His Year: Jon Kitna 2003

Put in the impossible position of starting over the first overall pick, Jon Kitna had an unexpected breakout, killing the Cincinnati Bungles in the process.

Welcome back to my Sports Passion Project everybody, where all of you owe me a shot. We’re back in the 2003 AFC again.

It used to be a meme in the earlier days of this publication just how often I talked about the AFC in 2003, as evidenced by this article, and this one, and this one, all of which spent either all or most of their runtime in the 2003 AFC, and those are in addition to the time Trent Green spent in this conference. Even that is in addition to the article you’re reading now, and there’s still more to talk about after that.

As if it isn’t obvious already, this is my favourite AFC of all time. I haven’t been in the 2003 AFC in a while, but I have not forgotten. I’m about to dive deep into my favourite NFC of all time in the coming weeks, but before I can move on to that project, there is one final loose end I absolutely must tie up in the 2003 AFC. There may also be one additional one next week. No promises, but I cannot move on from the 2003 AFC without discussing the 2003 Bengals’ QB competition.

If you have two quarterbacks, you don't have one.

This is the mentality about quarterback play in 2025. Everybody says this phrase, but my opinion is that the NFL zeitgeist has serious issues interpreting it correctly. Far too much emphasis is placed on the word two, meanwhile not enough emphasis is placed on the word one. In my opinion, the point of this phrase is the word one. Far too many NFL fans interpret having a very good backup QB as a problem.

It is not a problem to have two very good NFL QBs. The purpose of the phrase ‘If you have two quarterbacks, you don't have one’ is in the law of averages. If you have two QBs that are playing at approximately the same level, it's virtually assured that neither of those guys are good enough to take your team to the top. It's hard enough to get one great QB.

These days, training camp QB competitions are looked upon with disdain, and are seen as not being great for the future of a team, but I disagree. There are several success stories at the QB position that have come out of winning real competitions for the starting spot.

Jay Fiedler beat out Damon Huard for the Dolphins' starting job in 2000, and went on to have some great years there. Jeff Garcia had the best season of his career after fending off competition from three separate rookies in the same 2000 offseason. Tom Brady had to fight with Damon Huard to keep his backup job for the 2001 Patriots. Who'd he ever beat?

If those guys are not at a high enough level for you, how about Drew Brees? He blossomed as a great QB, all the while having to compete with Philip Rivers, who both was and wasn’t drafted first overall in 2004, to keep his starting spot. If you'd like a more modern spin, there's Dak Prescott. It's too often forgotten that the Cowboys tried to trade for Josh McCown to take them on that magical 2016 ride instead. I think he could’ve done it. We know how I feel about Josh McCown around here, but fourth round draft selection Dak Prescott played so well in the competition for the Cowboys' backup job that Dallas never did make that trade, and the rest is history.

There are countless other examples (Chad Pennington, David Garrard, Geno Smith, I can go on, and these are just the somewhat recent ones) of great players being forged in the fire of a true competition for the starting QB role. While this approach has generally been done away with in the modern era, mostly in favour of teams protecting rookies from true competition against much better players (i.e. JJ McCarthy against Sam Darnold. The Vikings got really close to messing that one up), there is one example of a rookie QB being forced to truly compete for the starting job that came up smelling like roses for everybody.

His name is Jon Kitna.

I hear you. You’re telling me that Jon Kitna wasn’t a rookie in 2003. How in the world can Jon Kitna be an example of how forcing a rookie to compete is a good thing?

I agree with you. He most certainly was not a rookie, but you’ll see what I mean when I say that. Take the ride with me.

Coming into 2003, it'd been a long time since Jon came into the league as an undrafted free agent in 1996. Spotted by the Seahawks at a tryout that was intended to be a chance for the team to evaluate a receiver on his Central Washington college team, they were so impressed by him as a thrower they decided to bring him on.

The competition as an undrafted rookie at the QB position must've been unbearable, but Jon made it as far as the Seahawks' practice squad for 1996, and by 1997 he was the team's third string QB, back in the days when teams used to keep three.

Now with a toehold in the league, by 1998 Kitna had surpassed John Friesz to be the Seahawks' backup behind Warren Moon, and as such it was Jon that got to start five of the six games Moon missed at the end of the 1998 season, and he played very well in them. In fact, he played so well that his first period of competition was over.

Following Warren’s flight to the Chiefs in the 1999 offseason, Seattle did not try to replace Kitna for the 1999 season. Instead, they only brought in entrenched backup Glenn Foley, cementing Jon as the starter. His 1999 was touch and go. Ranking 22nd in EPA/Play on a -2.2 fitted CPOE isn’t great, but it was good enough for the Seahawks to win the terribly weak 1999 AFC West division, and get within an eyelash of winning their playoff game, in the days when winning playoff games was not something that happened in Seattle.

