Orlando Brown Jr. discussed the Bengals O-line on The First Word with James Rapien and Jacob Tissot.
Cincinnati Bengals offensive lineman Orlando Brown Jr. recently made an appearance on The First Word, a new sports morning show on The Crown Media Network hosted by James Rapien and Jacob Tissot. He touched on a bevy of topics but was able to go in depth on the Bengals' offensive line, focusing on Amarius Mims, Dylan Fairchild and Dalton Risner, how they have developed, and his expectations for them and the entire group.
He started with Amarius Mims, the 2024 draftee out of Georgia who came into the league as an athletic freak but nevertheless a project who needed to get a lot of snaps under his belt. Brown said his first piece of advice to Mims was to play big, given that he already had all the traits and talent of the great NFL tackles.
“A lot of times, intangibles override talent in situations at the professional level.”
After not contributing much in his rookie season, Mims had a great 2025 campaign, setting the stage for the oversized tackle to be a breakout candidate ahead of the 2026 season. Mims received a 67.6 overall grade from Pro Football Focus last season and a 66.6 pass-blocking grade.
“Believe it or not, he’s gotten even stronger in the weight room,” Brown said.
For Dylan Fairchild, a rookie in 2025, Brown said it was really baptism by fire as he tried to figure out the entire NFL experience. From training to the schedule and everything else, Brown said he did not see Fairchild get comfortable until about December.
“He was the guy from the moment he got here, being at left guard.”
Dalton Risner, who started the final seven games of the 2025 season for the Bengals and eventually earned a one-year, $5 million extension before this season, has bounced around the NFL. Brown said that journey has led some people to put him in a box, but he has been a huge contributor to the team since joining the offensive line room.
“His juice on Sundays that he brings, he brings really healthy balance to us. With me being crazy, Ted being crazy and Mims being young.”
Risner had the highest offensive grade and pass-blocking grade of any of the Bengals' offensive linemen. He also had the highest run-blocking grade across the 13 games he played. It is worth wondering what a full 17-game campaign may look like, but Brown seems confident that Risner will continue what he started in 2025.
With all five of Brown, Ted Karras, Fairchild, Mims and Risner back for a second year as a group, Brown thinks the continuity is going to be huge for the offensive line, Joe Burrow and the offense as a whole. As we've touched on before, there is a sort of Mandela effect linked to the Bengals' offensive line: that it is perpetually bad. But after a huge step forward despite a decent amount of turnover on Cincinnati's offensive front last season, continuity may provide the chance to have a top-10 group in a huge season.
