Sometimes in the NFL, it's not just your stars that make or break your season.

Sometimes it's a key role player.

Sometimes it's the emergence of a second round safety like Jesse Bates taking the league by storm.

Who will be the X factors for the Bengals in 2026?

Let's get into it.

You are locked on Bengals, your daily Cincinnati Bengals podcast.

Part of the Locked-on Podcast Network, your team every day.

What up, Bengals fans, and welcome to another episode of the Locked-on Bengals podcast. He's James Rapine. I'm Jake Liscoe, and we are Lockdown Bengals, your daily source for Bengals news and analysis

all season long.

And today we're going to dive into the topic of looking for the X factors for the Bengals

in the 2026 season.

Everyone has high expectations for Joe Burrow and Jamar Chase and T. Higgins and Dexter Lawrence

and Brian Cook.

And those guys could exceed expectations and make their way onto this list when we have

hindsight to reflect on the 2026 season.

But one thing that we like to do and trying to predict the seasons to come is try to identify who those players are who if they took a big step and exceeded expectations, sometimes they come out of nowhere, sometimes are guys that are just a little bit better than you thought they'd be that

can make a big difference for this team. And I think that's the case around the NFL, where some

role player steps in and becomes a starter or a starter takes a step and becomes a star. And you're

looking for those players around the NFL, the guys that could take that step developmentally or surprises rookies and make a big difference for your football team.

And those guys are often the marginal difference that helps you win games in this league where the talent differentiation between teams, the talent level difference is often so close

and it comes down to the margins, James.

And so when we're looking at this Bengals roster this year, looking for those X factors,

...