By 2000 however, this honeymoon period was over. Coach Mike Holmgren was never impressed with Jon, and tried to trade for Matt Hasselbeck to replace him, even before he eventually got that trade done. As we know, Hasselbeck would eventually end up in Seattle, but not before a topsy turvy 2000 season which saw Jon individually play much better (1.9 fitted CPOE, 98 sk%+), but falter in the results department. He was replaced with Brock Huard for four starts, during which Brock played awful, so Jon went back in, but this was awkward for everybody, and in the offseason Mike would get his Matt Hasselbeck trade done. Jon would end up in Cincinnati.

Jon was walking into a dire situation, as the starting QB for the 2001 Cincinnati Bengals. Cincinnati hadn't seen the playoffs since 1990, and over the 2000 season had started both Scott Mitchell and Akili Smith at QB, who were both so bad it makes you cringe. Jon was an immediate upgrade, leading the team to a 6-10 record, which does not seem like an upgrade on the surface, but is an outlier of a good season in the worst of the Bungles years in the wake of the retirement of Boomer Esiason, although Jon still generated negative EPA/Play, not exactly putting himself in the clear as the undisputed starter.

As a result, it would again be a QB competition for Jon in the 2002 offseason, which he would lose, and be forced to watch as the combination of Gus Frerotte and Akili Smith scored a combined 23 points in the Bengals' first four games, all of which were blowout losses, the closest of which was by 13 points, before the Bengals came to their senses and went back to Kitna.

Jon would play much better than in 2001, with his ‘skill numbers’ of 1.5 fitted CPOE and 111 sk%+ in 2002 foreshadowing the breakout that’s coming, but the team around him was much worse. Nevertheless, the Bengals would score at least 20 points in nine out of Jon’s 12 starts (recall it took them four whole games to get to 20 points without him), but due to one of the league's worst defences, Cincinnati would fall to 2-14 and be in position to draft first overall in the 2003 draft.

As we know, a team having the first overall pick is often a death sentence for the incumbent QB, especially when that incumbent hasn't generated positive EPA/Play since 1999. Last week in my CPOE article, I discussed when this exact thing happened to Steve Pelluer, a man who reminds me a lot of Jon Kitna in general. Steve’s Cowboys found themselves in position to draft Troy Aikman through no fault of his, and Dallas never looked back. Despite clearly being a starting level NFL player, Steve made three career starts after the drafting of Troy Aikman.

This is the situation Jon Kitna finds himself in, as the Bengals select Carson Palmer with the first pick in the 2003 NFL Draft. He's gotten himself into another QB competition. One that’s clearly rigged against him.

Recall how Jon’s prior two competitions have gone. In his first, he climbed his way to the starting spot in Seattle, but quickly lost that starting spot and was exiled to Cincinnati, where in his first real competition he lost his starting job to Gus Frerotte. The Bengals rectified that mistake quickly, but if he were to lose his starting spot to Carson Palmer, we all know the rectification will not come so quickly. Yet again, this training camp is packed with pressure on Jon.

Painfully, and with gritted teeth, Jon does make it to the beginning of the 2003 season with his starting role intact, but the pressure only gets higher after the season begins with a 30-10 home loss to the Denver Broncos that features a ghastly -0.342 EPA/Play performance from Jon individually.

On this publication, we know these Broncos better than most. The 2003 Broncos are at the height of their permanent obstacle status. Those who have read the Trent Green series know that this is a team that can make even really good players look really bad sometimes. It’s not just Trent they get in the way of.

The problem with this in Jon Kitna’s circumstance is that there is no existing perception of him being a good player. His peripherals were fantastic in 2002 on an absolutely dreadful Cincinnati Bungles team, but back at the turn of the century, nobody looked at things like that. Jon has not generated positive EPA/Play since 1999, and that’s what people see, especially when you begin the season generating -0.342 EPA/Play against a team that ranked just 20th in total defence last year.

Fans and media are already starting to wonder about Carson Palmer, and this is beginning to look bad already. Jon has already accomplished the miracle of having his team hire a new head coach (Marvin Lewis), having his team draft a QB first overall (Carson Palmer), but somehow maintaining his starting position, and he must know in his mind that the line he’s walking is thin, and thin is likely being generous.

This story needs something to happen, and Jon Kitna’s salvation comes from the most unexpected of places.

With a matchup coming up against the defending AFC champion Oakland Raiders, the people want to see Carson Palmer. Even if it’s mostly acknowledged that Jon Kitna is the better player, nobody cares about that. The noise is just loud around the first overall pick. It’s a lot like how nobody in the world thought Caleb Williams was a better football player than Justin Fields in the most recent offseason, but Chicago shipped Justin out anyway, because the noise around the first overall pick is just that loud. Most first overall picks do nothing to silence this noise, because they want to play, and the only way for them to play is for the incumbent not to play, but the 2003 Bengals are not dealing with a typical first overall pick.

