Al Golden says the Bengals’ defense is already showing cleaner, sharper football in the early stages of training camp, and the new pieces brought in this offseason are starting to fit together.
Golden addressed the media after Tuesday’s practice, and the biggest thing he pointed to was how smoothly Year 2 of his system is coming along in Cincinnati.
"We're not miscommunicating," Golden noted about the early results. "We're playing our fundamentals. Everybody's doing their job, and and we're improving, and we have consistency."
One area drawing plenty of attention is linebacker. Barrett Carter and Demtrius Knight Jr. have done enough so far to keep Cincinnati from looking outside the building for help.
“You guys know how I feel about them - love them. I stood on the table for them," Golden said.
Up front, the conversation keeps circling back to Dexter Lawrence and what he can mean for the interior. The Bengals’ defensive line was a major problem last season, finishing with the worst stop rate by any team defensive line unit since tracking started in 2021. If Lawrence can stay on the field all year, the expectation is that the group should at least climb to league-average territory.
"Dex is everything you would imagine that he is," Golden declared. "He came back in great shape, and I think that's a testament to him and his work ethic and his energy, renewed energy and his focus.
So he's powerful. We're going to continue to work to get him to beat blocks.
His middle push is significant, so he's doing a great job of buying in and being a leader for us.
"Again, upstairs did a tremendous job, giving us depth and versatility. And I think I said back to the first day or before the first day, we're trying to find out what we do best too, and our guys are putting on film every day what we do best, and we're making little adaptations daily to make sure that we are using them the way they should be."
Cincinnati has Wednesday off before returning to the field Thursday morning, when the pads come back on.
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