The Solution for a Depleted Secondary

[*TheLeonardLeap*]

(11-05-2022, 12:17 PM)lone bengal Wrote: It’s not sexy but it’s extremely effective when fully healthy.  Defense was lights out during the super bowl run. Far as this season goes they were carrying us before the injures, offensive no shows versus Pittsburgh, Dallas and Baltimore are why we’re in this hole. Unlike Taylor, Anarumo has good game plans and can adapt. Far as money spent Awuzie, Hilton ,Apple and Bell were great bargains. Lou using his secondary background to identify talent. Hubbard, Wilson , Pratt, Bates, all homegrown talent.

Yes they had a good playoff run, but in the regular season the defense was 17th in scoring, 18th in yards, 17th in takeaways, 12th in sacks, and 22nd in 3rd down %.

They were real good earlier this year in scoring defense, but they also played exactly 1 NFL starting caliber QB, so it's unclear how much of that is real. Even while they were playing well, they weren't getting to the QB and were mediocre at getting the ball away.

As far as money spent, the Bengals have the 3rd most cap space spent on the defense in the league this year. 6/11 starters heading into the season were originally outside FA signings, with another 1 being from a trade. When Burrow gets $50-60m/yr, and Chase gets $30-35m/yr, good luck spending that much money on the D anymore. Lou hasn't proven he can make an elite defense with tons of money, let alone put up even a mediocre defense with more limited resources.