(11-05-2022, 02:37 PM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: 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.
In Theory the offense should be built to win shootouts/ games with a bad D but Taylor struggles with all the resources we give him. The defense has been consistently good end of last year to this season which shows consistency versus some fluke. The defense seems to have good game plans and strategy because Lou can coach versus the offense which looks like a mess. Elite is rare for any team are offense is so bad at times we need to be the 2000 ravens defense to win games. Points allowed is the most important stat could care less about sacks/ turnovers if your holding teams to 20 or under that’s enough to win games. We signed so many free agents because all are early picks were on offense, Burrow, Chase, Higgins, Williams. And he made drafted guys like Wilson and Pratt work.
