Chase Brown exploded onto the NFL scene in Week 9. Then Zack Moss was put on IR with a season-ending neck injury while Khalil Herbert arrived from Chicago.
This is an interesting move. I’ve got a reasonable amount of Herbert because he had multiple paths to value in 2024. Given the extremely underwhelming performances of D’Andre Swift and Roschon Johnson in 2023, he had at least an outside shot at being the leader of a committee after the coaches had a chance to watch the trio practice. Alternately, he was always the most likely RB to move in a trade. You don’t massively overpay Swift and then a couple of weeks later go, “Whoops!”
The most likely trade scenarios seemed to feature the Cowboys or Chargers, but both of those teams have backed into dynamic (J.K. Dobbins) or competent (Rico Dowdle) starters. And in their defense, I think they’d tell you “backed into” is a pretty uncharitable description of a savvy plan that worked.
By contrast, the Bengals have one of the most electric starters in football. What they didn’t have was a viable complement. Moss is a below-replacement level player, but he was barely below replacement in a lot of different facets. That matters.
By contrast, we really don’t know what Herbert is now. He ranked No. 7 in points-above-average per play in 2022. Last year he missed a chunk in the middle of the season with a high ankle sprain but still averaged 4.6 yards per carry and ranked No. 15 in PAA/A, just above Breece Hall and Bijan Robinson.
It’s a bit weird that Herbert isn’t playing for the Bears in 2024, but this is a franchise that’s making Caleb Williams and D.J. Moore look like two of the worst players in football. It’s a team game. You can only control what you can control, and you can’t even do that from the bench.
All of which is to say that Herbert is probably a serious improvement on Moss, but since the entire context is apples-to-oranges, these developments are a huge upgrade for Brown over the previous committee. The Bengals don’t have the same type of psychological commitment to Herbert, and they don’t have to use him in any specific way to prove that the acquisition made sense. When you make a midseason trade for a bench player, you can just use that player tactically in a way that helps your team.
This Is the Best Week to Buy at RB
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