For the second time in four years, offensive tackle Orlando Brown Jr. is going to an AFC Super Bowl contender with a great need to rebuild its offensive line. Brown, who played left tackle for the Kansas City Chiefs in 2021 and 2022 after a trade from the Baltimore Ravens, has signed a four-year, $64.092 million deal with the Cincinnati Bengals. Per Ian Rapoport of the NFL Network, Brown gets 67.87% of the deal fully guaranteed, with $42.3 million through Tear 2, and $49.9 million through Year 3.
The Bengals, who limped through the 2022 season with Jonah Williams at left tackle (Williams allowed 13 sacks and 45 total pressures in 748 pass-blocking reps), see Brown as a clear improvement, and the metrics do line up in that direction — at least in the sack department. Last season for the Super Bowl champion Chiefs, Brown allowed four sacks, but 58 quarterback pressures, in 893 pass-blocking snaps.
A third-round pick of the Ravens in 2018 out of Oklahoma, Brown overcame one of the worst combine performances ever to become a solid right tackle in Baltimore’s offense through his first two seasons, and he then availed himself well in 2020 as an injury replacement for Ronnie Stanley on the left side. The Chiefs, who were coming off a humiliating 31-9 loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Super Bowl LV, scrapped all five of their starting offensive linemen in the offseason, trading their 2021 first-round pick (No. 31 overall), their 2021 third-round pick (No. 94), their 2021 fourth-round pick (No. 136), and a 2022 fifth-round pick to the Ravens in exchange for offensive tackle Orlando Brown Jr., Baltimore’s 2021 second-round pick (No. 58 overall), and a 2022 sixth-round pick.
Brown was on the last year of his rookie deal in his first year with the Chiefs, and he played the 2022 season on the franchise tag. Negotiations between player and team never really came together, and when the Chiefs signed former Jacksonville Jaguars tackle Jawaan Taylor to a four-year, $80 million deal with $60 million guaranteed on Monday, that put an obvious end to Brown’s time with the champs.
At 6-foot-8 and 345 pounds, Brown isn’t the most purely athletic left tackle in the NFL, and he has a bad habit of getting beaten on the back half of the arc against speed-rushers, but he should be a more estimable blind-side protector for Joe Burrow than Burrow has had to date. The Bengals saw Brown allow a sack to edge-rusher Joseph Osaai in Week 13, but they decided to drop the hammer on this big deal, nonetheless.
In context with the deal Taylor got from the Chiefs, and especially in comparison to the five-year, $87.5 million deal with more than $50 million guaranteed that the Denver Broncos gave to former San Francisco 49ers right tackle Mike McGlinchey, this is a solid and much-needed move by the Bengals to continue to get their offensive line in order.