Shemar Stewart Carted Off Bengals Practice With Left Knee Injury: What It Means for Cincinnati’s Defense and 2026 Odds

Bengals defensive end Shemar Stewart was carted off the practice field Wednesday afternoon during the opening training camp session at Paycor Stadium, going down on the second rep of 11-on-11 drills with what appeared to be a left knee injury. Stewart could not put weight on the leg, was evaluated by trainers for several minutes, then removed his jersey before being loaded onto a cart and taken inside for further examination.

The 2025 first-round pick out of Texas A&M was fitted with a brace and seen on crutches afterward, and the Bengals had not confirmed a diagnosis as of Wednesday evening pending imaging. Multiple reporters on the scene described Stewart’s leg giving way awkwardly as he planted his foot during the drill, with his knee appearing to hyperextend on the play.

A Rough Start Just Got Rougher

Stewart’s rookie campaign was already defined by injury trouble before it even began. He held out of mandatory minicamp and the start of last summer’s training camp amid a contract language dispute, then battled an ankle injury that cost him time in the first month of the season. A knee injury suffered in a November game against the Bears eventually landed him on injured reserve, limiting him to just five games before he later returned for a stretch down the stretch, finishing with eight total appearances. Across that abbreviated season, Stewart posted 11 tackles, one sack and a pass defensed — modest production for a player Cincinnati took in the first round to be an immediate difference-maker off the edge.

Wednesday’s injury occurred early — on just the second rep of the first padded team drill of camp — leaving the Bengals with essentially no fresh evidence of progress from Stewart before this latest setback. Teammates were seen checking on him as he was carted off, and at least one report described him as visibly upset while being loaded onto the cart. The team has given no early word on severity, and the Bengals’ next update is expected to hinge on imaging results.

What It Means for Cincinnati’s Defense — and the Betting Market

Stewart was ticketed to start opposite Myles Murphy on Cincinnati’s edge this season, with Joseph Ossai rounding out the rotation — the same trio that split reps last year whenever Stewart was sidelined. Any extended absence pushes more snaps back onto Murphy and Ossai, and puts additional pressure on a Bengals pass rush that finished outside the league’s upper tier last season while Cincinnati worked to fix a defense that undercut Joe Burrow’s offense in a third-place, non-playoff finish.

From a market standpoint, the Bengals have carried some of the more attractive win-total and division numbers in the AFC this offseason — books had priced Cincinnati’s season win total around 9.5 to 10.5 with the over favored in several shops, and had the Bengals sitting behind only Baltimore in AFC North odds, in the range of roughly plus-190 to win the division. Those numbers were built in part on the idea of a healthier, more disruptive front seven complementing Burrow. A significant injury to a projected starting edge rusher — especially one who already missed the bulk of his rookie year — is exactly the kind of camp news that can nudge those lines before a single regular-season snap is played, even without a confirmed diagnosis yet.

Bettors watching Cincinnati’s futures market this week should treat Wednesday’s cart-off as a note to monitor rather than a verdict — the swing in perception between a bone bruise and a significant ligament tear is enormous for a team counting on its defensive front to take a step forward. Until the Bengals confirm what the imaging shows, oddsmakers and bettors alike are left pricing in uncertainty on one of the more important complementary pieces to Cincinnati’s 2026 outlook.