Film Breakdown: How Cincinnati Bengals Defense Became Historically Bad

The Bengals defense has been an abject disaster any way you look at them. Through traditional metrics, the Bengals are dead last in points, yards, and first downs given up. They’re also dead last in percentage of drives that end in points for the opposing offense and 30th in yards per carry given up.

When you look into advanced statistics it gets even worse. By DVOA, this is the worst defense since 1979. Since 2000, this defense is the worst in success rate and points per game while being the second worst in EPA per play and yards per game. This defense is not just bad, it’s historically bad and the blame for that can be placed at every level.

Missed Tackles and Bad Angles

Possibly the largest issue plaguing the Bengals defense is their inability to make tackles. They have five players who are in the top 50 of all defensive players for missed tackles: Jordan Battle, Demetrius Knight, Geno Stone, Barrett Carter, and Dax Hill. These missed tackles generally come from poor technique and improper angles.

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— Walter (@Pff_Walter) November 10, 2025

Carter has the running back lined up for a one on one in the hole on this play, but instead of wrapping up and driving his feet, he stops his feet and fails to wrap the ball carrier. To bring down a ball carrier, the legs have to be stopped. That’s the entire point of wrapping up as a tackler. Stopping your own feet as the tackler makes things easy on the ball carrier as well. Carter combines both of these issues on this play which results in him having virtually no impact on the ball carrier at all.

Both of these issues showed up on the game winning touchdown against the Bears as well.

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— Walter (@Pff_Walter) November 10, 2025

Battle neither wraps up or stays on his feet for this play. There was a shot that he would hit Colston Loveland with enough force that it knocks him over but that did not happen and instead it resulted in the Bears scoring the game winning touchdown. If Battle wrapped up in this scenario, he would have secured a tackle or at least enough time for others to get to the receiver to bring him down.

It would be one thing if these defenders just lacked technique when tackling, but there’s a major issue with these players as well with taking proper angles. They are fairly consistently either overrunning their targets or overestimating their athletic ability.

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— Walter (@Pff_Walter) November 10, 2025

Knight takes an abysmal angle on this play. The goal in pursuit here is to track the inside hip of the ball carrier. The angle that Knight takes ends up with him not even able to make contact with the ball carrier.

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— Walter (@Pff_Walter) November 10, 2025

Similar issue on this play where Knight takes a terrible angle resulting in him unable to make contact with the ball carrier. There’s just no way that Knight is able to make this stop on Fields while taking an angle like that. Even if he was able to make contact, he would not be in good position to stop Fields.

A third issue plaguing the Bengals defense is how they consistently attempt to go under blocks rather than fighting them or working to get over top of them.

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— Walter (@Pff_Walter) November 10, 2025

Carter runs himself right out of this play by attempting to go under this block. He made the job of the tight end blocking him incredibly easy because instead of having to fight and work, the tight end can watch the linebacker go underneath of this block and take a breather.

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— Walter (@Pff_Walter) November 10, 2025

It makes absolutely no sense on this play for Carter to attempt to go under this block and it’s the main reason this run goes for a touchdown. If Carter would have just fought to get over this block, then the back would have to work back and most likely be lined up for Oren Burks to make a stop.

The Lack of a Pass Rush

The defensive line for the Bengals has a few issues in the run game as well, but the primary issue plaguing them in this group is their lack of a pass rush without Trey Hendrickson.

Hendrickson has a pass rush win rate of 21.5% this season, which is good for sixth-best across the entire NFL. The next best Bengals pass rusher is Myles Murphy with a win rate of 9.4%. That’s good for 85th best across the entire NFL. Without Hendrickson, the Bengals have looked like a helpless unit rushing the passer. Against the Jets, Justin Fields faced his lowest pressure percentage on the season at 35.1%. Caleb Williams actually faced his highest pressure percentage of the season at 43.9% but also had the slowest time to throw of his season at 3.77 seconds. That’s actually the slowest time to throw of Williams’s NFL career so far. In both of these games, the pressures the Bengals were able to put on the opposing quarterback were fairly low quality as well. Against Justin Fields, a majority of the listed pressures from NextGenStats had next to no impact on his ability to throw the ball.