Prior to week two against the Oakland Raiders, Carson Palmer goes on stage and proudly proclaims ‘Jon Kitna is the best QB on this team right now.’

I have tremendous respect for Carson Palmer for doing this.

Even if this is an obvious truth, it takes a real man to go in front of the media (even if it is the mostly toothless Cincinnati media) and say such a sentence as the Heisman trophy winner and first overall pick. It shows me that Carson Palmer really was a team player, and did not want himself out there playing just because.

Most rookie QBs are not team players, and would do anything to be out there playing, just because. Moments like this are how you can tell a real one from a regular football player. This is a very important moment in the NFL career of Jon Kitna. Carson could’ve chosen to tear him down. There would’ve been no repercussions. First overall pick QBs are bulletproof. Everybody knows that, but Carson didn’t tear Jon down. He built him up, and gave Jon the breathing room he needs to have his real coming out party as an NFL player.

As I said, Cincinnati's week two matchup is on the road in Oakland against the defending AFC Champion Raiders. Jon Kitna and the perpetually gutless Bengals are going to match up against defending league MVP Rich Gannon. This is seen as a total mismatch. The Bengals go into Oakland as 12 point underdogs, but the world is about to find out that this isn't the same old Jon Kitna, and these are not the same old Bengals. We're in a new era now, and this is the jumping off point.

Coming into this game with an estimated Win Probability (according to NFLFastR) of just 15 percent, and not at all helped by the fact that his first four drop backs are a sack and three incompletions, things get even worse, as the Bengals are behind 10-0 before we can even blink.

We are five and a half minutes into this game, and our estimated WP is seven percent. This is where any other Cincinnati team since 1990 would’ve folded like a cheap suit in the Oakland sun, but not this one. This Bengals team ties the game back at ten, and comes close to doing it before the first quarter even ends, showing the AFC champions (and the world) that we are here to play.

Unfortunately, and bafflingly, Jon is allowed to throw just two passes for the remainder of the half. As a result, we don't score any more, and the score at half is still 10-10. The first touch of the second half doesn't help either, as after a healthy 12 yard completion to Chad Johnson on the first play, Jon doesn't get to touch the ball again until third and five, where he throws an incompletion. Yet again, he's been put into a bad position, and hasn't been able to bail the Bengals out. We punt.

The second touch however, is a different story. Jon gets to throw four first down passes, as Cincinnati marches down the field towards another field goal. At one point, the Bengals face third and 17, but Jon manages to convert it, with a 19 yard pass to Peter Warrick. Throwing the ball at Nnamdi Asomugha on third and long is not something very many people dared to try, but Jon did, and it worked out perfectly. First and goal from the Oakland eight only converts into a field goal, which sucks, but it’s good enough, and the game is tied at 13 as we go into the fourth quarter.

After yet another defensive stop to begin the fourth, it looks like the Bengals are in a good position to take the lead, which would put us on track to accomplish one of the biggest upsets of the whole 2003 season, until a Peter Warrick holding penalty stops our drive in its tracks. First and 20 is tough to overcome, but after the defence again holds up, Jon gets the ball back again, this time at 7:22 of the fourth quarter, with the game tied. This is make or break time. If we’re going to pull off this massive upset, it’s going to have to be now, and Jon acclimates himself quite well.

He converts one third and five and then another third and fifteen and gets the Bengals to the Oakland 20 at the four minute mark. We could’ve stood to go a bit slower with Rich Gannon on the other side, but this is prime position to take the lead. However, it's also where Jon makes his only mistake of the day.

He throws a backbreaking 83 yard pick six to surrender our chances at taking the lead, and instead land ourselves in a 20-13 hole, now with just 3:38 on the clock.

That's still more than enough time to get this game tied, but I don't think anybody expects it to look as easy as it does. People have been trained for almost 15 years to watch the Bengals fold like a piece of paper in a rainstorm whenever the going gets tough, but this time, Jon makes up for his mistake in a big way. We score a touchdown easily, with most of the yardage coming on a Kitna to Johnson 28 yard connection. This game is now tied, and if the defence can hold just one more time, there's still the chance at a massive upset here.

Unfortunately, we scored just a little bit too easily, leaving too much time on the clock for the reigning MVP, who gets his Raiders into FG range as the clock expires to steal this game from us, 23-20.

This is without doubt disappointing, but remember that we were 12 point road underdogs, on the road, against the AFC's defending Super Bowl representative. We had Jon Kitna to try to match up against the league MVP. Our defence had no luck stopping either Charlie Garner or Tyrone Wheatley all day, and despite all of this, we came within one minute of winning.

When you are the Cincinnati Bungles, sometimes there are moral victories.

Nevertheless, looking at it from a more objective point of view, this was a missed opportunity. Jon Kitna did manage to outplay Rich Gannon, generating 0.24 EPA/Play, even including the killer pick six. The defence held the Raider offence that was so electric in 2002 to a mere 16 points all day, and the Bengals all around were the better team today, but we still managed to find a way not to win.

