Bengals D.C. Al Golden on Moving On, Mobsters and That Sideline Talk with Duke Tobin

Watching Cincinnati Bengals defensive coordinator Al Golden walk through the Reliant Stadium tunnel following Sunday’s game, you would have never known if the team had just won or lost the game.

Golden looked half spent, half preoccupied after authoring the best defensive performance in his 19 games as coordinator, which saw the Bengals not allow a touchdown for the first time since 2022 while recording a remarkable 41 pressures and four sacks in a 20-6 triumph of the Houston Texans.

“I was on to Pittsburgh,” Golden said of his stoic demeanor in the immediate aftermath of what should have been a satisfying victory. “I know it’s unfortunate. I was onto it. I was gone already.

“What we just saw, what are they seeing that fits with what they do. What are we gonna see again? What do we need to stop? My mind was already wheeling.”

Then Golden quoted Hyman Roth, the fictional antagonist from the movie “The Godfather Part II.”

“I know a lot of people want to stop and celebrate, but that’s not the world that we’ve chose,” Golden said. “I say it all the time, ‘Hyman Roth.’ This is the business we’ve chosen, and you got to move on.

“This league does not wait for anybody,” he added. “If you’re celebrating what happened two days ago or yesterday, the next one will get you. This is the AFC North. This is the Pittsburgh Steelers in Pittsburgh. Aaron Rodgers. Mike McCarthy. We’re moving on.”

Before Golden left the field to head up the tunnel, he did allow himself a moment to celebrate on the sideline with director of player personnel Duke Tobin, an exchange the CBS cameras caught.

What's Al Golden saying to Duke Tobin after the win?https://t.co/4xH3g8zi2w pic.twitter.com/miAL053mkT
— Goodberry (@JoeGoodberry) September 20, 2026

“Duke's been so supportive, especially in the offseason in terms of what we need and what we want it to look like,” Golden said. “Obviously ownership and personnel, led by Duke, they did a great job in terms of giving us an opportunity to have players that are versatile, can do a lot of different things.

“I think he was really excited, and I was grateful.”

While Golden instantly flipped his mindset to Rodgers and the Steelers, he spent 20 minutes with reporters Monday going over Sunday’s defensive performance in Houston.

Here are some of his takeaways:

On the short-yardage execution that saw the Bengals stop the Texans on fourth and 1 twice and third and 1 once …

“Excellent,” Golden said. “It's something we take a lot of pride in. Those were big moments. They're pivotal moments. And when you can win those short yardage, good things happen. Sometimes it's fourth down, but sometimes you force a field goal, and you make them execute the operation. And obviously, one of those went our way.”

That was a fourth and 4 when the Texans elected to try a field goal and botched the long snap.

On what he thinks this defense’s identity is …

“I think they have a mindset of what they want to be and what their brand is, and I'm going to let it play out,” Golden said. “I think they play like they love each other. I think they play with energy and enthusiasm. I think they're very much a next-play mentality unit. And what I mean by that is they get a big play to get in the fringe or in the red and we just go and play the next play.

“So I think there's unit cohesion there in terms of their pre-snap communication and the awareness of formations and backfield sets and things that we have practiced. Again, we're so early in the season in terms of me identifying what I see, but I think those are some things that I think would describe what we're doing right now.”

On blitzing more often …

“I thought we blitzed quite a bit yesterday,” Golden said. “I don't know off the top of my head, but to me, each game is its own bingo board. So at the end of the day, the way it worked out was we had a lot of pressures for three quarters and then we had a lead and we just wanted to be careful, didn't want to give them a quick one.

“And the guys have done a good job of keeping the ball in front and we have to clean up some of those things, the explosive passes that did hit us on early downs and that's what we're trying to get ready to do right now.”

After blitzing on just four of 48 plays (8.3 percent) in the season opener, Golden brought pressure 10 times on 68 plays (14.7 percent) Sunday in Houston.

And in the first three quarters when the game was still anyone’s to win, Golden called nine blitzes on 43 plays (20.9 percent).

His highest blitz percentage in 2025 was 12 percent, which came in Week 5 against the Detroit Lions.

“I though we mixed it up pretty good,” Golden said. “And again, the way the game unfolds, especially early in the season, there's a lot of communication on the sideline and a lot of talk about next time we go out when it's, let's say it's three to six (yards to go) is the number. Hey, what calls do we like? If it's seven to 11, what do we like? If it's 12 plus, what do we like? So I think the staff has done a good job communicating and getting us in what we need, not necessarily what's on the sheet. And I think there's two different things there. What transpires in the game is a lot different than especially this time of year.”

On preparing for the first Steelers tem in two decades not coached by Mike Tomlin ...

"I'm not there yet," he said. "We're looking at so many different things just to see what's streamlined and what's carrying over (with quarterback Aaron Rodgers and new head coach Mike McCarthy) in generations, you know what I mean? Whether it's Dallas or Minnesota, where the offensive coordinator came from or McCarthy in his past and what's lining up with what they're doing now or perhaps what they did against us last year. Is there anything there that looks like it's moving forward?

"So we got a lot of different angles that we're looking at," he continued. "We've got to cover a lot of film in a short period of time. But I think Mike would probably say they've always done a great job of giving (Rodgers) the freedom to distribute the ball from the line of scrimmage, get him out of a bad run, get him into a good RPO or slant on the backside, if you will, just trying to dumb it down, make it simple."

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