Locked On Bengals - Daily Podcast On The Cincinnati Bengals - Can Al Golden keep playing Cover 1 50% of the time with the Bengals?

Episode Date: February 20, 2025

After covering what we should expect from Al Golden's fronts as he takes over at defensive coordinator for the Cincinnati Bengals, part 2 examines Golden's coverage preferences from Notre Dame. Jake Liscow and James Rapien are joined by Mike Santagata (bengalstalk.com, Always Gameday in Cincinnati podcast) to break down how Notre Dame managed to be so good playing so much single high man coverage despite teams knowing what was coming, overcoming plenty of injuries along the way, and how that could manifest differently in the NFL with the Bengals.Join the Locked On Bengals Insider Community! https://joinsubtext.com/lockedonbengalsFind and follow Locked On Bengals on your favorite podcast platforms:Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/locked-on-bengals-daily-podcast-on-the-cincinnati-bengals/id1159723162Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7AObc0lh0WmQl5fJVgtajsGoogle Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vbG9ja2Vkb25iZW5nYWxz?sa=X&ved=0CAYQrrcFahcKEwio_sXtj8nuAhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAgStitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/locked-on-bengalsSupport Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!FanDuelRight now, new FanDuel customers can get ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS in Bonus Bets if your first FIVE DOLLAR bet wins!Download the app or head to FANDUEL.COM to get started. Bet with FanDuel—Official Partner of the NBA.   FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Bengals need to be better in all facets of defense, and they're going to play a whole lot more man coverage. At least we think with Al Golden's arrival in Cincinnati. Let's break down the big coverage changes we should expect with Golden, a defensive coordinator for the Bengals. You are Locked on Bengals, your daily Cincinnati Bengals podcast. Part of the Locked on Podcast Network, your team every day. What up Bengals fans and welcome to another episode of the Locked on Bengals podcast. I'm your host, Jake Liskow. He's your host, James Rapine, and we are once again joined by Mike Santagana, who wrote up the Bengals schematic changes we should expect for BengalsTalk.com.

We're in part two of a two-parter. So if you missed the first part where we talked about the front end of the Al Golden Defense, where today we'll be talking more about the coverage structures and the back end of the Al Golden Defense, make sure you check out our most recent episodes. Of course, the everydayers didn't miss that one. But if you're new to the show, maybe you want hit that subscribe button to make sure you don't miss an episode here on the lockdown podcast network covering your team every day. Today's episode brought to you by Fandle where new customers can get $150 in bonus bets if your first $5 bet wins. And guys, let's dive into this Al Golden coverage family or coverage tendencies that we saw from him in Notre Dame, which

I think we all agree will probably have to change in the NFL. But Mike, a lot of cover one. A lot of man coverage from a team that stuck with it even in the national championship game against Ohio State and all of those weapons. What do you think it was that made this so effective for Al Golden at Notre Dame? Not just that. I think of he lost his number one corner. He lost most of his pass rush. And he was still using it. Like he never went to like, oh, geez, like we're down so many guys.

let's just play cover two, sit back, and hopefully the quarterback makes a mistake. He just stuck with it. And to his credit, I feel like the defensive backs for Notre Dame play it extremely well. Like they always play to the right leverage. Outside of, I think sometimes the really good players are able to kind of freelance, know something from film, whatever. I'm thinking of like Xavier Watts at times would be like lined up inside away from his help. Like, why's he doing that?

The guy cuts in and he gets an intercept. are like, oh, that's why. He just knew what was going to happen. Cool. But not a Xavier Watts podcast. I thought all the defensive backs did a really good job. Playing to the leverage, playing everything correctly. You think man coverage and you might think of like, oh, it's so simple as I just line up on that guy and cover him. No, I mean, there's a lot of rules where if he's, let's just call it at the numbers or just inside the numbers outside, you're going to have to play inside leverage. And you are one-on-one with this guy, but you're going to try to use the sideline to your advantage. I thought one of the best things Benjamin Morrison did was use the sideline to us. advantage and play to his leverage, whereas that guy comes in just a little bit, even if he's the most outside receiver, but he's a little bit more tightly packed. You're going to play outside leverage because what he's doing is playing cover one as his man coverage. You want to funnel that to your help. You have a deep zone defender in the middle of the field, and you have sometimes an intermediate middle of the field zone defender. And sometimes that guy has a rule he's going to try to cut crossers or whatever, but just generally, that's where your help is. Funnel that to your help.

You're too far away from the sideline. So I thought they did a great job of playing to their help, to their leverage what they're supposed to do. He actually broke the box and whiskers plot, by the way, on cover one, where all the way outside the end is Notre Dame. They're further over than more than 50% of the time. They played cover one. It was almost every snap it felt like where you watch go, okay, cover one again. And I don't think we'll probably get to that.