This is what we need to stop doing. This what we've been doing for years. There is room for one moral victory against a team the calibre of the Oakland Raiders, but playing well and then losing is not the way to success in the NFL, especially for a man that has Carson Palmer breathing down his neck. This has to stop.

Over the next two weeks, it does stop. For better and for worse. In week three, we get rid of the ‘playing well’ part, as the defence can't keep a lid on Tommy Maddox, Jon generates negative EPA/Play again, and the Bengals take a third consecutive loss to start the year. In week four, we finally get rid of the ‘losing’ part. We turn it around by walking into Cleveland (a playoff team in 2002, not an easy team to beat on the road) as five point underdogs, and clowning on their defence all day, en route to a close (but not lucky) 21-14 road victory.

Jon Kitna has finally gotten a victory, and generated 0.58 EPA/Play in Cleveland while he was at it, but an overtime loss in Buffalo, where Jon plays good enough to win against a very good Buffalo defence, but is hindered by an ungodly 27 touches for a rush offence operating at -0.39 EPA/Play, drops our record to a thoroughly unimpressive 1-4 as we go into the bye week.

It's here where everything changes for Jon Kitna.

During the bye week, QB coach Ken Zampese pulls Jon aside and lets him know the secret. The two games coming out of the bye are against Baltimore and Seattle. Top brass have no intention of throwing Carson Palmer to the wolves against either of those defences, but the next two games are against the Arizona Cardinals, and their 31st ranked defence, and then Houston, with their 28th ranked defence. That's a good spot to get a rookie QB into.

The message is not stated explicitly, but it’s clear. Jon must impress in these next two games, elsewise it’s going to have to be time to give Carson Palmer a try.

I’m struggling to put into words just how impossible of a situation this is. Jon Kitna has just been put into the situation of being told that his starting position depends on his ability to impress, against the Baltimore Ravens. To a QB in the early 2000s, that is nightmare fuel. It’s the seventh circle of hell. The one situation that everybody prays not to have to find themselves in.

2003 is not just any edition of the Ravens' defence either. It's the best they've had since the Super Bowl. Not quite as good in the raw numbers, but in my era-adjusted EPA/Play Allowed+ statistic, they’re actually better than the Super Bowl winner. They’re so great I wrote an article on how great they are, and defence doesn’t sell folks. If I wrote an article about defence, you’d better believe they were a statistical anomaly of the highest order.

Needless to say, the Ravens are by far the best defence 2003 has to offer. They haven't had many tough matchups so far in the year, but in their two real tests, they've held both Trent Green and Drew Brees to negative EPA/Play. Jon Kitna is no Trent Green. He’s certainly no Drew Brees, but he’s being put into a much harder position than even either of those two were.

For Jon, it’s not enough to merely win the game. It’s likely not enough even to fail to generate negative EPA. The word used was ‘impress.’ Jon cannot just play adequately. Adequate does not convince fans and GMs not to play the first overall pick. Jon has to play well, and he has to do it against one of the best defences of all time.

Now do you understand why I used the word ‘impossible’ to describe the situation Jon has been put into? I considered ‘no-win’ as my word choice, but that didn’t seem strong enough to suit the circumstances.

Nevertheless, this is an article that exists, so there’s some degree of knowledge on the part of both writer and reader that this game goes well, but I want you to take a guess. Think about it in your head, keeping in mind all the factors that I just told you. Jon Kitna vs. a defence roughly equivalent to the 2000 Ravens.

How well do you think this game goes?

I know what I would think if I were in your position. Maybe a 17-10 win. Maybe 23-17. Something like that. Just barely enough to keep the dogs at bay long enough to get the chance to face some weaker opponents, against whom Jon would do the impressing. That’s the logical answer.

Logic has no place in a His Year article.

Welcome to Jon Kitna's Year.

Whatever your answer was to my above question that I posed, I'm certain ‘immediate blowout featuring 21 Bengal points in the first quarter’ was not what came to mind, but that's what you get. Jon takes the early 2000s Ravens defence, and hangs them out to dry, the likes of which we’d very rarely seen before this. It takes three plays to get our first score. It takes four plays to get our second, and one 82 yard pass to get their third. At the dawn of the second quarter, we are already up 21-7.

These 2003 Ravens will give up 21 points in a whole game four times all season including this one. Jon Kitna has just done it to them in one quarter. It's over from here as far as the actual result of the game goes, but Jon still has more impressing to do. Keep in mind that we are still playing the Ravens, so there's a lot of three and outs from both sides, but we take a 24-7 lead, and then a 27-7 lead, and on the first play of the fourth quarter we score to go up 34-10 and officially put the nail in this coffin. Two garbage time touchdowns pull the score to 34-26 at the final, but everybody sees this for the blowout victory that it is.

