12-06-2020, 12:00 AM
(12-05-2020, 12:29 PM)Fan_in_Kettering Wrote: The Steel Curtain. The Purple People Eaters. The Fearsome Foursome. The Doomsday Defense. The ‘85 Bears. The ‘00 Ravens. With or without a nickname, the best defenses in the NFL are iconic and stand the test of time. Furthermore, these defenses live on in history as the finest examples in the game. Defensive players are iconic too. Think of Dick Butkus, Ray Lewis, Ronnie Lott, the Minister of Defense, Willie Brown, Bob Lilly, and more.
The Bengals have had good-to-great defenses in the past most recently under Mike Zimmer. Incidentally, there have been more playoff appearances for the Bengals win the defense is well above average. Why is this? Sometimes even the best offenses struggle during a game and the defense has to win the game for the team. The Cincinnati defense used to be able to do this but no longer. Here in the AFC North where the play is very physical a solid, stout defense is very important — especially one which generates lots of sacks and turnovers.
These days the only turnovers found in Cincinnati are in the baked goods section at Busken and the only sacks are found in the checkout aisles at Kroger.
For the Cincinnati Bengals to return to greatness I believe developing a shutdown defense is the easiest path to get there. Lou Anarumo isn’t the guy to get the team there unfortunately and it pains me to write that because I have lots of personal respect for Lou. He was brought into a bad situation and didn’t make things much worse.
Let’s start by hiring Wade Phillips or Dan Quinn as defensive coordinator.
They definitely need to improve the D (especially the pass rush) but there’s a reason all of the defenses you named are 20+ years old. It’s an offensive league now. Defense doesn’t win championships any more. The rules dictate that.
That’s the reason all of the QB records are from current QBs. The rules let them play into their 40s because they are not absorbing nearly as much punishment. Brees/Brady/Mahomes/Manning are great but what kind of numbers could Marino/Elway/Montana put up with these rules.
Fix the O line first and just get the D to be good. They don’t need to be great to win.
