In my last post, we took a look at the Joe Flacco trade and how that may work out for the Bengals offense (in short: not great). Today, we’re looking at the other side of the ball. What has the Bengals defense looked like in 2025?
You can look at whatever numbers you want to look at and the picture for this Bengals defense isn’t pretty. FTN’s DVOA doesn’t typically normalize until Week 6, but we’re far enough into the season where things start to become a little more clear. Through 5 weeks, the Bengals are
sporting the 3rd worst defense in the league, better than only the Dolphins and the Cowboys.
They’re the 7th worst rushing defense in the league, and there are multiple reasons for that. They’re stacking the box on 47.7% of their snaps (9th highest in the league, per NextGen), but their front 7 isn’t a particularly stout group. Their defense has a stuff rate of 11.1%, 2nd lowest in the league. Their EPA per Rush of +0.02 is 9th worst in the league.
“Oh but what about their pass defense?” you may be asking yourself (or maybe not; I don’t know your life). Per NextGen, they are the 7th worst passing defense in EPA per Play (+0.10) and 4th worst in pressure rate (27.5%). As you might expect, those numbers are even worse when Trey Hendrickson isn’t on the field. I’ll just drop in this card from NFL NextGen:
Through 5 weeks, Hendrickson has been on the field for 67.4% of the Bengals’ defensive snaps. If you are good at math, that will tell you that he has been off the field for 32.6% of their snaps. If the Packers run 64 plays on Sunday (roughly their average number of plays through 4 games), that means Hendrickson will be off the field for 21 plays. I don’t expect those 21 plays to go particularly well for the Bengals.
They don’t really blitz (their blitz rate of 17.1% is 3rd lowest in the league) and they don’t do a lot of pre-snap disguises. What you see pre-snap is what you’ll see post-snap, more often than not.
It’s not great from a scoring perspective. Per FTN, the Bengals are allowing 0.33 TDs per Drive, 4th worst in the league. They have allowed 23 drives to get into the red zone this year (2nd most in the league) and are allowing touchdowns on 74% of opponent trips to the red zone (4th worst in the league).
Last stat, and this is a big one. Per NextGen, the Bengals have given up 878 yards after the catch this season, the most in the league. NextGen also keeps a stat called YACOE: Yards After Completion Over Expected Allowed. The Bengals’ YACOE is +209, dead last in the league. The Jets are the second worst team in the league at +144. The 65 yard gap between the Bengals and the Jets is bigger than the difference between the Jets and the Washington Commanders, who are the 10th worst team. There’s potential for a big games in the receiving game for Josh Jacobs (+54 YACOE) and Tucker Kraft (+34 YACOE).
In short, it’s bad. It’s all bad. They don’t have a lot of great players on defense, which might be why they feel a bit static in terms of what they’re running on defense. It’s a fairly limited coverage menu, but they’re also not particularly good at running any of it, and the lack of pressure up front doesn’t do them any favors. There are regular breakdowns in coverage, either because they’re covering for longer than they should be, or just miscommunications on coverage assignments.
If time presents itself, I’ll have a film room piece with some examples of common coverage busts they’ve shown, along with some specific concepts that have given them trouble this season. But, for now, I’ll just leave you with all these beautiful, beautiful numbers.
Albums listened to: The Besnard Lakes – The Besnard Lakes are the Ghost Nation