Wow.

Talk about rising to the occasion.

Put into the impossible position of having to play for his starting spot against the best defence the NFL has seen in years, Jon went out there and hung 24 points on them in the first half. He generated 0.42 EPA/Play. 0.42 EPA/Play against the Ravens in the early 2000s is unprecedented. Combining their two all-time great years (2000 and 2003), nobody gets to 0.42 EPA/Play against them.

Nobody except Jon Kitna.

This is unbelievable. This is unfathomable. I like to give modern allegories for old situations, because it’s more relatable that way, but I can’t in this case, because there is no team the likes of the 2003 Ravens that exists today. I’m not often at a loss for words, but this is such an unpredictable outcome that it’s difficult to put words on. This Jon Kitna game against the Ravens is perhaps the wildest thing that’s ever happened in a His Year article, and we’ve seen Case Keenum outplay Tom Brady. We’ve seen a lot of wild things. None of them have left me as wordless as this game.

The important thing is that it wasn’t wild to the one man whose opinion matters. It was not a wildly unpredictable outcome to Jon Kitna.

A list of players who played these Ravens and were not able to do anywhere near as good as Jon Kitna includes MVP candidate Marc Bulger, MVP candidate Trent Green, future MVP candidate Drew Brees, former MVP candidate Jeff Garcia, and the actual 2003 NFL MVP Steve McNair. I could go on, but I'll choose to only name the important ones.

Marc Bulger, Trent Green, Drew Brees, Jeff Garcia, and Steve McNair. This is an unreal list of quarterbacks. Each and every one of them were held to negative EPA/Play against these 2003 Ravens. The very same Ravens that Jon Kitna took to the cleaners, all the while under the pressure of having his starting spot on the line.

Take a bow Jon.

As if that performance wasn't enough to ensure that it is not yet Carson Palmer time in Cincinnati, Jon doubles down on it the following week at home against Seattle. Yet again playing as underdogs, Jon outduels Matt Hasselbeck to the tune of 0.24 EPA/Play in a barn burner of a 27-24 win, featuring a fantastic go-ahead touchdown drive in the fourth quarter.

In all, over the four weeks following the tip-off that his starting spot is on the line, Jon takes the 1-4 Bengals and gets them to a respectable 4-5 record. Over that stretch he leads two fourth quarter comebacks, and he generates 0.198 EPA/Play, fourth in the NFL in this span, behind only Marc Bulger, Peyton Manning, and Trent Green. All of this with the pressure of the first overall pick, whom the people upstairs were really wanting to play, looking over his shoulder.

All of that is over now. There will be no more debate in 2003 over who the Bengals' starter is, but there is no lack of pressure on Kitna's shoulders, because we’re now staring down our biggest challenge of the season.

Our week 11 opponent is the Kansas City Chiefs, led by our man, Trent Green. I have not often seen him as an opponent on this publication, but I know enough about him to know he’s an extremely intimidating person to play a football game against. Currently owning a 9-0 record, the KC Chiefs are the NFL's best team. By point differential, 2003 is still the best Chiefs team ever (not including the AFL). No Patrick Mahomes team has ever beaten this one. At least we get to play them at home, but we're doing it with our playoff lives on the line.

The AFC North in 2003 is incredibly weak. 5-4 Baltimore has their all-time great defence, but their offence is led by Anthony Wright at QB. Our 4-5 Bengals have by far the best QB in the division in Jon Kitna, and by extension the division's best offence. We counterbalance this by coming into week 11 with the league's 25th ranked defence. The two playoff teams out of this division from 2002, Pittsburgh and Cleveland, are both 3-6 and non-factors at this point.

The race is between Cincinnati and Baltimore. Considering what happened the last time we played Baltimore, I'm confident that we can make that one game up over the course of the season. All of a sudden, our perpetually moribund Cincinnati Bengals are looking credible for our first playoff spot since 1990.

It can really happen.

Here's the thing. It can only happen if we host the Kansas City Chiefs, and hand them their first loss of the season. That will not be easy. In the years since, people have forgotten how great this 2003 Chiefs team was. I’ve done a lot of work to try to remind people, but one man can only do so much. At this point, they possess the third best offence and seventh best defence in the NFL. By season's end, that offence will shoot up to number one.

To put it bluntly, this is not a game the Bungles are supposed to win. We're here to be the NFL's punching bag, and to mess everything up. That’s been our primary purpose for 13 years. If it helps to conceptualize, think of the Bengals from 1990-2002 as the Cleveland Browns from 2008-2019. No playoffs. No winning seasons. No nothing. At this point, that's what everybody thinks the Bengals still are.

I know I told you week two against Oakland is when the Bungles died for good. As it turns out, I think I lied to you. Yes we played well in a big game, but we still lost a game we should not have lost. This time, I have no doubts in my mind. This time, there will be no close losses or moral victories.

