Most underappreciated Bengal: Trey Hendrickson

[*TheLeonardLeap*]

(12-16-2023, 09:44 PM)Shake n Blake Wrote: Another 1.5 sacks today. Our run defense problems aren't on Hendrickson. Unless he suddenly got so massively worse in one year that it's caused us to drop from 7th to 25th as a team.

I'd give the title of "best pass rusher" to the guy who was better at rushing the passer, but that's just me. More consistent as well. Doesn't disappear as often as Atkins did.

Love Atkins though. One of my favorite Bengals of all-time. We just disagree, and that's fine.

I actually do wonder if he was trying to be much more deliberate with maintaining the edge and that impacted his rushing last year. Remember that while the Bengals had a good run defense, Hendrickson only had 8 sacks last year and now he's at 15 this year while also almost doubled his missed tackle %.

Atkins was doing it against 2 OL and sometimes 2 OL + 1 RB, which is why it was so impressive, but also why he'd go a bit quiet at times even though that meant he was opening up everything for everyone else.

Hendrickson is still a hell of a pass rusher, though, and he's really on quite a run of sacks this year, only having 2 games this year where he's not recorded at least a half sack. That's real nice consistency. I just also know that outside of sacks he's only made 2 solo tackles and 1 assissted tackle over the last 5 games. It's largely sack or bust.

(Also just saw that Twatt retook the sack lead for now, blech.)