Was Austin the Problem with the Defense?

[BengalChris]

(01-14-2019, 05:33 PM)Pat5775 Wrote: Yes. He was awful. A modern day Chuck Bresnahan, but worse.

The most lazy, hands-off defense I’ve ever seen

Yes, but he was hand picked by Merv himself. Then thrown under the bus.

[*SHRacerX*]

(01-14-2019, 04:19 PM)bengalhoel Wrote: You also have to factor in Driskel at QB and and a shit ton of injuries when Marvin was DC. All those final games were close except for the first Cleveland game, though we did make a mini comeback at the end.  

Our offense left our defense on the field for way too long at the end of the season and we still could have won most of those games so I think he did a much better job.

Beat me to it...we not only had a lot of backups on the field for offense, but on defense we had lost Glasgow, Lawson, Burfict, Evans, Vigil (who came back late), and at times a few of the secondary guys.  Starting Nickerson at LB was an open door to all kinds of crossing routes and check downs.

Austin was a horrible DC, and Marvin is still too soft for me, but it was an improvement.  I think a DC that will up their blitz % and play more man coverage outside will have this unity potentially in the top 10 again....but they won't do that without significant upgrades in the LB corps.  They need a very good draft pick (White?) AND a solid FA with some speed and attitude.  Yes, that won't come cheap, but the upgrade should help the entire defense.  

[*SHRacerX*]

(01-14-2019, 04:21 PM)Truck_1_0_1_ Wrote: We don't need an overhaul.

Fix the LBs, stay healthy, our D is back to fearsome.

Period.

Much more succinct than I was, but this is dead on.

[*SHRacerX*]

(01-14-2019, 06:59 PM)wolfkaosaun Wrote: Really dig the write up.

I don't think Austin was bad persay, just his defense wasn't a good fit for what the Bengals had.
He preferred zone and attempting to maximize on turnovers. The cornerbacks are MUCH better with man to man. Look at Jackson before and after Austin. His play completely changed.

The biggest issue for this team is linebackers.

Also, to note:
The Bengals had 13 turnovers under Austin in 9 games.
(10 INTs, 3 fumble recoveries)

Since then?
Bengals had 5 turnovers in 7 games.
(2 INTs, 3 fumble recoveries)

I get this, but 4 of those were from Famous (for Picks) Jameis.  And that is the Breshnahan/Austin defense:  Sit back off the receiver and catch any bad passes.  The only problem is now even the rookie QBs are good.  When you get a dud QB, sure...that style seems to work, but there aren't many duds in the NFL right now at QB.  

[*Wyche'sWarrior*]

(01-14-2019, 08:49 PM)Whatever Wrote: Our LB's are just plain bad.  Burfict is finished.  Rey is finished.  Brown is a decent 2 down thumper, but he's a FA.  Vigil looks like a quality backup, at best.  Evans looks lost half the time.  Nickerson isn't NFL roster worthy.  Jefferson couldn't get on the field, but new coaches might be able to get something out of him.  We definitely need 2 guys that are starting caliber.

Pass rush also became an issue when Lawson went down.  He wasn't getting sacks, but he was generating pressure and forcing QB's to step up into Geno.

I agree, although I think Brown is a little better than he's given credit for around here.  He had an INT at Indy, and played through a bad ankle sprain from then on.  I think he's a pretty good ball player when healthy.  He would make a good complimentary piece to a couple of legit LBs.  

[*Synric*]

(01-15-2019, 11:07 AM)Wyche Wrote: I agree, although I think Brown is a little better than he's given credit for around here.  He had an INT at Indy, and played through a bad ankle sprain from then on.  I think he's a pretty good ball player when healthy.  He would make a good complimentary piece to a couple of legit LBs.  

Vigil is also taking alot of heat even though he had a serious MCL sprain but going into week 6 (week he was hurt) he lead the NFL in stops.

https://www.cincyjungle.com/2018/10/15/17979278/bengals-lb-nick-vigil-to-miss-extended-time-due-to-mcl-injury

[Truck_1_0_1_]

(01-14-2019, 06:14 PM)jason Wrote: Think we could use a legit guy on the edge to replace MJ too. The linebackers being hot garbage, and MJ's lack of anything helped offenses to key in on Geno and Dunlap. I like Hubbard, and think he's gonna be a nice player, but I like him as a rotational guy at the moment. I don't think Lawson's a 3 down guy either.

You've got a great point, however I feel Hubbard is ready to go.

He had a great rookie year and he will build upon it, getting stronger and more savvy.

[*Wyche'sWarrior*]

(01-15-2019, 11:29 AM)Synric Wrote: Vigil is also taking alot of heat even though he had a serious MCL sprain but going into week 6 (week he was hurt) he lead the NFL in stops.

https://www.cincyjungle.com/2018/10/15/17979278/bengals-lb-nick-vigil-to-miss-extended-time-due-to-mcl-injury

That's true as well.  With so many injuries, it's easy to overlook things when a guy came back to play.  Brown wound up with 2 INTs, 2 more than our entire CB unit combined.  One of those came while he was playing hurt.  He was slowed dramatically from the guy that led the NFL in tackles the year prior, and you know Vigil was slowed down some as well.  I would definitely keep him too.  I would be inclined to release the rest of them if I am able to.....with the exception of Jefferson.

