Al Golden has a much better roster to work with than he did before, but Week 4 still looks like a mess waiting to happen for the Bengals defense.
Cincinnati heads into Sunday’s matchup with Jacksonville already dealing with damage in the secondary, and that’s the part of the field you absolutely do not want stressed against Liam Coen. Jalen Davis is on injured reserve.
Bryan Cook and Kyle Dugger are both day-to-day after limping through Week 3. Dax Hill has been pushed back inside to replace Davis in the slot.
That leaves Golden trying to piece together a back end that is suddenly thin in all the wrong places.
And the opponent is brutal. Coen has one of the league’s sharper offensive minds, and the Jaguars have the kind of receiver group that can punish a defense stuck in the wrong coverage at the wrong time.
Parker Washington, Jakobi Meyers and Brian Thomas Jr. are enough to make life difficult on their own. Add Travis Hunter into the mix, and the margin for error gets tiny fast.
That’s why Cincinnati’s heavy reliance on Cover 1 feels like a dangerous habit right now. Football Insights on X showed that Golden has leaned hard on pure man coverage through three weeks.
That can work when Dax Hill is living on the boundary with DJ Turner. It gets a lot trickier when Hill has to move back into the slot and the Bengals are asking someone else to hold up outside.
If D.J. Ivey, Tacario Davis, Josh Newton, or whoever else gets targeted repeatedly, the day could turn ugly in a hurry.
The safety situation makes it even harder to feel good about the matchup. Wednesday’s injury report had three safeties near the top, along with G Dalton Risner.
Jordan Battle’s season has been especially hard to sort out. His tackling has been shaky, and his coverage hasn’t been much better.
After what he did against the pass last season, the expectation was that Bryan Cook would handle the physical work in the box while Battle kept thriving deep. That hasn’t happened.
With PFF ranking Battle 86th out of 89 qualifiers at safety, Cincinnati may be down to hoping Cook can get healthy in time. If not, Russ Yeast may be forced into a bigger role, and the optimism there is basically down to one believer.
The tackling issues only make the run defense more concerning. Cincinnati is already dealing with a rough matchup against Bhayshul Tuten, a back who can shrug off contact and has the kind of burst that can flip a drive in one snap.
He reportedly ran a 4.32 40 with a 1.49-second 10-yard split, and the speed shows up on tape. He’s still developing, but the raw explosiveness is obvious.
If the Bengals don’t do a better job fitting the run than they did against Jaylen Warren in Week 3, Tuten could have a big afternoon.
There was at least one positive note on Wednesday: B.J. Hill returned to practice, according to ESPN’s Ben Baby.
Even so, Cincinnati still has to decide how to fit him into a defensive tackle group that already feels crowded. There’s also the question of why Landon Robinson still isn’t getting a bigger look over Kris Jenkins Jr.
If Golden wants pressure from a four-man rush, Jenkins can’t keep being part of the answer.
That’s the tension in this defense. The Bengals have some real names up front, and the numbers show opposing offenses are paying attention.
Per NextGenStats, Dexter Lawrence has drawn 51 double-teams, second-most in the NFL, while Jonathan Allen has faced 42, third-most. Boye Mafe has also flashed when left one-on-one, with 15 quarterback pressures in those situations, fourth in the league.
But that front-line attention only matters if the back end can survive long enough for it to count.
Right now, Cincinnati doesn’t look sound enough behind the rush to send extra bodies at Trevor Lawrence with much confidence. Golden is tied for the lowest blitz rate in the league at 13.2%, according to Pro Football Reference, and there’s a reason for that caution.
If he brings more pressure, it could help the front. It could also expose a secondary and a second level that already have enough problems on their own, including Barrett Carter and Demetrius Knight Jr.
That’s part of what makes Coen such a tough draw. Jacksonville has stayed balanced through three games, with 86 carries and 81 passes.
Cincinnati, by contrast, has leaned more heavily on the pass, with 103 attempts and 68 runs. That doesn’t say anything bad about the Bengals’ offense.
It just reinforces how much Joe Burrow still carries, even with Chase Brown giving them a capable option in the backfield.
For Golden, the challenge is obvious: somehow survive a game against a balanced, creative Jaguars offense with a battered secondary, shaky tackling, and a pass rush that can’t afford to waste opportunities. The Bengals need the front to overwhelm Jacksonville at the line of scrimmage, and they need the tackling to improve fast. Otherwise, Coen has too many ways to make this one painful.
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