What are the Bengals doing at Defensive Tackle?

[Luvnit2]

For the record, I loved and respected the play of DJ Reader. He was a great run stopper, but frankly a poor pass rusher.

I think the Bengals know better than any of us our impact losing him.

I understand we play in a rugged run division, and we need to attempt to stop the 4 or more yard runs on 1st and 2nd down. But we also play great passing teams not only in the division, but a team like KC.

In time, we will see if what we lost against the run, we gained against the pass. Rankins is a better pass rusher than DJ and we need to get more pressure up the middle in our pass rush. I hope the offense and Burrow can put us in better position in 2024 to have a nice lead heading into the 4th quarter making teams 1 dimensional.

I know this, our defense was not good with DJ in 2023, our offense was not good without Burrow either.

At this point, we can hope Jenkins and others step up on the DL so we get better than the 2023 team with a healthy DJ Reader.