The Bengals have a slightly worse roster than last season

[*ochocincos*]

(03-12-2025, 01:18 PM)Luvnit2 Wrote: So you think Rankins was a liability and he was cut. We added a run stopper and have 2 young DT's who played better by the end of the year.

How has our DL gotten worse? I am confused. I get the pass rush is the same, but against the run we should be much better.

One way to beat the Bengals is to keep our offense off the field. Our defense's inability to stop the run put our defense in a lot of 3rd and less than 4 situations. It also allowed teams to eat up the clock and made Joe a spectator too often.

I think many fans are discounting the attempt to fix our run defense because they are fixated on adding a DT with great pass rushig skills (albeit same player is average to bad against the run).

We win the LOS, we are a better team. They have made a move to improve our run defense. Now, they need to add a vet guard minimum and an Edge rusher to help Trey on 3rd and long. They do and we are a better team even if Ossai and Murphy show little to no imrovement.

In regard to the DL, I said...
"DE is not improved, possibly worse than last season.
DL pass rush is not improved."


So I wasn't necessarily saying it WAS worse, just that it could be.
I'm not sold on Jenkins, Jackson, Murphy, and Ossai actually having improved from last year, and they were overall not good last year aside from Ossai's final 4-5 weeks.
If Ossai's 2025 will be like his final month of 2024, it will be improved. But hard to discount the previous time before that until we get a larger sample set with Ossai this year.


The pass rush still has not been improved, as Slaton is just a run stuffer.