CINCINNATI – The Cincinnati Bengals have a long way to go to put themselves in position to compete for a Super Bowl championship in 2025.
The defense needs fixed, the top two draft picks remained unsigned and Trey Hendrickson, the 2024 sack leader, is feeling disrespected and doing media interviews on the practice field while his teammates work behind him.
But in the literal sense, the Bengals don’t have far to go at all.
In terms of travel miles for their road games, the Bengals rank 32nd among the 32 teams.
Their 8,753 miles are nearly 2,000 fewer than the next friendliest schedule, which is owned by the Buffalo Bills (10,546 miles).
It’s the third year in a row the Bengals have ranked at or near the bottom of the league in travel distance.
They were 31st in 2024 and 32nd in 2023.
The furthest the Bengals will travel this year is Miami, which is 2,282 miles roundtrip.
The close proximity of their division games (382 to Cleveland, 500 to Pittsburgh and 838 to Baltimore) always has them on the low end before factoring in the road trips that change year to year.
Fourteen of the team’s 17 games this season will be played in the Eastern Time Zone, with Denver (2,140 miles), Minneapolis (1,190) and Green Bay (524 miles) being the outliers.
The other road trip is Buffalo (874 miles).
At the other end of the itinerary are the Los Angeles Chargers (37,086), Los Angeles Rams (34,832) and Seattle Seahawks (31,302), as is usually the case.
The Jacksonville Jaguars, with two London games, have the longest to go among teams in the Eastern Time Zone with 29,006.
