Wednesday with seemingly few position battles among the starters.

All 11 starters are back on offense, which is rarity. The last time the Bengals had the same five offensive linemen start a season finale and the ensuing opener was 2010 with Andrew Whitworth, Nate Livings, Kyle Cook, Bobbie Williams and Dennis Roland.

Though all 11 are back on offense, there is one spot that could be up for grabs in camp.

There are two spots on the remade defense, and one on special teams.

Let’s take a look at the veterans – players entering at least their fourth season – whose jobs could be on the line during the next six weeks of practice leading up to the Sept. 13 season opener against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Jalen Davis

Perhaps “starter” is a loosely applied title for Davis, who has just three starts in his previous eight seasons.

But all three of those starts came in the final month and a half of last season, and Davis enters training camp as the starter at nickel corner.

The Bengals coaches and front office obviously are big Davis fans to keep him around so long despite him playing fewer than eight games in three of his six seasons with the team. But there is a long line of competitors challenging him for the job.

“We've got guys that are competing in there, and we've brought guys in this offseason that'll get some competition in there,” director of player personnel Duke Tobin said. “We’ve got young guys who will grow in their second and third years at that position. So we’ve got a lot of guys fighting for that spot.”

It should be the most interesting position battle of camp.

Myles Murphy

Murphy is coming off the best season of his career – and the only one that worked worthy of the first-round pick the team used to select him in 2023.

Murphy started the first 10 games of his career in 2025 and had 5.5 sacks after combining for just three in 2023-24.

He has something in common with the player most likely to unseat him as the starter, 2025 first-round pick Shemar Stewart.

Like Murphy, Stewart’s rookie season was stunted by multiple injuries and a learning curve. He still started five games, three of which came before Trey Hendrickson went down with his season-ending back injury.

Stewart and Murphy will be competing for the starting job opposite of Boye Mafe, whom the team signed in free agency in March.

The coaching staff continues to be bullish on Stewart’s future, and a healthy and explosive training camp could be all he needs to unseat Murphy as the starter.

Regardless of which one is on the field for the first play of the game, both are going to see a lot of action as the Bengals have been intentional this offseason about creating waves of pass rushers.

Andrei Iosivas

The 2023 sixth-round pick started a career-high nine games last year but fell just shy of the numbers he posted in 2024.

The No. 3 receiver behind Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins, Iosivas could see his starts dwindle in 2026 even he holds off the challengers – primarily fourth-round pick Colbie Young – if the Bengals shift to more 12 personnel and open games with two tight ends instead of just one and three receivers.

Either way, Iosivas is expected to receive a push from Young, a larger possession receiver who is more physical with the ball in his hands and a strong blocker in the run game.

This is a contract year for Iosivas, so he will have plenty of motivation to outperform Young in camp.

Charlie Jones

Special teams players don’t get credited with starts, which is why Jones zero career starts in 33 games as the team’s primary return man.

More concerning than the zero starts are the 33 games out of a possible 51.

Jones has at least one return touchdown in each of the last three seasons, but he’s struggled to stay healthy.

That’s left the door cracked for Ke’Shawn Williams, who joined the Bengals in December and averaged 25.4 yards on eight kick returns and 10.6 yards on nine punt returns.

Jones averaged 25.8 yards on 42 kick returns, including a 98-yard touchdown against the Chicago Bears, and 8.8 yards on 13 punt returns.

"I view it as a pretty good competition,” Bengals special teams coordinator Darrin Simmons said Monday at the pre-camp luncheon. “I mean, Charlie's the incumbent guy. He naturally should be. He's proven he can do it. He's scored three times in three years.

“But he's got to be able to stay on the field,” Simmons continued. “And so I think having somebody like Ke’Shawn here pushing him in that regard is a huge factor. Both those guys are going to get a ton of reps.”

Add us as a preferred source on Google