Williams: Joe Burrow's healthy, 1-0 should be Cincinnati Bengals' focus. It's complicated

1-0.

It's all that should matter for the Cincinnati Bengals, who can't afford to waste another season of Joe Burrow's career.

Winning the season opener in Cleveland. Nothing else should matter for the Bengals, who can't afford to miss the playoffs again because of a slow start.

Finally, Burrow enters a training camp fully healthy. All systems go toward 1-0.

That should be the story. But the Bengals are bengaling their way into the start of training camp on Wednesday.

Rookie defensive end Shemar Stewart remains unsigned. Reigning NFL sack leader Trey Hendrickson doesn't have a contract extension. Both contract situations are accompanied with plenty of unnecessary drama. They are a distraction from what should be the mission of going 1-0.

The clock's tickin'. The window's slowly closing. Choose your cliche about Burrow's time in Cincinnati. It's the start of Year 6 for Burrow, who will turn 29 late in the season. No Lombardi Trophy. The Bengals have come up one game short of making the playoffs each of the last two seasons, ultimately because they lost season-opening stinkers in which they weren't even ready to play.

Lose in Cleveland, and all hell is going to break lose from a fan base that isn't happy about how the offseason went. They will start calling for Zac Taylor's job, not that public criticism has ever swayed Bengals executives to take action.

Everyone thinks the Browns are going to stink, and they will. But in case you forgot, Taylor is 1-5 against the Browns in Cleveland. The last season opener the Bengals played on the banks of Lake Erie, in 2023, it was one of the worst performances of the Burrow era. And the Bengals were coming off going to the AFC Championship game, so it doesn't really matter if the Bengals are supposed to be good and the Browns aren't.

Given all that, don't you think the Bengals would've done everything possible in the offseason to get all their key players' contracts worked out and have them ready to step on the field for Day 1 of training camp?

Given that the Bengals' defense caused them to waste an MVP-caliber season from Burrow in 2024, don't you think ownership would've gotten perhaps the two most defensive important players' contract issues solved already?

To be fair, the Bengals still have a day to get deals done with Hendrickson and Stewart. Anyone optimistic that's going to happen?

The Bengals can say Stewart is getting bad advice from his agent, something player personnel director Duke Tobin told reporters on Monday. The Bengals can say it's not a money issue, something owner Mike Brown said. Stewart may very well be getting bad advice from his agent. It's a contract language issue over how much guaranteed money the team would have to pay Stewart if he gets in trouble with the law.

The Bengals may very well be on the right side of the Stewart negotiation. This is their first time to try to implement such language in a player's contract. They have a right to "evolve," as Tobin put it.

Doesn't matter.

The Bengals picked the wrong time to do this. Do it with next year's first-round pick or the 2027 first-round pick.

But it was a bad decision to try to set a precedent this year, with this pick. The Bengals were already dealing with the Hendrickson issue. They already had major issues on the defensive line even with Hendrickson recording a league-best 17.5 sacks last season. The Bengals drafted Stewart to rush the quarterback from the edge opposite of Hendrickson.

The team needed to make damn sure Stewart was good-to-go for every team workout after the draft. He has yet to participate in a team practice.

Three things are critically important in the NFL: Having a great quarterback, protecting the quarterback and rushing the quarterback. The Bengals enter training camp having one of those things fully covered. The universe found out last year that even Superman Burrow can't save the Bengals from poor draft-day decisions, corner-cutting free-agent signings and lingering contract drama.

Some in the hometown media think this is a Super Bowl team. Simmer down, fellas. How about win a season opener first.

Because it's all that matters for now and the next six weeks leading up to Sept. 7 in Cleveland. But as usual, the Bengals have made the mission of starting 1-0 way more difficult than it should be.

Contact columnist Jason Williams at [email protected]

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Joe Burrow is healthy should be Bengals' storyline. It's not