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Bengals defense.


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I think the DL rotation is going to depend heavily on how ready the rookies are.

 

Dunlap - Geno - Billings - Johnson - these guys will likely be your "starters", but look for a heavy rotation to keep guys like Willis, Lawson, Clarke, Sims, Gilberry, or whoever does end up making the roster fresh. MJ and Gilberry both have proven more than capable at sliding inside so we could see Dunlap - Geno - Johnson - Willis at times as well.

 

We're going to see a lot of these guys on the field at the same time and subbing in and out for each other. As far as your 3-4 idea, I'm not sure which 4 linebackers we'll have on the field at the same time though, unless we see a guy like Lawson coming off the edge without technically being lined up as a DE. I'm not 100% sure how often we're going to have 3 LBs on the field, let alone 4.

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I don't think we run much if any 3-4 at all. But I am looking forward to seeing our defense with more speed off the edge and Vontaze Burfict starting the season in football shape. 

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I know that every situation is different, but look at how many 2nd-4th rounder DL/LB we've drafted over the past few years and how much play time they've seen.

 

Dontay Moch, Devon Still, Brandon Thompson, Margus Hunt, Sean Porter, Will Clarke, Paul Dawson, Marcus Hardison, Nick Vigil, Andrew Billings

 

In the Dalton-era, those are our DL or LB picks in the top 4 rounds. Just because guys are drafted in the early to mid rounds doesn't automatically mean they're going to be playing tons of snaps. Some of these guys had injury issues, but that's not the excuse/reason for all of them. I like both the Willis and Lawson picks, but look for them to be playing sub packages in the typical Bengals defense.

 

Guenther isn't going to change the entire defensive philosophy due to these couple of guys being drafted. You plug 3rd-4th rounders into your defense, you don't revolve your defense around 2 guys being picked up.

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They need to do something to get over the hump.  Both sides of the ball were mediocre last year, with the offense finishing 15th and the defenses finishing 13th, despite the talent they have.  Whether it's the D or the O, one of the units have to turn it up to 11, this season for The Bengals to make the playoffs.

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9 hours ago, BENgal Solo said:

They need to do something to get over the hump.  Both sides of the ball were mediocre last year, with the offense finishing 15th and the defenses finishing 13th, despite the talent they have.  Whether it's the D or the O, one of the units have to turn it up to 11, this season for The Bengals to make the playoffs.

 

The defense played better the second half of the season once Burfict was in shape and Williams and Iloka communicated better.

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10 hours ago, BENgal Solo said:

They need to do something to get over the hump.  Both sides of the ball were mediocre last year, with the offense finishing 15th and the defenses finishing 13th, despite the talent they have.  Whether it's the D or the O, one of the units have to turn it up to 11, this season for The Bengals to make the playoffs.

 

Ehhhhhh it's not really fair to make blanket statements about the O or D because of 1 single YPG ranking. For example, our defense also ranked...

 

PPG - 8th

Yards per play - 11th

Play action yards per play - 6th

Team pressure rating - 8th

Interceptions - T-2nd

Dre Kirkpatrick was one of the better shutdown CBs in the league

Atkins and Dunlap were both in the top 10 in individual pass pressure rating

 

As Jason said, our defense got much better as the year progressed, we had 8 games prior to the BYE and 8 games after so it makes for a nice 50/50 split

 

PRE-BYE

189 points

3028 yards

183 1st downs

 

POST-BYE

126 points (63 point difference, over a touchdown's worth differential per game)

2584 yards

158 1st downs

 

So even though the defense wasn't very good in the 1st half of the year, we still ranked 11th or higher in a lot of very important categories. I can't call the defense mediocre for that. The only statistical categories we really sucked in were being dead last in fumbles caused, fumbles recovered, and having our tackles broken. I don't believe those things bring the good qualities of the defense down to the middle of the pack. Our D was pretty good last year except they really need to work on wrapping up the ball carrier.

