Few people are better positioned to speak on the state of the Cincinnati Bengals than Andrew Whitworth.

The former Bengals and Los Angeles Rams legend with 235 regular-season starts to his name, friend of Joe Burrow and analyst on NFL On Prime, is back in Baltimore on Thursday a year after watching the quarterback’s season end.

Last weekend he even dressed up like Burrow for Halloween, blond wig and all.

He even once went through a contract dispute (or two) with Mike Brown and the Bengals during his time in Cincinnati, nine of those years spent as a captain and one of the great leaders in club history.

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Now, on the desk on “Thursday Night Football,” his podcast with former Bengals teammate Ryan Fitzpatrick or wherever you want to meet him, he speaks the NFL truth as well as any former player out there.

I caught up with him this week, and his answers were enlightening and uniquely insightful to the current situation as the Bengals try to dig out of an early-season hole that followed another tumultuous offseason dealing with contract disputes and trade requests.

Here were his five best answers from that conversation.

Did you reach out to Joe about dressing up like him for Halloween last week or where you can get that sleeveless black mesh top?

Listen, one thing I know Joe well enough about is when he’s in locked-in mode, which he has been for the last few weeks, I’m not reaching out to Joe Burrow for anything. I don’t even care if he’s the one person who had the opportunity to help me. I’m staying out of his way because when he’s ready to ride and it’s like, hey, it’s football, must-win time, there’s nobody more intense and that has the ability to turn it on like that guy.

So, I’m not getting in the way. … But no, I did not ask him, but I did do my research, I had some people help me and we got it done. I mean, you know, obviously, I think for me because I haven’t had hair in about 20-something years, that hair was definitely the most fun. I did a lot of stroking of the hair throughout the night. You know, later that night, I never took the wig off. So, Fitz gave me a lot of crap for that. But listen, I haven’t had hair in 20 years. It was just nice to have some hair for a little while. That’ll probably be the last time you see me in a mesh tank top.

This wasn’t on my bingo card for 24’
Big whit x @IncredibleCulk https://t.co/sb4Cv5WbP7

— Andrew Whitworth (@AndrewWhitworth) November 1, 2024

Last week, a video of a podcast conversation you had at the Super Bowl last year made the rounds in Cincinnati where you retold the story of writing a letter to Mike Brown as you went through the contract and free-agency process with them, eventually landing with the Los Angeles Rams. It wasn’t the easiest of exits. What is your relationship with the Bengals now and how has it evolved since your career ended?

It’s been great. I’ve had a couple of opportunities to be back for games to be around and make some visits, even going up and seeing Mike a couple of times. You know, for me, it’s, man, 11 years. It’s some of the most special years of my career and really my life. I think of all my kids, Melissa and I got married and moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, and all our kids were born while we were playing there. Last time we went back, I think it was last year for a game, we went by and saw our old house and the kids’ old schools, even though they’re really little, just to kind of show them around and remind them of that memory.

It’s a place that to me will forever be special and always be a great part of my life and a big part of my story. And so, obviously, from the community service work to really just the investment in that entire city, I think some of my lifelong friends and just people that will always be part of who I am or from there. So, when you talk about the organization and those things, I think what’s tough really when you see these things resurface, which I’m with you, it’s hilarious what gets resurfaced out of nowhere for what reason, who knows. But people are only hearing the answers to the questions that are asked, right? And so, you’re hearing me talk about a very intense emotional moment for my life and also for the Bengals. And I think if we look back, there’s probably things that both sides could have communicated better in that situation.

Obviously, they made a decision they made. Now, being somebody who, I think you know me well enough and know me over my career, I’ve always been somebody who probably is a little more like, ‘Oh, man, this guy’s going to definitely go be a coach or an OC or whatever.’ If I was ever going to get back in, it’d be as a GM or somebody in those positions. So I’ve always looked at rosters and people and what makes the characteristics of who they are and what makes successful teams. And so when I look at that decision, people are asking me about the question of my experience. When I look at it from an outside view, let’s back out, look at the camera, look, that decision was really tough. I was 35 years old. I mean, it had never been done before. I mean, the Rams and obviously, there was multiple teams that got involved. Nobody had ever signed a lineman at a high-end contract as a left tackle ever in the history of the NFL at 35 years old. So it was a very tough decision to make for them as well. And they had just spent a lot of draft capital on Cedric Ogbuehi and Jake Fisher. I think first- and second-round picks. So they were in a situation where you got to back up the selections you made. So, yeah, my emotional side of it, you’re going to hear and you’re going to hear why, how it ended up the way it ended up. But on the flip side of it, they made decisions that they believed in.

Now, whether they were right or wrong, look, that’s the league, you draft picks, you make decisions, you get guys and sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t. So, there’s not some personal vendetta for me about that situation. It’s from my side of it, this is how I felt. But if I’m sitting in their seat, I can see exactly the thinking that they had. They just weren’t correct. And so it’s like, now I get to have my celebration, right? Because you weren’t right about me. So, I’m right on that end, but it doesn’t mean that there’s any ill will. It doesn’t mean that they were necessarily 100 percent wrong.