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— Walter (@Pff_Walter) November 10, 2025

There’s just not much impact from Joseph Ossai’s pressure on this play. Fields still makes this throw in rhythm. Fields was actually at +0.04 EPA per play when pressured by the Bengals, completing 8 of 13 passes for 59 yards and 1 touchdown. None of the pressures resulted in a sack for the Bengals either. It was a similar story for Williams as he managed +0.04 EPA per play when pressured as well. Williams consistently invited the pressure and then would make the defender look silly.

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— Walter (@Pff_Walter) November 10, 2025

This is a listed pressure from NextGenStats and it really just seems as if it has no impact on Williams at all. Williams was willing to hang onto the ball as long as he liked in this game because he knew that the Bengals were slow to pressure him and unlikely to bring him down even if they got there.

It’s nearly impossible to have a good NFL defense if there is not a good pass rush. The Bengals currently have the 5th lowest pressure percentage in the entire league while also facing the 5th longest time to throw. They also have allowed the most yards after catch in the league which is an example of how the angles and shoddy tackling bleed into every aspect of their defense. How did the defense reach this historical incompetence?

The Offseason Plan

Last year, the Bengals were also inept defensively. The difference is that they were merely subpar last year ending up 25th in points against. Due to this performance, the Bengals fired defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo. As for the rest of their plan defensively? They signed a nose tackle, a cheap linebacker, asked their starting safety to take a pay cut, and drafted a trio of defenders. Ten out of the top 11 defensive players that led the team in snaps in Week 1 against the Browns were on the roster last season. Since then, they’ve made a movement towards playing more youth on defense. This has resulted in eight of the top 11 defensive players in snaps being players who were on this defense in 2024. Also the results have gotten worse since making those changes.

The plan seemed to be that Al Golden was going to work miracles to provide better results than Anarumo was getting. The Bengals were betting on significant improvement from their young draft picks. Since 2022, the Bengals have used 10 out of their 13 top 100 picks on defensive players. Out of those 10 players, only one seems to be a player that has actually significantly improved over the course of his career: DJ Turner II. Two of those players aren’t even receiving snaps on this team either by virtue of being waived or being a healthy scratch every week: Zach Carter and McKinnley Jackson.

The plan was clear and coherent. Plan to make the defense cheap while the offense is going to get much more expensive. This is why the plan to pay Joe Burrow, Ja’Marr Chase, and Tee Higgins is not the issue. The issue is whiffing on nine out of 10 picks that were meant to build the defense. The front office also doesn’t seem to care to put in the effort required in free agency as some of these guys who are back with the Bengals had to be re-signed.

BJ Hill was signed to a 3-year, $33 million extension this offseason. Rather than work their pro scouting department to find a replacement, they took the easy way out and kept the guy who had been around the building. For that same contract or less, they could have signed Maliek Collins, Poona Ford, or Teair Tart. There’s nothing wrong with Hill, but all three of those players have a pressure percentage above 8% this year, while Hill has a pressure percentage of 5.8% this season.

Ossai is another player that the Bengals kept this offseason, signing him to a one-year on $6.5 million contract. Ossai has been fine for the team but for an extra million dollars, they could have had Patrick Jones or Michael Hoecht who both have a higher pressure percentage than Ossai.

Not to mention deciding to keep Geno Stone on a pay cut instead of trying to find a replacement safety. It just feels like the Bengals choose the easy, safe option instead of trying to work to find the best available option.

There’s no reason that this defense should consist of nearly all the same players as last season. The last time the Bengals knew they needed to make major changes on the defensive side of the ball was the offseason before 2021. Out of the top 11 players in snaps in 2021, only five were on the roster in 2020. You cannot expect to achieve better results while making minimal changes.

There’s still time for the Bengals defense to go from historically incompetent on defense to simply incompetent, but the damage may already be done. By losing back-to-back games where the offense scored 35+ points has put them two games out in the AFC North standings.

Three of their next four games are against current playoff teams and the only one that’s not against a team with a winning record is against the Baltimore Ravens. They've won three games in a row and have Lamar Jackson back at quarterback for them. The path to success this season relies on them being better defensively. The issue is that they flunked the easier tests and now have to achieve success against some of the hardest tests they will face this season.

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