This time, Jon Kitna will kill the Bungles forever.

After a tight first half that sees the teams struggle to just a 3-3 score at the half, Jon turns it on. A TD on our first touch of the second half (following a KC field goal to start it) moves the score to 10-6. Some help in the form of a punt return TD makes the score 17-6. When the Chiefs narrow the score to 17-12, Jon immediately responds with a 77 yard one play touchdown pass to make the score 24-12.

It's over from here. A late Trent Green touchdown pass narrows the score to 24-19, but the Chiefs never see the ball again. Following the touchdown that moved the score to 17-6, Cincinnati spent a total of one play below a 75 percent win probability, and once that play (a KC two point conversion attempt on 17-12) failed, the game was never again in doubt.

This is amazing.

I went through that very quickly, because it wasn’t very interesting. We have not merely taken the Chiefs' zero. We've done it handily. Easily even. Jon Kitna outplayed Trent Green. Rudi Johnson outplayed Priest Holmes. Our 25th ranked defence held the electric Kansas City Chiefs to just 0.07 EPA/Play, which is good but not as good as they normally can do. Everything went right in this game, and there's still more that went well for us today.

This win, combined with a Ravens' 9-6 overtime loss in Miami, means that we are in the lead of the AFC North. Shout out to the Cincinnati fans, as this Kansas City game is the first in a streak that eventually reaches over 60 games of consecutive sellouts, showing that if you give fans something to watch in Cincinnati, they will watch you. This is only 2003 remember. It hasn't been that long since the franchise raked these same fans over the coals and threatened to leave Cincinnati before getting their stadium deal in 1996. The relationship between team and fan was broken. This season is what mends it.

Killing the Cincinnati Bungles is a feat far too often misattributed to Carson Palmer. It was not Carson Palmer that ended the era of the Bungles. It was Jon Kitna. We’re watching it play out before our eyes, as were the fans in Cincinnati in 2003, and they’re going bananas.

The fans have every right to be beside themselves. This franchise hasn't had a playoff berth since 1990. I've said that a few times and you know that already, but it goes even deeper than that. These Bengals have not even come close. We have not been the first team out of the playoffs since 1990. We’ve never even been the second team out of the playoffs since then. For perspective the second team out of the AFC playoffs in 2024 was the Indianapolis Colts. This is not a high bar. We've finished as well as second in our division just once, in 1996. We've had just one team (also in 1996) with as much as a positive point differential since 1990. That's 12 years folks.

When I tell you these figures I want you to think about the New York Jets, who are currently viewed as a laughing stock of the NFL. Over the past twelve years, the Jets haven’t made the playoffs, but they were the first team out in 2015. They've finished second in their division four times, and they've had a positive point differential three times.

Those are by no means good numbers. There's a reason why the Jets are a laughing stock of the league, but they are leaps and bounds better than the Cincinnati Bungles era. That's what Bengals fans in 2003 were looking back on. That's what Jon Kitna walked into. That's why a 5-5 team with a division lead is so exciting.

It's even more exciting when Jon picks apart the San Diego Chargers to the tune of 0.40 EPA/Play in another one of these soft blowouts these Bengals seem to love so much (the Chargers scored two fourth quarter touchdowns to make a 34-13 game into a 34-27 one, neither with any effect on the outcome) and this becomes a 6-5 team with a division lead.

It's more exciting yet when Jon balls out again (0.43 EPA/Play) in Pittsburgh. Taking the field down four with 1:10 left, Kitna gets the team all the way down the field and into the end zone with 13 seconds left, moving us to a 7-5 record. At this point, it's a jubilee in Cincinnati. The fans are so ecstatic they can hardly contain themselves.

We know this Bengals team is not great. We know it's barely even good. None of that matters, and a lot of the reason why it doesn't matter is Jon Kitna. If you would have told Bengals fans at the dawn of the 2003 that they were about to get genuine top five QB play out of Jon Kitna, I think they would've laughed fairly hard at you, but they're getting it. No ifs. No ands. No buts.

As of week 13 of the 2003 NFL season, here is the EPA/Play leaderboard. It starts with the eventual co-MVPs, Steve McNair in first and Peyton Manning in second. Third is the breakout season of Matt Hasselbeck. Fourth is the resurgent Chad Pennington coming back strong from his wrist injury, and would you look at that?

Fifth place in the rankings is our man Jon Kitna.

I'll lay out the whole top ten for you, in order: Steve McNair, Peyton Manning, Matt Hasselbeck, Chad Pennington, Jon Kitna, Jay Fiedler, Trent Green, Daunte Culpepper, Marc Bulger, Jake Plummer.

Which of these names is not like the others?

This is some hefty company to keep for little old Jon Kinta. Bravo my friend.

