<\/p>\n
The\u00a0Cincinnati Bengals\u00a0don\u2019t often come up in national praise, although the tides continue to shift during the Joe Burrow era, at least.<\/p>\n
There are some big exceptions, though. When it comes time to look at some of the biggest hits in franchise history, well, the\u00a0Bengals\u00a0have some best-ever candidates.<\/p>\n
While running down the best draft picks ever at every pick, ESPN\u2019s\u00a0Ben Solak\u00a0singled out the Bengals in the No. 55 slot for a guy named Andrew Whitworth:<\/p>\n
\u201cWhitworth played 239 games over 16 seasons (wow!), and he needed all 16 of those seasons to get his ring with the\u00a0Rams. Whit worked his way into a dominant back half of his career, making his first Pro Bowl at 31 and first All-Pro team at 34. The Bengals, who drafted him, will appreciate him for his 11 seasons of quality play, and the Rams enjoyed his strong sunset.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Despite the messy exit from Cincinnati due to ineptitude on the part of the Bengals at the time, Whitworth is one of the best players in franchise history and all parties certainly deserve the nod here.<\/p>\n Not far down the list from Whitworth? A guy named Ken Anderson at No. 67:<\/p>\n \u201cA 16-year vet of the Bengals, Anderson’s 1981 season won him an MVP and took Cincinnati to its first-ever Super Bowl. I strived to avoid overweighting quarterbacks in this exercise, but even without a positional value bump, Anderson still clears the value of Alvin Kamara, also taken at No. 67 overall and one of the best third-round picks ever.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Not a bad duo when thinking about all-time Bengals picks in the top 100 of drafts. There\u2019s still plenty of time for some of the modern guys like Burrow to start making their case for much more competitive slots higher up the all-time order, too.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" usatoday.com wants to ensure the best experience for all of our readers, so we built our site to take advantage of the latest technology, making it faster and easier to use.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27484,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cincinnati-bengals"],"yoast_head":"\n