Bengals go out of their way to bring in new assistant coach

Kragthorpe and Kovacs were each expected in-house hires. Kragthorpe, who was the assistant quarterbacks coach in 2023, will take Dan Pitcher's place following Pitcher's promotion to become offensive coordinator. Kragthorpe was originally hired by the Bengals in 2019 as an offensive assistant, and has worked as the assistant wide receivers coach as well.

Prior to joining the Bengals, Kragthorpe spent the 2018 season as an offensive analyst at LSU, working with an offense that featured Bengals QB Joe Burrow and WR Ja'Marr Chase. 

Kovacs was the assistant linebackers coach for the past two seasons. He will now take Robert Livingston's old spot after Livingston was hired as Deion Sanders' defensive coordinator for Colorado.

Kovacs is a former NFL safety who joined the Bengals in 2019 just like Kragthorpe. He started out as a defensive quality control coach his first three years in Cincinnati.

New coach in town

Instead of hiring a new assistant QB coach to replace Kragthorpe's former role, the Bengals went out and hired Rascati as their pass game coordinator on offense. Racati comes from the Minnesota Vikings, where he spent the past two seasons as their assistant offensive line coach. He previously served as an offensive quality control coach with the Denver Broncos from 2019-21.

Rascati also has experience as an offensive coordinator. He served that role most recently at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga from 2017-18, where he was also the QB coach. He played QB in college at Louisville and James Madison. 

The Rascati hire is the most interesting of the three considering it materialized a brand new position on Zac Taylor's coaching staff. Taylor will remain the play-caller for Cincinnati, but the workflow of designing the offense and in-game management is spread out among him and his assistants. 

Pitcher and Kragthorpe are already part of that process. A pass game coordinator joining the team should help out even more.