McNair, Manning, Pennington, and Trent Green have all already been candidates to be called the best QB in the league. Hasselbeck will not take long to join them with his elite 2005. Daunte will beat him to it, putting up one of the best QB seasons ever just next year in 2004. Jay Fiedler is on the downhill, but he's been a solid top ten guy for a few years now. Marc Bulger will go on to be one of the most overlooked and underrated QBs of the decade, forced to watch as his elite Rams roster falls apart around him in the ensuing years, and Jake Plummer is the permanent obstacle. An underrated option that will lead some pretty good Broncos teams to some pretty good places as this decade goes on.

Amidst all of this is Jon Kitna, who just seven weeks ago was warned by his QB coach that he was liable to be replaced. I'm willing to bet that is not what Jon and Ken Zampese are talking about in meetings these days.

Nevertheless, there’s been the subtle undercurrent of both Jon Kitna and his Cincinnati Bengals all playing a bit over their heads throughout the whole of this piece, and that will begin to turn eventually. Unfortunately for Jon, this is where the turn happens. It all begins to crumble in week 14.

Week 14 is without doubt Jon's worst game of the season, a crushing 31-13 road loss in Baltimore to surrender the division lead back to the Ravens. I spent several paragraphs explaining the quality of this Ravens defence earlier in this piece. It is no shame to have the worst game of the season against them. Plenty of people do it, but it feels extra disappointing considering how well Jon did the first time.

This loss drops us to 7-6, and surrenders the division lead back to 8-5 Baltimore. Due to the quality of the AFC in 2003, there has never been a chance at a wild card berth. Cincinnati's only chance has been this weak AFC North, and now we've just harmed our chances there quite badly. Without an additional Ravens loss in the final three weeks of the year, there is now no way we can win this division.

Week 15 is back to the good stuff. Another instance of Jon and Rudi Johnson teaming up to bully a poor defence. This time it's the San Francisco 49ers. Thanks to one of the final great games of Jeff Garcia's NFL career, Jon's 0.39 EPA/Play, combined with a ton of help from a 0.28 EPA/Play day out of the rush game, is still only enough to squeak out a 41-38 home victory.

As is typical with these Bengals, this score is closer than the game actually was, as the 49ers at no point were within one score with the ball, but because they kept coming, it meant Jon was kept on his toes for the whole of the game, knowing he had to keep scoring in order to hold the underrated Jeff Garcia off, and he did it.

We failed to score just twice on our eight possessions in this game, as Jon again pulled off a great game to bail out another poor defensive effort, in a clutch performance that is not remembered enough, in a game we desperately needed to attempt to keep pace with Baltimore.

The reason it isn’t remembered is the week 16 game, where even with all of the greatness Jon Kitna has displayed in 2003, the Cincinnati Bengals are just outgunned and overmatched by the 11-3 St Louis Rams. This loss drops us to 8-7, and we enter week 17 needing the same help we've been needing most of the season in order to win the division: a win combined with a Ravens loss.

If this were to occur, the teams would be tied in head to head record, but we would have a 4-2 division record, compared to 3-3 for Baltimore, giving the Cincinnati Bengals the AFC North division for the first time ever, and the division in general for the first time in almost 15 years.

Unfortunately, it just isn't meant to be. Our defence gets torn up by, of all people, Lee Suggs, giving up 186 of the 1074 total yards Suggs would tally in the whole of his NFL career. Despite coming in as very large 8.5 point home favourites, the offence can't get anything going, and we go out with a whimper, falling 22-14 to the Cleveland Browns.

Our season is over, at 8-8. No playoffs again, but the corner has been turned.

The Bungles are dead.

For one final reminder, the Bengals have not made the playoffs since 1990. That's now 13 years with no playoffs. In the ensuing 13 years (2004-17), this franchise will make the playoffs seven times, and have three additional seasons of positive point differential that fail to make the playoffs.

Over the course of this 2003 season, the Bengals have gone from a doormat to a moderately successful NFL franchise, and will stay in that mold for a while, and eventually make the jump to perennial fringe contender, where they remain today.

This is a well known rags to riches story. It’s one of the most told stories of the 2000s NFL. Everybody knows about the rebirth of the Cincinnati Bengals, but the forgotten man is Jon Kitna.

Jon ended the Bungles. Not Carson Palmer. Not Andy Dalton. Not Joe Burrow.

Jon Kitna.

Jon in 2003 did something that I don't know if I’ve ever seen done before or since. With the first overall pick in the 2003 draft, the Bengals selected the man who was supposed to be their franchise saviour, Carson Palmer, but before Carson could even hit the field, the franchise was already saved. Kitna had His Year, and pre-empted him.

