One of the most popular debates this draft season is what the Cincinnati Bengals should do with the 5th pick in the draft. Over time the two top options have become abundantly clear. They can either take Oregon’s offensive tackle Penei Sewell to protect their young QB Joe Burrow, or they can reunite Burrow with receiver Ja’Marr Chase who Burrow played with at LSU. The Draftniks and Draft Media overall believe that Penei Sewell is the better pick, and many fans agree with this sentiment. Less people believe that Chase is the correct pick, but the arguably more important people think that Chase should be the pick, namely analytics places such as PFF as well as quarterback Joe Burrow himself and likely the Bengals organization. I think there is a good chance the Cincinnati Bengals end up taking Ja’Marr Chase and quite honestly I think that is absolutely the correct decision and I’d take Chase over Sewell any day of the week.

Before we dive into the positional value and why I think a receiver would make a bigger impact on the team, first I think I should give a brief analysis of what I think about each prospect after watching the tape. Watching Ja’Marr Chase I fell in love with his game and I see almost no weaknesses with how he plays the receiver position. There is no one way to stop Ja’Marr Chase and Ja’Marr Chase can beat you in so many different ways. The one obviously flashy thing that he does is make insane contested catches. Ja’Marr Chase does a phenomenal job at gaining positioning and leverage off of the snap and putting himself in position to make a contested catch. His timing, ball skills, and leaping ability then allow him to make the catch. A 50-50 ball is not really 50-50 when thrown in Ja’Marr Chase’s direction. This, however, is just the baseline for Ja’Marr Chase, and highlight watchers may come away thinking that Ja’Marr Chase is a phenomenal contested catch receiver but doesn’t do much else. When you watch Chase play in and play out you notice a lot of the nuances that his game has, beyond just the contested catch ability. Ja’Marr Chase may be just 6’0 201 lbs which is just about average in both for the receiver position, but it is obvious that his functional strength is phenomenal and it allows him to gain leverage on cornerbacks every play. Ja’Marr Chase gets to where he wants to go, and if that’s not by using deception he can go through cornerbacks and will not be bumped off of his routes because of his phenomenal functional strength, as well as great footwork and body control when running his routes. That’s not to say he can’t win with deceptiveness however, because he certainly can. Ja’Marr Chase is an amazing route runner and gets significantly less credit than he deserves in that aspect of his game. He sells his route fakes incredibly well and sets up routes over multiple plays which is not something that a lot of receivers do. Ja’Marr Chase is the ideal Number One receiver at the NFL level, because he can beat you with every aspect of his game. He can get open deep with his speed and route running, even if he’s not completely open deep his contested catch skills allow him to consistently win at the catch point downfield, and he can also win with quickness and route running in the quick game and can get yards after the catch as well. There’s not a lot I see wrong with Ja’Marr Chase and he’s going to be the perfect X receiver for any team, including the Bengals. 

Chase is a guy who I think has relatively few weaknesses and has insane upside for his position, I think Penei Sewell has just as much upside for his position if not more, but he has quite a few flaws to his game, and I wouldn’t say that he is the generational offensive tackle prospect that people are making him out to be. He is one of the biggest offensive tackle prospects we’ve ever seen and he has insane foot speed, quickness, and change of direction for his size. While these aspects of his game may be truly mind boggling for his size compared to all offensive tackles he’s only slightly above average. While he does utilize his size well using it to easily beat smaller edge rushers on snaps he’s not overly powerful and doesn’t control edge rushers perfectly like his frame would indicate. Another big issue with Sewell is his inconsistency using his hands and his feet at the same time. Some snaps he looks great doing it and other snaps he looks like each motion is deliberate and choppy instead of one fluid motion which leads to his hands not having as much power as they should when he punches, and sometimes when combined with his shorter arms it lets edge rushers get into his chest which is never a good thing. The great thing about Sewell however, is that he’s still so young and athletically he’s off the charts. The weaknesses I just talked about in Sewell’s game were the weaknesses I saw on tape watching a 19 year old player. When most other offensive tackles were at Sewell’s age they had just as many technical issues if not more so it’s not surprising that Sewell has flaws. His athletic upside more than makes up for it because his size and movement profile is rare and he understands leverage, positions himself well to choke off angles for edge rushers, and places his hands extremely well. He may not be as much of a surefire pick as Chase but considering his age he’s still advanced technically and has amazing athletic upside to more than make up for it.

