I will say this, if "rally and make the wild card" is going to happen, the defense is going to have to do a 180.

32nd in tackles for loss/no gain
32nd in explosive run % allowed
32nd in successful play % allowed
31st in explosive pass % allowed
31st in yards per play allowed

— Andrew Russell (@Andrew_Russell7) November 20, 2023

I read that as the league is made up of 31 really good defenses and one OK one.

Sad and pathetic

yet feel they're much better

I'm surprised by these stats as we have some talented players on the defense.

Not buying it. Now show where they rank high. You can't just focus on weaknesses without highlighting their strengths.

10th in qb Rating, 9th in pass completion, 2nd in interceptions, 10th in QB hits, and 7th in turnovers. It's not all bad for the defense.

Bengals are #5 on the season in takeaways... they have been very opportunistic.

However this defense is absolutely trash the stats prove it. The turnovers are great but a very small part of the story.

I'm mostly talking about the secondary... not having Hubbard last two games killed us as well. Clearly Lou needs an amazing secondary for his scheme to work.

I don't think they're that bad. Rex Ryan was on ESPN Pregame with a devilish grin fantasizing about all the things we had planned for Stroud. "There's no one in the league better than Lou Anarumo!" That was just two weeks ago.

The issues with tackling and explosive plays and rush defense have been going on all season. The turnovers have been saving the defense's bacon.

#s don't lie. The defense outside of the turnovers is really bad. The zone D gets gashed waaay too often. We also don't blitz much. DO SOMETHING to try & stop the gashing. Man D & blitz more.

We gave up A LOT of big plays against the Texans that I think skewed the numbers.

I don't think the defense is as bad as the numbers indicate. That Texans game was something though...

I don't think this defense is great, but I also don't think they are awful. I think they are average with a lot of young talent that is still learning what it takes to win and play in Lou's system. Giving up big plays are the growing pains this defense is going to have to live with when they chose to let quality vets walk and fill holes with sub par vets and rookies.

Yes, as others said, it is somewhere in between. Not nearly as good as I thought we would be on Defense this year, especially
the tackling. And then when one of our players makes some great tackles the NFL wants to ban them lol

Seriously though, they need to first improve on tackling and then everything else will sort itself out. We have a lot of youth on
Defense, but we have some very good players. The Texans game as Pistons said was really bad and it made our Defense look bad
for the year.

I blame a lot of the early struggles on Burrow being hurt and always playing in the Shotgun with no running game or no effort to
establish one. Our Defense was on the field so much early on against great running teams. Our Defense is more like the one against
the 49ers when we are playing well. We still struggle against TE's as Kittle shown but we kept him out of the end zone and that is
what mattered.

One thing I have to add, if we are unable to keep Reader I am scared for the future unless we somehow bring in somebody that is
a game changing run stopping NT.

Just a little devil's advocate....the defense puts up bad numbers and Lou's still a genius and the unit isn't as bad as the numbers dictate. The offense struggles a bit, and it's worse than the numbers actually show and we should fire the coach.

(11-22-2023, 10:53 AM)Wyche Wrote: Just a little devil's advocate....the defense puts up bad numbers and Lou's still a genius and the unit isn't as bad as the numbers dictate. The offense struggles a bit, and it's worse than the numbers actually show and we should fire the coach.

Lol, true, I think we are harder on our Offense. Lou has a lot of work to do to get his Defense up to par though no question.

The D is the similar to the O

All sorts of crazy talent sprinkled in to a very mediocre group.

We usually rely on JB and Chase to just show up big and take over games.

We rely Trey, SamH and SamR —and pray for a couple of TO’s on D.

As a team - we are not good.

That’s kind of how this franchise has always been built though. Lol.

It’s the Jeff Blake to Carl Pickens Hail Mary approach or just hand it to Corey Dillon, etc.

Lots of frustrated sarcasm above but some truth to it.

(11-20-2023, 06:14 PM)THE PISTONS Wrote:

I will say this, if "rally and make the wild card" is going to happen, the defense is going to have to do a 180.

32nd in tackles for loss/no gain
32nd in explosive run % allowed
32nd in successful play % allowed
31st in explosive pass % allowed
31st in yards per play allowed

— Andrew Russell (@Andrew_Russell7) November 20, 2023

Bend and break Defense!

The uncomfortable reality of Lou's Bengals defenses...

2019: 25th scoring defense
2020: 22nd scoring defense
2021: 17th scoring defense
2022: 6th scoring defense
2023: 21st scoring defense

(11-22-2023, 06:36 PM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: The uncomfortable reality of Lou's Bengals defenses...

2019: 25th scoring defense
2020: 22nd scoring defense
2021: 17th scoring defense
2022: 6th scoring defense
2023: 21st scoring defense

I feel like Lou's earned his good reputation among Bengals fans mostly due to some second half shut downs of KC. I feel like the unit as a whole has underachieved considering the money spent on that side of the ball the past 3 or 4 seasons.

The Defense has been bad in areas but so has the offense ratherly this year did we have solid games and many games we had terrible halves by each,