(09-24-2024, 01:54 AM)BengalsLUFC Wrote: Trey- Brilliant but not much of a run blocker.

Hubbard- If he was a horse he would have been shot.

Rankins-Waste of money

BJ- A rotational piece in 21 is now our premier IDL says a lot

Murphy- You’d expect more of a 1st round pick.

Ossai- like a girl who wears a push up bra flatters to deceive.

Carter- Give me a break.

Pratt- Moments of magic moments he looks lost.

Wilson- Where has the ball hawk/ guy who had Lamar’s number gone?

Dax- **** off and when you get there **** off again.

CTB- Propelled in to a CB1 spot he wasn’t ready for needs to stfu.

Bell- The brain is there unfortunately the legs aren’t anymore.

Stone- We got fleeced.

Hilton- Love the guy but you barely even notice he’s on the field anymore.

Battle- Did he eat Lou’s last chicken nugget? He’s a better option than Bell at the moment.

Turner- How bad do you have to be to lose out to that waste of space?

ADG- Been our best LB this season which doesn’t say a lot.

I know there’s more but it’s 6am and I’m ***** seething.

So you went ahead and turned the test in while we are all still working, huh? 

Lou may suck, but these players are may have him trying to make champagne out of dumpster water. 

(09-24-2024, 01:46 AM)kevin Wrote: 0-3

Open Forum on The DB's, or the DT's.  Who was never replaced from Super Bowl D, or who is injured. Is it not as bad as it seems.  

Go for it.  Let's here is about the Defense so far in 2024.

PFF's ratings say it all:

BJ Hill - 52.0
Rankins - 53.5
Carter - 46.4
Tufele - 41.3

Ossai - 47.0
Hubbard - 46.1

Stone - 55.0
Hilton - 59.9
Bell - 59.6


These are all the guys who have had a good number of snaps and below 60.0 rating.
Dax Hill and CTB above this threshold because of their first two games, but they were below against DC.

Hendrickson, Wilson, and Pratt the only real dudes on defense week after week after week the whole season so far.

(09-24-2024, 02:53 PM)coachmcneil71 Wrote: Pretty much agree with this. Losing Bates has been much bigger than many realize. I live in the NFC South viewing area and I watch a lot of those teams games.

Losing Bates and Reader is looming large. Injuries to Rankins and Hill make it worse. The fact that the defense doesn't seem willing to tackle ball carriers makes it really bad! 

I know front office cut some defense knowing they had to pay Burrow.  They also let Mixon and Boyd go and really as yet have not signed Higgins or Chase long term.  What front office did was spend more money on O Line.  The question is, are they getting their moneys worth at O Line ?   Anyway, back to Defense, they let some key D Players go, and it shows.   Patriots ran at will on our DT's.   Washington has a good young QB, but Bengals were the first team he lit up with his arm.  OK, he can run, but Bengals DB's were toast out there.  That was very bad secondary coverage all night long.  

Zac loves 5 DB's 80 % of the time.  So Bengals are pretty much a 4-2-5.   2 LB's and 5 DB's.   What helped was Bates was kind of a LB type in the secondary.  If you are only going to plat 2 LB's.  then you better have a Safety who is able to be an LB on run plays.  Someone on here just posted that Bengals Safeties are not very good.  See, if that is true, that just kills only playing 2 LB's.   In this Zac system, it only works if you have top notch Safeties.  They have to be very good at helping the cornerbacks, but they also have to be good at helping the linebackers. 

How Do You Fix It ?   I always go to Defensive Guru Tony Dungy.  He took awful Tampa and made them good with Defense. He took not so good Indy Colts and went Super Bowl with Defense.  On taking over Indy, he said The Colts were too slow on D.  Dungy brought in fast players.  At Tampa and Indy, he believed a Defense has to be Fast....Maybe the 0-3 Bengals Defense is too Slow to the ball.  When in doubt, I always look to Tony Dungy who built great defenses by refusing to have slow players. Dungy always had a monster at DT, such as Warren Sapp who nobody wanted to run up the gut on.  Those Tampa and Indy DB's Dungy had were super fast. 

One play Bengals were burned on the safety came up as a linebacker thinking run play, and so he wasn't back to cover the pass and the receiver was too wide open.  TV announcers highlighted that.  

Someone suggested we only got Bell back because other teams think he isn't good anymore.  If that is true, that kills the excitement of getting Bell back.  

The Super Bowl year we had big defensive tackles playing like Super Bowl defensive tackles.  We had a Super Bowl group of defensive backs.  It's not Hendrickson's fault if we don't have the good DT's or good DB's anymore.  

They took payroll from The Defense and spent it on big name O Linemen.  I'm all for blocking, I'm just not sure they ended up with a great O line.  I'm positive they cut D Player payroll to go get free agent O line Blockers.  Maybe they cut too much D player payroll.  We don't have one monster up the gut at DT from what I see, and the secondary looks like the days of Toast Jones because he gets burned so much type players. 

A lot of the Super Bowl Team Defense is gone.  The guys out there now, at 0-3, they ain't no Super Bowl type Defense.  More like that D in 1987.  Blake got benched and they put in Boomer Esiason and they also put in Corey Dillon and they could score points.  Problem was the Defense gave up more.  No matter how many points Boomer and Dillon put up, the Bengals Defense gave up more.  Sadly, the 2024 Bengals so far remind me of the 1987 Bengals.  If you score 50, the Defense will give up 60.  