[Mike M (the other one)]

(01-14-2019, 05:19 PM)Sled21 Wrote: At least Evans is showing steady improvement. A new LB coach will do him wonders....

Yes, not ready to dismiss Evans yet, he was a known project coming in, and he has the speed and skills to cover. Just needs to learn the position better. I would like to see him with a new LB Coach, find out of the learning or teaching was the problem and same there with Jefferson. I think he's got the ability, just needs to learn his positions well.

Both are Projects that have the Speed and Ability, just need to acquire the skills from a competent LB Coach and both are of the mold we are looking for. Can't always get those 1st rounders ready to roll. Sometimes have to develop them yourselves.

[3wt]

(01-14-2019, 05:06 PM)Sled21 Wrote: Marvin did more with less....

This.

Kudos to the OP for a really well thought breakdown.

[I_C_DeadPeople]

(01-15-2019, 11:29 AM)Synric Wrote: Vigil is also taking alot of heat even though he had a serious MCL sprain but going into week 6 (week he was hurt) he lead the NFL in stops.

https://www.cincyjungle.com/2018/10/15/17979278/bengals-lb-nick-vigil-to-miss-extended-time-due-to-mcl-injury

Rey M used to get a lot of tackles as well. But old Captain "Wrong gap" also did most of his tackling after 4 or 5 yards were given up. 

This LB crew is a complete re-set. Maybe one or two guys will be salvaged. 

[Joelist]

Was Austin THE issue with the defense? No, but he was certainly a major issue. For example, his insistence on playing personnel obviously better suited for press man coverage in soft zones did nothing but make it child's play for offenses to march down the field on us.

As to the LB I keep Brown, Vigil and Jefferson and release EVERYONE else. Between the draft and free agency restock the LB corps.

[CJD]

BONUS STAT:

Okay, I did 3rd down percentage.

It was sitting in the back of my mind as a curiosity, so I just went ahead and did it.

The format is exactly the same as the first post.



With Austin, we allowed conversions 56.15% of the time.
Without Austin, we allowed conversion 38.71% of the time.
An improvement of 17.44 points.

With Austin, they were allowing 3rd down conversions a whopping 12.4% more than the opponent's season average.
Without Austin, they were allowing a 3rd down conversion only 0.1% more than the opponent's average.

Under Austin, they held a team below their season average just 1 time.
Without Austin, they held a team below their season average 3 times.

On the whole, the Bengals ended the season dead last in 3rd down conversion % allowed.
With Austin, they were also dead last.
Without Austin, if that period of time were compared to the entire regular season for other teams, they would have come in at 17th place. Not great, but not abysmal either.

Obviously, the same asterisks apply: generally better offenses in the first half, more injuries and a worse Bengals offense in the 2nd half etc.

The bottom line is Austin's defense ***** sucked.

[*Synric*]

(01-15-2019, 03:36 PM)I_C_DeadPeople Wrote: Rey M used to get a lot of tackles as well. But old Captain "Wrong gap" also did most of his tackling after 4 or 5 yards were given up. 

This LB crew is a complete re-set. Maybe one or two guys will be salvaged. 

Stops are not just tackles. It's a tackle that results in the failure of an offensive drive aka not letting an opposing offense convert on a 3rd or 4th down.

[*Nate (formerly eliminate08)*]

(01-14-2019, 04:00 PM)Crazyjdawg Wrote: I was reading the NFL draft forum threads and someone mentioned, as a reason not to draft the LSU LB White, that Austin was the problem and that once we fired him, our defense improved to the point that we don't really need to overhaul the defense anymore.

I found this to be an interesting topic for discussion. I also noticed an improvement in the Defense once Austin was fired, but how substantial was it?

Well, this conversation could go on for hours if you break every single statistic down and relate them to the competition faced and the averages of those teams (it really could go on forever). I wanted to do some sort of analysis without getting into the nitty gritty with things like 3rd down percentage and strength of opponent etc.

So, instead, I boiled it down to 4 basic categories:
Pass Yards allowed
Rush Yards allowed
Points allowed
Time of Possession Allowed.

That final one, granted, is also a factor of your offense. If your offense keeps going 3 and out, your defense will inevitably allow a longer time of possession. But, really, you could say that about ANY defensive statistic that is measured quantitatively (such as yards or points allowed), so I will disregard that for now. If you want to dive into the qualitative stats such as 3rd down percentage, I would love to read what you have to say.

But anyway, this is what I came up with:



This grid is set up in three sections. Each section is used to compare what we allowed while Austin was our DC (in red) to what we allowed after he was fired (in green).
The first section is listing our opponents and how many yards/points/minutes we allowed to them. "Our Game"
The second section is each of our opponent's stats over the course of their season. "Opponent Average"
The final section compares the difference between what we allowed and what they averaged over their season. "Difference"

I did this in order to add a measure of consideration to when we allowed a bunch of yards to a team that just...gets a lot of yards (like New Orleans, Tampa Bay or Kansas City) compared to when we allow a ton of yards to a team that doesn't typically produce that many yards (such as allowing 105.9 more yards to Atlanta than they averaged over the season.)