It's hard to have your career year with the first overall pick sitting on the bench behind you. It's perhaps the hardest thing to do as an NFL QB. Chris Chandler did not have his career year when the Falcons selected Michael Vick. Kurt Warner did not have a great year with Eli Manning on the bench. Josh McCown's first NFL career ended because he played so badly starting over JaMarcus Russell. Tyrod Taylor did not have a resurgence playing in front of Baker Mayfield, and nobody ever got the chance to start over David Carr, Alex Smith, Matthew Stafford, Sam Bradford, Cam Newton, Andrew Luck, Jameis Winston, Jared Goff, Kyler Murray, Joe Burrow, Trevor Lawrence, Bryce Young, or Caleb Williams. All of this just in the play tracking era.

The glaring outlier in this group is Jon Kitna starting over Carson Palmer. In his try at it, he succeeded where Kurt Warner failed. He succeeded where Josh McCown failed. Both of these QBs were great, and both would go on to be great even after they got ousted in favour of the first overall pick, but even they weren't up to this task in the way Jon Kitna was.

The closest thing I can think of is when Drew Brees had his breakout season in 2004 with Philip Rivers, who was kind of a first overall pick, on the bench behind him, or when Alex Smith had his career year for the 2017 Kansas City Chiefs with Patrick Mahomes on the bench, but got traded anyway. These were both great performances under a lot of pressure, but not first overall pick pressure.

In His Year, Jon generated 0.112 EPA/Play (9th), on a 5.72 ANY/A (14th). CPOE was not measured in 2003, but I project him at a 2.4 (9th). On top of these good rate numbers, Jon was super available, a quality harder to possess in 2003 than it is now. Jon touched the ball 609 times this year, seventh most among all QBs.

More important than these numbers is the situation in which he put them up. The Cincinnati Bengals were a franchise that’d been accustomed to great QB play, with Ken Anderson in the 1970s and Boomer Esiason in the 1980s both playing to a standard that would’ve landed them in the Hall of Fame, if quality of play was a more significant consideration for the football Hall of Fame.

However, since Boomer Esiason left the second time in 1997, this franchise had been stuck with a level of QB play that was so bad, it’s difficult to put it into perspective. Nobody generated positive EPA/Play for five years, a streak no NFL team is currently riding at the moment. Aaron Rodgers was positive in 2024 for the Jets. Jacoby Brissett was positive in 2022 for the Browns. Think of any team you’d like, they’ve had a positive EPA guy in the last five years. The Bengals hadn’t. They were deep in the muck of a QB stretch worse than any currently ongoing in the NFL of 2024.

Once again, it was Jon Kitna that ended that, and he didn’t just end it via being a mild positive. He was a legitimate top ten QB, and an underrated fixture of my favourite AFC in NFL history.

Unfortunately, despite all of that, circumstance dictated that Jon would never be the starter again for the Cincinnati Bengals.

He would be benched to begin the 2004 season in favour of the man who’d become a close personal friend, Carson Palmer, who has since remarked on how easy Jon made the transition, despite having every reason not to. By all means, Jon should've been traded instead of benched, which is surely what would've happened had this situation taken place in 2024.

Even in 2004, most players would’ve made a serious issue out of this, and made an earnest effort to tear the team apart, like Donovan McNabb, Kerry Collins, and several other QBs below Jon’s calibre would go on to do in the years ahead, but Jon Kitna did not, paying the favour back for what Carson did at the beginning of this season by sticking it out in Cincinnati for two more years as his backup before going to Detroit in 2006 to be a full-time starter again.

Jon would play like a top ten QB in Detroit too, doing some okay things with some extremely bad offensive rosters, but he could never quite get back to his 2003 form. We never got the chance to know whether the Bengals had found a true diamond in the rough or not, because by the time that diamond revealed itself, it had already been replaced by a bigger, heavier, and shinier diamond. By the time that diamond found its way to Detroit, it was already 34 years old, and not as equipped to play behind awful offensive lines as it used to be.

That horrendous offence would go 0-16 as soon as Jon left it, clearly indicating that he was the only thing holding it up. The drop in form the instant Jon gets injured is noticeable. With Jon still on the roster, there’s no way that team would’ve gone 0-16, but it goes to show just what kind of offensive help Jon spent his last good years dealing with.

The one other time in his career Jon got some decent offensive help, starting for the 2010 Cowboys in place of the injured Tony Romo, Jon generated 0.088 EPA/Play (17th), on a 2.1 CPOE (12th), on a healthy enough 376 play sample, as a 38 year old man. He still had it. Even at 38 years old, Jon Kitna was still a starting level player. He was just given very few chances over his career to show it. He would retire shortly after this Dallas season.

So goes the ballad of Jon Kitna. He had some good years in Seattle, some good years in Detroit, and even a good season in Dallas in his chance to start there, but none of these years could match his one great season in Cincinnati. The only time in his whole career where he was truly given a chance to showcase his skill.

If you take any one thing from this article, remember that Jon Kitna killed the Bungles. That's a fact that is too often forgotten in modern discourse, but all who've now read this article won't forget anymore.

We'll never forget Jon Kitna's year.