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On 5/11/2017 at 6:23 AM, Jason said:

 

The defense played better the second half of the season once Burfict was in shape and Williams and Iloka communicated better.

...except the offenses we played in the second half of the season were statistically a lot worse than the ones we played in the first half...that may have helped too.

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honestly this defense is pretty damned stacked with good young talent with a good mix of vets still in their prime years....Burfict is the key to everything on that side of the ball no matter what type of formations they run....if he stays healthy and out of the league office for the entire season, the sky is truly the limit. 

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On 5/9/2017 at 8:18 AM, Jpoore said:

 

I really think we will be seeing different formations this year. I think we will run 4-3 and 3-4 defenses. Thoughts??

 

Sent from my 2PYB2 using Go-Bengals.com mobile app

 

 

 

 

I don't think it change much but we will see the Bengals use a 4-3 defense with 3-4 principles or more of a one gap system.

2gap1.png

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On 5/9/2017 at 1:38 PM, omgdrdoom said:

I know that every situation is different, but look at how many 2nd-4th rounder DL/LB we've drafted over the past few years and how much play time they've seen.

 

Dontay Moch, Devon Still, Brandon Thompson, Margus Hunt, Sean Porter, Will Clarke, Paul Dawson, Marcus Hardison, Nick Vigil, Andrew Billings

 

In the Dalton-era, those are our DL or LB picks in the top 4 rounds. Just because guys are drafted in the early to mid rounds doesn't automatically mean they're going to be playing tons of snaps. Some of these guys had injury issues, but that's not the excuse/reason for all of them. I like both the Willis and Lawson picks, but look for them to be playing sub packages in the typical Bengals defense.

 

Guenther isn't going to change the entire defensive philosophy due to these couple of guys being drafted. You plug 3rd-4th rounders into your defense, you don't revolve your defense around 2 guys being picked up.

 

I agree that we should not expect 3rd and 4th round picks to immediately step in as starters.  But this year we are replacing two starters (Peko, Maualuga) in our front seven.  While we did not draft these guys to specifically replace the departed starters I can see some other changes being made due to this transition.

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20 minutes ago, fredtoast said:

 

I agree that we should not expect 3rd and 4th round picks to immediately step in as starters.  But this year we are replacing two starters (Peko, Maualuga) in our front seven.  While we did not draft these guys to specifically replace the departed starters I can see some other changes being made due to this transition.

 

It's going to be an interesting year for sure on defense. 2 highly rated prospects from our 2016 draft didn't get to play a snap last year. When we let Peko walk, that tells me the team has faith in Billings ability and also they must feel good about his injury recovery. That's not even to mention our guys drafted this year.

 

I think our defensive "rookies" (literal rookies + WJIII, Billings) will see snaps but in moderation. If I had to take an absolute guess, I'd say our 2 rookie pass rushers will see around 40% of snaps on D (combined, 30-ish% for whoever breaks out, 10% for the other), Billings at 50-60%, and WJIII being the wild card that could see 10% or 70% depending on Jones' and Dennard's performance. We're losing some vet presence with Maualuga and Peko being let go, but I don't think it's going to affect our young pass rushers. Billings steps in Peko's 2016 role and we addressed MLB in free agency with a 3 down LB. I know there are a lot of fans around various boards who have through the roof expectations for our rookie edge rushers, but I just don't see high snap counts for either guy.

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2 minutes ago, omgdrdoom said:

 I know there are a lot of fans around various boards who have through the roof expectations for our rookie edge rushers, but I just don't see high snap counts for either guy.

 

I might be opening a whole new can of worms here, but I think a lot of the expectations for the young guys are based on some people's opinion that MJ is now total garbage.  They expect Johnson to be benched for one of these younger guys, and that just is not gOing to happen this year.  I see MJ playing fewer snaps than last year, but still being on the field more than 50% of the time.

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