Obviously, this doesn't account for a team that changed dramatically at some point in the season, like Baltimore and Cleveland switching QBs. For example, we did allow 493 yards to Cleveland in the penultimate game, but their average was pulled down by several weeks of Tyrod Taylor at QB, so we weren't as blatantly horrible against them as it appears (though we still sucked ass in that game).

But...it's the best I got.

For the third section, I color coded the cell red when we allowed more yards/points/time than their season average and green when we allowed fewer.

Below the entire grid, I added a single line: Difference between time periods. This is a straight subtraction of what we did under Austin vs what we did without him. Without Austin, they allowed 91.7 fewer yards per game and 8.1 fewer points per game. They didn't get off the field any easier, as their average TOP allowed was only ~1 minute less but, keep in mind, they had an absolutely anemic offense in the second half and still held onto the ball longer...so that indicates the defense did succeed in getting the opponent's offense off the field more often.

Finally, I put a grid at the bottom comparing our seasonal rankings for the total of 2018 to the period with Austin and the period after Austin. I compared each set to the end of the year rankings, as I did not have the rankings available from Week 1 to Week 10 and Week 11 to Week 17. So it isn't perfectly accurate, but it's something to compare to, at least.

TL;DR
Here are the basic results that I see:

We improved in every way once we got rid of Austin (32nd to 9th passing, 31st to 28th rushing, 32nd to 19th in points, 32nd to 22nd for total yards.) But, it's worth pointing out that we did face 3 of the best offenses while Austin was employed (New Orleans, Tampa, KC). So take that information with a grain of salt. But our latter half schedule did have better rushing teams, so it almost balances out (a net difference of 14 yards per game and 3.5 points on average more for the first half vs the second half opponents' offenses)

The thing that sticks out the MOST is the fact that our passing defense jumped from 32nd to 9th once we removed Austin. But, like I said, not having to face NO, KC and Tampa probably had an awful lot to do with that jump.

In the third section, you can see that, for the 5 categories (pass, run, points, time, total), over 9 games, the Bengals defense held their opponent's below their season average a total of 11 times (a total of 45 chances, or a 24.4% success rate).
For the final 7 games, the Bengals held a team below their season average a total of 20 times (a total of 35 chances, or a 57.1% success rate).
Those numbers may not mean a whole lot, depending on the context in which you view them.
But what is clear is that we did, in fact, dramatically improve once Austin was ousted.

If Marvin had been our defensive coordinator for the entire year of 2018, who knows what we would be saying right now. The good news is that it is clear that Austin was causing some sort of problem.

Was he the whole problem? It's hard to say. But what we do know, based on these numbers, is that he is a bad defensive coordinator, or at the very least, did not match the personnel we have here in Cincinnati in any way.
I'm glad he's gone

Great breakdown CJD, yeah it was definately much better once Austin was gone no surprise but the Linebackers were bad all season long and that made the enitre Defense way worse than what they really are. We have good players but when one entire position group is just terrible it hurts everyone on the Defense. I want to see how much better our Linebackers are next year under a different LB coach. BTW, still need a FA and an early pick LB'er.

[wolfkaosaun]

(01-15-2019, 09:57 AM)SHRacerX Wrote: I get this, but 4 of those were from Famous (for Picks) Jameis.  And that is the Breshnahan/Austin defense:  Sit back off the receiver and catch any bad passes.  The only problem is now even the rookie QBs are good.  When you get a dud QB, sure...that style seems to work, but there aren't many duds in the NFL right now at QB.  

That is true.
But you can also say that 2 of the fumble recoveries came against the Raiders. So that would leave 2 INTs and 1 fumble recovery for the other 6 games with Marvin being DC.

I just don't think the personnel fit what Austin wanted to do. Just a bad fit for everyone involved.

[Catmandude123]

(01-14-2019, 04:10 PM)ochocincos Wrote: Worth also pointing out the records with and without Austin...
With Austin: 5-4
Without Austin: 1-6

Without having looked up the specifics of when the Bengals started to fall behind in the games that Marvin took over the defense, I assume the rushing was up and the passing was down because the Bengals were losing and therefore the opponents were running the ball more than passing.

WE were 5-4 in spite of Austin not because of him.

[*ochocincos*]

(01-15-2019, 08:01 PM)Catmandude123 Wrote: WE were 5-4 in spite of Austin not because of him.

I know that...my point was that the offense was better and therefore the opponents were calling more pass plays. I thought that was obvious...


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[*Nate (formerly eliminate08)*]

(01-16-2019, 12:21 AM)ochocincos Wrote: I know that...my point was that the offense was better and therefore the opponents were calling more pass plays. I thought that was obvious...


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Was pretty obvious to me...

[*TheLeonardLeap*]

(01-14-2019, 04:21 PM)Truck_1_0_1_ Wrote: We don't need an overhaul.

Fix the LBs, stay healthy, our D is back to fearsome.

Period.

I think fearsome is an awfully strong word.

Three 1st round CBs with 0 INT is hardly fearsome.