ESPN. Bengals on the Rise

[SunsetBengal]

(04-11-2020, 02:00 PM)J24 Wrote: Williams and Bell are the same exact player good run stuffing Box safeties, Wayne's is a better run defender than Kirkpatrick but Kirkpatrick was better against the pass, and I agree that Alexander and Dennard are pushes. I would actually say Alexander is a better bet because he is younger. For the thousandth time Billings wasn't a bad player for us at all in fact he was actually good. Yes Reader is better but we would have been fine at the NT position with Billings and Topu.
I don't think we got worse but we didn't get better. It would have been better if we addressed our biggest need in a true 3 down LB.

Well, nothing against you, as you seem like a pretty decent and rational person, but we will just continue to disagree on some fine points here.  I think that if the Bengals are serious about running 3-4, 3-3-5, and 4-2-5 looks on defense, the addition of Bell tells me that they are going to be implementing some 3 Safety sets.  Having both Williams and Bell, who statistically speaking are similar players, allows them to be utilized in masked coverages, with one playing "star" LB hybrid, and the other in full coverage.  The Bengals want to take away the entire middle of the field, and that's a good thing.

So, what I'm basically saying is that I'm not convinced that Bell was brought in to replace Williams, as much as to play in coordination with he and Bates.  I agree that Waynes is better in the run and gives up more completions than Kirkpatrick, but his tackling is so much better that I kind of feel like it is not a factor.  He (Waynes) is younger, has sustained fewer injuries, and has a much higher utilization rate than Kirkpatrick.  (a player ready to take the field is infinitely more valuable than one out often with injury)