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You’re uniquely positioned to answer this. There have been a lot of questions about the Bengals’ culture when you have a lot of offseason drama that has been happening, whether we’re talking about in recent years from the likes of Jessie Bates, Jonah Williams, Tee Higgins, Trey Hendrickson, Ja’Marr Chase, with the holdout. This has been repeated and you probably know how it ends up that way. What is the effect on a culture when that stuff happens? Is there a difference between one-offs and repeated transgressions? And how do you feel like that shows itself in the season when that stuff starts to pile up?

Yeah, I think that’s the biggest challenge. You know, you look at it in Cincinnati really with the talent they have, the team they’ve acquired is that when you’re in those markets where sometimes it’s more challenging than others to handle all these financial situations, they’re going to come up with great players. You obviously want to acquire great players, but then you got to pay them all at some point, right? You look at teams when you talk about culture. Listen, the ownership and the team can have their side of it, of like, man, this is how we have to deal with it. Like, we’re trying to figure out how to pay these guys. I look in Dallas, very similar thing with Jerry Jones and that group this whole offseason. But the truth is they can have all their reasonings. It erodes the culture of a team because it’s a distracting thing.

And it’s something where every guy on the team starts to stress about it. I look at it no different than a home. When you talk about homes where you have a quality relationship that kids grow up around, they talk about their parents and they impact their father or their mother, even if they grow up in a split home or whatever, just the impact of that individual had on them, the comfort level they had, the confidence they grew from them, the things they learned from their parents.

Players a lot of the time, they’re really young guys and they’re growing up and learning the business of the NFL as they play and experience it. And what I thought of the NFL when I was in my second year in the league versus my 12th and then even my 16th, totally different visions for what the NFL is. And so sometimes when you have these unhappy homes, where all offseason I’m hearing this might happen and this guy might leave and he’s an impact to me and I don’t know what we would do without this guy. You’ve created distraction, you’ve created fear, you’ve created guys having their focus other places. So is it the business of the NFL to figure out how to get all these under contract? One hundred percent it is. But it’s also part of the culture of the NFL, of guys feeling like, man, we’re going to be in this thing together. We’re going to create unity. We’re going to all do this for each other. Well, if I’m worried about one of us isn’t going to be here, I’m distracted. So the reality can be both things. Yeah, that’s the nature of the game is that you got to figure these deals out from an ownership standpoint. And sometimes we can’t pay everybody at the same time. But at the same time, it also has a massive effect in your locker room.

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You look around the locker room, I don’t wonder what Tee and Jamar are thinking, because guess what, they are rich and going to be more rich. I wonder what the rest of the guys who are contributing on rookie deals, the young players that get drafted, what are they thinking when they watch the fight that has happened over all those names that I mentioned earlier?

That’s what I think of when you talk about that. You know what resonated in my mind? I’ll give you an example. In ’17, when I left, when A.J. Green and Andy Dalton were fighting for their contracts, I’ll never forget this, and this was part of the letter I wrote to Mike, is that Andy has this deal, they get the deal done. I’ll never forget, at the press conference, Katie (Blackburn) makes a comment basically like, “we paid him this much money because this is what guys in that position are getting paid right now.” Because the criticism at that time was like, all right, you’re going to pay him this, but how long has Andy really shown it? Did you want to see more? You’re not going to make him go through all this other stuff. Then A.J. comes up, and in the preseason, A.J. is coming to me upset, like we’re trying to figure this deal out. It’s like, dude, just stay calm. And then A.J. gets paid, same thing. We paid him this much because this is what …

And then so, when I became a free agent, and it was like, oh, take this 50 percent discount, or 40 percent discount, I was like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa.” If that’s what the quarterback deserves to get paid, and that’s what the receiver deserves to get paid, how about the guy that’s been the captain for the last nine years? You want me to take the pay cut, and nobody else? Come on. And so that was the thing, to your point. Look, I remembered every contract negotiation and every comment they made after they signed every guy.

Thursday night, the Bengals and Joe Burrow can make a major statement and right the ship of the season. How do you see them in terms of being able to dig out of this?

I mean, this is it. Somebody asked me yesterday on a call, do you think the Bengals make the playoffs? And I know it’s crazy to say. I think it literally might be what happens Thursday night. Because I think that really tells you how hard of a road it’s going to be to get there because it’s going to be a lot of teams that are in some situations similar to theirs, and they may have more favorable schedules. And so it’s really going to come down to, man, if you don’t win Thursday night, it’s going to be a really tough road to get yourself back in it. So this game, like Joe said, no celebrating until we get to Baltimore. He’s right because if their season means something to them, they’ve got to go outperform a tremendous football team in the Baltimore Ravens.

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(Photo: Cooper Neill / Getty Images)