Cincinnati Bengals Film Breakdown: What Sheldon Rankins Brings to Lou Anarumo's Defense

The Bengals signed Rankins to a two-year contract on Monday morning.

Author:
Mike Santagata
Publish date:
Mar 19, 2024 9:31 AM EDT

In this story:

The Cincinnati Bengals signed Sheldon Rankins to a two-year, $26 million contract.

Rankins has abused the Bengals in his career, tallying six sacks in four games, including an incredible three sack performance in the Texans' 30-27 win over Cincinnati in November.

His pass rushing talent has translated across three different teams (Saints, Jets, Texans) and even though he's turning 30 years old on April 2, he hasn't had a dip in his play as he's gotten older.

Let's dive into Rankins as a player and what he'll bring to the Cincinnati Bengals' defense:

Dynamite Pass Rusher

Rankins has rare pass rush ability. He can threaten offensive linemen to the inside or outside, while also possessing one of the best stutter bull rushes in the NFL.

When a defender can win in all three ways against an offensive lineman, it doesn't allow that player to cheat against them. You can't just sit on Rankins’ power because he has the ability to win inside or outside with spins, chop clubs, and swipes. He also sets up all of his moves to look fairly similar with a stutter.

This can lead to some surprisingly clean wins against high end competition. He has a deep bag of moves he can utilize to take advantage of any mistake from his opposition. He even has the ability to bend to turn the corner which is rare for a player his size.

Finding a defensive tackle that can bend is hard to find. A guy that can play within a limited area with traffic to the inside and the outside gives tight corners for players to win if they are attempting to take the outside edge.

You can see on this play that not only does Rankins showcase a deep bag of moves that he effortlessly strings together, but he also can turn the corner to end with a clean win. It's not a sack and may not even be labeled as a pressure, but seeing him stay on his path despite Wyatt Teller pushing him and trying to get him off of his track is impressive.

To go with these moves to win inside or outside and the ability to bend and turn wins into sacks, he has one of the best stutter bull rushes in the league. It pairs perfectly with his other moves.

The stutter bull is a move that is designed to work off of a player’s ability to work inside or outside. The stutter at the start of the rush makes the offensive lineman think about the pass rusher working inside or outside and that puts them on their heels. Then transferring that into a bull rush can result in some dramatic, clean wins. He used this move to beat Alex Cappa and Kevin Zeitler. He has a ton of power to go with the movement ability.

The only thing stopping him from being one of the very best pass rushing defensive tackles in the league is consistency. He can beat the top end talent, but he doesn’t always dominate the lower end talent like you think that he should. There are games where he only comes away with one or two pressures mixed in with games where he has three sacks and six pressures.

One reason he isn't overly consistent is that he has a tendency to miss high with his hands from time to time on bull rushes. Instead of landing his hands around the breast plate, he will have them land on the shoulder which takes away his power. It’s not something that happens too often, but if he could be a tad more consistent with how he places his hands, he would be a more consistent pass rusher overall.

It may be too late in his career to expect a change in his technical ability to make him more consistent, although schematically it may help if he was put in a 2i situation less often.

When a defender is aligned in a 2i, they will almost always get the slide from the center. It’s a shorter distance to help on that player than it is on a 3T or a 4i the other way. Houston played mostly over fronts without a designated nose tackle. Rankins played the left side and if the run strength was to the right side, then he would have to be the 2i nose tackle on that play. This led to a ton of double teams if the offense then passed the ball. If Cincinnati makes him a designated 3-tech, he may be more consistent from game to game rushing the passer.

Defending The Run

The one area that has been criticized with Rankins is his ability to defend the run. His Pro Football Focus grade was a 39 overall in run defense last season. I think that PFF fails to capture the nuance of this discussion.

Rankins isn't a liability when it comes to taking on blocks, especially when he gets to face a guy one0on-one rather than a double team. He is hampered by missed tackles (5 last season for 11.9% missed tackle rate) and the aforementioned 2i usage put him in double team situations more often than expected. Missed tackles don’t always translate season to season because they are a low volume, high variance statistic.

Rankins has consistently been under a 10% missed tackle rate for his career, but last season he missed one or two extra tackles which hurt his overall grade. It doesn’t make him a bad run defender, it just made him unlucky last season.

He’s not the most sure tackler out there, but he also shouldn’t be seen as a liability when it comes to making tackles.

He shows a high end ability to take on blocks when it’s just him against one offensive lineman.

You can see him win against reach blocks from Ryan Ramczyk, Chris Lindstrom, and Zeitler in the video above. That’s not something that a terrible run defender should be able to do. Just like with his pass rush ability there’s some variance here and it’s not always consistent, but he should be seen as a neutral or even plus run defender when he’s in 1-on-1 situations.

However, he isn't the best at taking on double teams or combo blocks. He seems to get bumped over on combo blocks to get sealed and moved on double teams to create a lane for the offense. He typically does protect his linebackers on double teams so they can still make a play, but his anchor against those doubles is not ideal.

This is where he may be a negative in the run game overall. He should face less double teams if he’s in a 2i alignment less often, but 3 techniques still take on double teams and combo blocks regularly.

One more area that shows up is his ability to go backdoor against offensive linemen for quick wins. This is something Larry Ogunjobi did quite a bit for the Bengals in 2021 when they had their best defensive line of the Zac Taylor era.

He can get himself through the offensive line cleanly and then has the athleticism to make the play anywhere on the field. He has range to make stops outside the numbers or to get in the backfield and hit the ball carrier before they can get going.

Overall, Rankins is probably a neutral run defender on the field. He’s not bad at it. In fact, he’s pretty good when he has the opportunity to be one-on-one.

Combination blocks and double teams can give him some issues. If the Bengals continue to use more bear fronts as their base package, then he may face less double teams than he did this past season. They will most likely still play even over fronts when they are in nickel and those situations are when you could see him face those double teams more often than you would like.

Smart Player

The last part of Rankins' game worth mentioning is how smart he is as a football player. This shows up in one key aspect of his defense that has not been covered yet: His ability to sniff out screens.

He has an uncanny ability to quickly figure out when a screen pass is coming his direction. He also has the athleticism to make the play on these screens to make them entirely useless when he is able to sniff them out. This is an ability that not every defensive lineman has but can be crucial during the course of a game.

Despite being a great pass rusher and in a system that prioritized his get off, he also rarely got hit by an unsuspecting trap block. It seemed as if he always knew those trap blocks were coming and was able to then beat the block so that the play had to go somewhere else.

Overall, Rankins is a great addition to the Bengals' defensive line room. He brings a pass rush ability that they haven't had in years. His processing and ability to take on blocks one on one will be extremely useful as well. If they can keep him out of situations where he has to take on double teams too often then he should shine as one of the better signings in free agency.

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