In 2024, the Bengals have allocated (in salary cap) $60,000,000 on DL (2nd highest) and $44,000,000 on OL (9th highest).

Bengals 2024 salary cap spend $130,000,000 on offense and $113,000,000 on defense.  

Only 4 teams have a higher salary cap on defense- Steelers, packers, bears and chargers.
_______

Bengals Defense sucks ass. In 3 games the Steelers D has given up less points total than the Bengals average per game. Fire Tobin.

We had a good 3 rear run. Can’t wait until another 20 years to have a good team again. Who day. The good thing is Cincy fans are fair weather fans and parking and getting out of the stadium will become easier as the season goes.

(09-25-2024, 10:35 PM)chopperbobby Wrote: We had a good 3 rear run.  Can’t wait until another 20 years to have a good team again.   Who day.  The good thing is Cincy fans are fair weather fans and parking and getting out of the stadium will become easier as the season goes.

Great input, do you have any insightful ideas on how the team might remedy the current situation that might be helpful?

Wilson and Pratt have been disappointing since they got paid.

Maybe let our run stopping rookie LB get his feet wet? Might need him when it comes time to stopping our AFC North foes run games.

Where is Njongmeta? Has he had any snaps, or is he warming the bench with Battle?

i dont get why we didnt pay defensive players if we arent paying our Offensive players either lol...

Lets do less Highest paid at X position contracts and more Solid everywhere deals.

Maybe it's just me but why does it seem like alot of what appear to be solid college players come here and go backwards in performance? If it isn't from injuries it's players playing positions they aren't cut out for? Especially defensive positions.

(09-26-2024, 09:23 AM)XenoMorph Wrote: i dont get why we didnt pay defensive players if we arent paying our Offensive players either lol...

Lets do less Highest paid at X position contracts and more Solid everywhere deals.

Good point, didn't pay Bates or Reader and haven't signed Higgins or Chase. The front office has always searched for that wholesale player for less $$ and it always comes back to haunt, always.

(09-26-2024, 08:51 AM)reuben.ahmed Wrote: Where is Njongmeta? Has he had any snaps, or is he warming the bench with Battle?

He’s only played special teams so far.

It's 1 of those situations where we have 3 players on the Dline that are playing terrible. It's making the LB job harder the sceondary job harder because they have to stay in coverage longer. You can't even begin to evaluate the rest of the defensive players outside of Tre because the production has been so awful by the other 3

(09-26-2024, 09:44 AM)RegularGuy22 Wrote: Maybe it's just me but why does it seem like alot of what appear to be solid college players come here and go backwards in performance? If it isn't from injuries it's players playing positions they aren't cut out for? Especially defensive positions.

Because the NFL is harder than college.....There are players that are great high school players, that aren't good enough to be good or great college players. The same way there are good/great college players that aren't good NFL players. It's a huge jump in competition. 

If it was as simple as "hey, that player was good in college, they will be good in the NFL", drafting wouldn't be difficult. 

(09-25-2024, 10:50 PM)SunsetBengal Wrote: Great input, do you have any insightful ideas on how the team might remedy the current situation that might be helpful?

He's not wrong. For 20 years now the organization has hit the reset button, drafted a new QB, caught lightning in a bottle for a couple seasons, paid said QB, then not be able to figure out how to sustain any of it for the second contract. Maybe this is all a big overreaction, and they right the ship and we all laugh and make everyone eat crow... But damn they're in a tight spot. How do they fix it? I dunno start operating like every other team. Upgrade scouting, do a better job of drafting, do better at development, hire legit coordinators, and figure out how to structure contracts so we can afford more than Joe Burrow?

(09-26-2024, 12:32 PM)Lucius Cincinnatus Wrote: Because the NFL is harder than college.....There are players that are great high school players, that aren't good enough to be good or great college players. The same way there are good/great college players that aren't good NFL players. It's a huge jump in competition. 

If it was as simple as "hey, that player was good in college, they will be good in the NFL", drafting wouldn't be difficult. 

Well then why do other teams college players seem to thrive more times than not and our college pics many times fall off the cliff?

DTs: Can't expect to draft and start the season with 2 rookies who are injured and expect things to go well. DT is a position that I don't expect great play from rookies (even good ones) anyway. The 2025 draft is thick with DT prospects, but the Bengals drafted two last year. And you've doubled up on expiring rookie contracts in a few years. Bengals will get younger and cheaper next year when BJ Hill's contract expires unless we need to give him a one-year deal in which case he and Rankins will both expire in 2025 and the Bengals will lose their entire line after 2025. Not smart.

DBs: I actually feel good about this group for the next couple of years if they are allowed to play pass defense and not sell out against the run. The loss of Vonn Bell will bring us back to 4 safeties. Dax Hill should replace Mike Hilton. I know it's another position change, but it's his natural position. If that's not the plan, a trade of Dax Hill should be a serious consideration, as his 5th year option in 2026 will be 10M.

DEs: All the coach-speak about KJ Henry and then we can't find a spot for him on gameday despite Hendrickson and Hubbard being gassed and/or dinged up makes me want to slap somebody. The coaches are clearly paying checkers...