10-30-2024, 09:19 AM
(10-29-2024, 06:32 PM)KillerGoose Wrote: You can't really do this. There's no team in the NFL that is going to "scrap zone" and run a large majority man. You run into a host of issues, one of which being conditioning. You're also going to be stressing the DB room with the pass rush that Cincinnati has - no one is going to get home. There's nothing you can really do here. If your pass rushers can't pass rush and your corners can't cover, what do you do? There's no scheme that fixes that. Now, I think our DB room is largely fine but the defensive line play has just been atrocious. They DBs are being left on an island. If they want to run more man and blitz more often I am not going to be opposed per se, but I haven't seen anything to suggest that they are going to win more often versus getting beat more often.
They already do this. The defensive line just isn't winning. There's no defense in the NFL that doesn't utilize stunts.
The Bengals already run a 4-3. Lou prefers four linemen but will show multiple fronts. The Bengals will show 4-3 under looks against heavy personnel along with 5-2/3-4 looks. Given that NFL defenses are in nickel personnel 60%+ of the time, we're focusing on the wrong thing here.
There's nothing that is going to fix this team this year in any major way. They have talent deficits that you can't really scheme around, namely on the defensive line. You can try to play with the run game like you mentioned, Cincinnati's offensive line doesn't have good athletes on it so wide zone may not be a great fit. At the end of the day, though, this just isn't a very good team.
To add to this if you look at the amount of really good running QB's they've faced it makes it even more difficult because DB's also have to turn back to see if the QB has escaped the pocked or broken contain. I believe it's 6 out of 8 games they have faced both an elusive QB and one that will also take off because that's a part of their offense.
So now you have a well below average pass rush, LB's that also don't seem to get enough depth in their drop backs (probably due to staying home more with QB's running the ball due to breaking contain) and DB's that have to stay with WR's too long. Just a bad bad recipe for a defense to be successful unless you're really good in the redzone (which they were in their playoff years) and/or you force a lot of turnovers.
