The Athletic NFL
By Jacob Robinson
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Bengals’ X factors
Around the league, at least 15 players fit the dictionary’s “X factor” definition (“strong but unpredictable influence,” per Merriam-Webster, in case you were curious) this season.
Among them, the Bengals’ playoff hopes rest on their linebackers specifically, as Robert Mays explains in this clip:
“People are looking at all the moves the Bengals made this offseason: Dexter Lawrence, multiple big free-agent acquisitions, and saying, ‘All right, here we go.’
“There’s plenty of reason to believe that this group will be significantly better than it was a year ago. (But) if the linebacker play from (Barrett Carter and Demetrius Knight) does not take a step forward and looks even marginally close to what it did last year, that could be enough to sink this unit.
“That is the position group on this team where they did nothing to upgrade this offseason.”
Carter and Knight are second-year players who struggled when thrust into starting roles as rookies. They improved in the latter half of 2025, but not enough to quiet concerns about Cincinnati.
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Interesting. I’d never hear that defined before. I always thought of it as a “fudge factor”. You know when an ingineer does a load calculation and at the end multiples by two or three “just to be sure”.
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