NFL: 2024 Season Player Headshots

Bengals Extend Punter Ryan Rehkow For An Additional Two Years

Punter Ryan Rehkow will be a Bengal for two more years

NFL: 2024 Season Player Headshots

It is rare in the NFL for a special teams player, and much less a rookie punter to make headlines. In a sport where stars are born either on the offense or on defense, special teams kind of take a back seat to everything that happens, irrespective of the fact that games are won and lost with big special teams play.

Last year, 26-year-old rookie punter Ryan Rehkow had a great start to his professional career with the Cincinnati Bengals. Undrafted in the 2024 NFL draft Rehkow was initially signed by the Kansas City Chiefs but after he was released the Bengals made him theirs.

On the back of a record-setting performance, Cincinnati has signed Rehkow to a new two-year contract extension through the 2026 season as per NFL insider Adam Schefter. This move by the Bengals seems like a no-brainer as Rehkow was an instrumental member of the special teams unit which was ranked number 1 in the league by Pro Football Focus. The Bengals are doing well to hold on to most of the players on this unit for the upcoming season.

Rehkow’s 2024 season

Rehkow won the starting job very quickly and with it the hearts of the Bengals’ players, coaches, and fans with his electrifying debut performance against the Patriots in week 1 of the 2024 season. He set franchise records in his very first game as a professional when he averaged a staggering 64.5 yards per punt. His four punts in the game went for 258 yards while the longest kick was a massive 80-yarder. Rehkow finished the year averaging 49.1 yards per punt on the year with a long of 80 yards. He also had 25 punts that landed inside the opposition’s 20-yard line.

Also Read: Top 10 prospects in the 2025 NFL Draft

Room For Improvement

Overall, Cincinnati is quite happy with Rehkow’s performances from last year, which evidently is the reason he received a new deal. Nevertheless, the Bengals’ special teams coordinator Darrin Simmons is expecting further development and has already suggested a couple of action points to work on.

As per Simmons, he wants the youngster to work on his direction while punting as well as cutting the field in half, and forcing returners to make a good play. Furthermore, he wants Rehkow to improve on pinning the opposition inside the 10.

One more area to get better is while placing the ball during field goals. Last season Rehkow owned up to a mistaken hold which resulted in kicker Evan McPherson missing a crucial field goal in their overtime loss to the Ravens. Cincinnati, however, will not be worried too much as the former BYU Cougar will have an entire offseason to work on his development with Simmons citing that he still has a high ceiling to be explored.

Cincinnati Bengals

NFL

ryan rehkow

Devavrat Kulkarni

nfl

I am a content writer for the NFL team, and joined The Playoffs after working with Sportskeeda and NFL Analysis as an NFL writer. After starting my professional career as a French-to-English translator, working as a content writer is a new adventure for me. I started out in the sports media field for two main reasons: my love for sports in general, especially the NFL, NBA, and Tennis, as well as my passion for writing. The best part of this job is that I get to write a variety of pieces with the freedom to explore content from various angles. It also enables me to stay up to date with the sporting world, which otherwise can be difficult to do in the day-to-day grind. In a world full of chaos, sports unite and entertain like nothing else!