After looking at what both players are good at and what their flaws are this brings me to my main point. Having a surefire receiver who can win in almost every way possible and has little to no weaknesses is more important than a high upside offensive lineman. The offensive line is a weakest link position group, you are only as good as your worst player is a sentiment that while isn’t 100% accurate, holds true much more for the offensive line than it does for a receiving core. To further compound that statement, the trickle down effect has a much greater impact for receivers than it does for offensive lineman. If the Bengals draft Ja’Marr Chase not only will their production at the WR1 position be increased but the other receivers on the Bengals roster will also reap the benefits. For example Bengals wide receiver Tee Higgins will be facing opposing teams number two corners, instead of their number one corner. Tyler Boyd in the slot will also see more production as more attention will be diverted to helping the number one corner with Chase and the number two corner with Higgins than it will to the slot, increasing the production capability for Boyd. Even Auden Tate now gets moved down to WR4 and will be one of the better depth players in the league, and in four receivers sets he will also receive less attention than usual. Offensive line is one of the positions in football where this trickle down effect isn’t really seen. Penei Sewell will play left tackle and from there you have two options. You can kick Jonah Williams into guard and play Riley Reiff as the short term starting right tackle, or you have Jonah Williams move to right tackle and kick Reiff into guard as the short term option. In either scenario I have a short term or long term gripe about each option. In the first option where you kick Williams into guard, the long term right tackle position is now somewhat unstable. Reiff isn’t a long term fix and with Williams bouncing around from left tackle to guard then to finally right tackle it will hinder his development and Williams value will be minimized. If you move Williams to right tackle, Williams value is moving laterally and Reiff’s value may even be going down as you move him to guard, a foreign position. Any way that you look at it what’s likely happening in the long term is that they upgrade at LT, upgrade at one of RT or LG, and downgrade at one of RT or LG. Michael Jordan is the one being removed from the starting lineup, but in the long term once Reiff leaves, the Bengals will either need Jordan or will have to replace him. This means by picking Sewell either Michael Jordan, who has been a solid young guard up to this point, or Riley Reiff, who the Bengals just dished out 5.5 million for, are going to be unnecessary players. Offensive lines also don’t use a rotation like receivers so the depth at receiver differs from the offensive lineman now moved to the bench. Obviously Reiff or Jordan should not be stopping a team from drafting Penei Sewell on their own but when you have a situation like the Bengals do with Chase where he only helps the guys around him this can sway the pick in the favor of Chase.

When you have a passable at worst and great at best left tackle like Jonah Williams in the building already, I just don’t see the point in adding Sewell for a slight gain on the rest of the line besides left tackle, where they’re not even upgrading that much considering Williams is a decent player. For receivers however, not only will Ja’Marr Chase be a great number one option, but he will also increase the production of guys like Tee Higgins and Tyler Boyd, as well as deepen the rotation and make guys like Auden Tate more productive for their role. 

We also have to take into account the value at the draft where the Bengals are picking. Ja’Marr Chase brings a valuable skill set of being a true X receiver. The Bengals receivers currently consist of two bigger guys, Tee Higgins and Auden Tate, as well as Tyler Boyd as a smaller possession receiver in the slot. Ja’Marr Chase offers the skill set of being able to not only get open deep but also feast underneath. That kind of ability is just not going to be found in this year’s draft after the first pick. If the Bengals want to supply Burrow with more firepower to compete with the high octane offenses in the AFC, after the first round they’re not going to find it. Ja’Marr Chase, Devonta Smith, Jaylen Waddle, and Rashod Bateman are the locks to not make it to the Bengals 2nd round pick. After that we have about a 50-50 chance Terrace Marshall is there, but he plays very similarly to Higgins. Elijah Moore is another popular choice to be available but he plays too similarly to Tyler Boyd. The guys at the top of Round 2 just don’t fit what the Bengals will be looking for. Another argument that may be made is that receivers on Late Day 2 and Day 3 are easy to find and that the Bengals should just take a shot at one of those guys but what people don’t realize is that for every Antonio Brown and Allen Robinson there are another 5 Amara Darboh’s or DaeSean Hamilton’s. The slightly higher number of solid Day 2 receivers is because of the sheer number of receivers that are drafted in that range every year. Considering the Bengals draft history I don’t trust the scouting department to find and identify the right guy. 

Offensive tackle on the other hand is a position that I’m fairly confident in the Day 2 talent. By their pick in the second round Penei Sewell, Rashawn Slater, Christian Darrisaw, and Teven Jenkins will all likely be gone, but two guys I like quite a lot are Sam Cosmi and Dillon Radunz. They both have the upside to be amazing offensive tackles in the NFL, and unlike Penei Sewell the Bengals do not have to stick either guy at left tackle, keeping Jonah Williams in his natural position and having just as good of an impact on the rest of the line other than left tackle if they traded Penei Sewell. I like the value of Day 2 players and tackle significantly more than I like the redundant talent at receiver on Day 2 for the Bengals.

And all of this is without even mentioning the impact that the Ja’Marr Chase pick will have on Joe Burrow. The most frequent reasoning I see as to why the Bengals need to take is that the line next year was so bad that Joe Burrow got injured and that they’d be doing a disservice to Joe Burrow if they didn’t take an offensive lineman, but at the end of the day Joe Burrow is one of the people that is campaigning for the Bengals to take Ja’Marr Chase. He already has chemistry with Ja’Marr Chase and he believes that a wide receiver that he is familiar with would do more for making him comfortable playing. At the end of the day, your franchise QB trumps everything else, so if Joe Burrow believes that it was a freak injury last year and is not concerned about his line, then you go out and get that receiver. In the unlikely case Burrow does end up getting hurt again, he was the one who suggested wide receiver, so at the end of the day he can’t really blame the Bengals front office since he was the one who got to decide. 

There are a multitude of reasons that I believe that Ja’Marr Chase is a better pick than Penei Sewell and no matter who the Bengals choose this Thursday have at 5 the future of the Bengals organization and contention window under Joe Burrow is going to be vastly altered. The Bengals are picking in the Top 5 and with Burrow I don’t know if they’ll ever be picking that high in the draft again. I think the pick here has to be Ja’Marr Chase and in a few years we can revisit this to see if Ja’Marr Chase is really the right pick over Sewell.