I don't think it's going to happen in the NFL level, but there probably will be more man coverage. And that's important. I think he does a really good job of teaching to his guys and Freeman, teaching to their guys what they have to do and did stick with it as his identity throughout all types of turmoil throughout all types of issues and a lot of injuries all the way to the bitter end where this actually cover zero that Jeremiah Smith won on let's let's be fair uh and the other part of this is people like oh just double him if you're going to do that the nickel fell down on that play it's like i thought

that too it's like we got double Jeremiah Smith right i watched it back oh the nickel is on the ground. So this would have just been a Nekbuka big play instead. So nothing matters. So at some point, the players just win. But yeah, I think he loved cover one and Freeman love cover one at Notre Dame. They play it extremely well to the point where they didn't have the best pass rush at times because of injuries. They had true freshmen and all these other guys on the field that you probably wouldn't expect them to be out there trying to man up receivers one-on-one, especially good players. But they went out there and they did it. They did a good job. So outside of that last plan, yeah, I thought he does a great job of teaching it.

There's a little bit of some changeups off of it. It runs every variation of it, too. Rob or Lur, cutting that crosser on a three-by-one and also playing some man match. I thought that was really interesting seeing him against USC where they love to run mesh. Lincoln Riley, I think, their head coach loves mesh, just sending, and that's a cover one beater. You've got two guys. They're basically setting a pick for each other and they keep moving, two shallow routes crossing over each other. They're supposed to actually tap hands with a coaching point that they can low five

the way across. And that's where he got beat on that on fourth and one. And then he switched. He ran cover one man match with a rat defender. And then you have a three-man weave where you're going to have one guy take that from leverage. So they're coming in. And then instead of continuing with their man, they both just switch. Or they have the middle guy cut one of them and the other guy cut the other.

And then the other guy becomes the middle guy. But everybody changes their positions. And I did effortlessly. and got a fourth down stop and a turnover because of that. So I think he runs every variation of cover one. He did an extremely good job of it at Notre Dame. I think the thing when people hear you are watching you, Sands, describe it. It's going to be, oh, man, he did more with less, with young guys, despite having injuries to a guy in Morrison who could be a first round corner, despite dealing with the issues that they had to deal with and play young guys.

And obviously, that's what the Bengals are looking for. I know for a fact, we all do now. But during the season, there are people in the Bengals building that were like, man, we have more talent than this on defense. We should be more disciplined. We should get more out of these guys. We should be able to get more out of them. It feels like they're confident Al Golden can do that.

And you're saying that he did at Notre Dame. Is that fair based on what you watched? Yeah. I think guys would go down. there was next man up and they would go perform. So yeah, I think that is an apt description for one of the best qualities that looked like he had at Notre Dame.

And the second part of this would be coverage breakdown wise, all the deep stuff they've given up since Jesse Bates left town and went to Atlanta and got that shiny new contract. At some point, we have to be able to stop saying, all right, well, Jesse Bates left. That's why they keep giving up big plays. The technique, the discipline, all of those things,

I know Lou would tell these guys the right way to go about it. Maybe Al's just a better teacher. I'm not sure. But it's one of those things where you saw the secondary react the right way. And obviously you've seen this Bengal secondary, not react the right way. Yeah. There was some type of disconnect in the coverage. And I don't know if that means that Lou was a bad teacher or if he just didn't mesh well or the guys weren't responsive to his style.

of teaching because you could also point back to like, well, he worked with Jesse Bates. It's gotten to be an all pro. No doubt. So some guys were able to connect with it, but it did feel like the last two seasons, even guys that were connected with them before, like the linebacker group, would just have these mistakes. And it's like, I'm not sure what's going on here. Like, why are you having coverage breakdowns week 10 on something simple?

It's just like two guys drop into the same zone or just not passing off a guy or running with a guy, everybody else's area zone vision coverage, and this guy's matching and running across the field. Hopefully, there would be less of that. And I think when you watch Notre Dame, you didn't see very much of that. Maybe this is an Xavier Watts podcast. Maybe this is a bit of a Jack Kaiser podcast. And let's talk a little bit about the communication aspect of this. And it's something that my first exposure to the Notre Dame defense was the national championship game. I think every single Bengals fan that was watching this coaching search closely, watch that game. Whether or not they're Ohio State fans, I know there's a lot of crossover there, but

interested to see how Notre Dame's defense would show up with an Ohio State offense that was just stacked to the gills with draftable players. And we're going to see a ton of those guys have their names called early in this draft and in future drafts for that as well. Let's talk a little bit about that communication aspect of things coming up next. Today's show is brought to you by Fandall. Fandle is America's number one sports book. An NBA action, well, it's here.

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The reason I mentioned that national championship game is in that first exposure to the Al Golden defense for me. You could very obviously see a high degree of pre-snap communication and post-snap communication from this Notre Dame defense. It's something that we've had drilled into our heads as people following the Bengals closely by Bengals coaches and Bengals players over the last couple of years where it was a communication issue after the departure of both safeties two years ago.

They bring Bonbel back and we're thinking last preseason, Vaughn'll fix the communication. That'll be a huge help. at least that's what we were told. And obviously it takes some guys playing well on top of communication. And there were still communication breakdown. So what is it that you saw, Mike, in terms of communication responsibilities and efficacy from this Notre Dame defense? Because it is something that Al Golden talks about, empowering his players, because he said this in multiple interviews, he's saying, I can't be right all the time.

I need my players to feel empowered to make corrections on the field when they see something after the call. is in and need to make adjustments. Yeah. So the defensive headset eventually cuts out and your players then have to work with each other. And that coincides with motions, shifts,

whatever. Like, if an offense was completely static, you might not need the communication. I mean, maybe if they line up in a bunch over there, you might need to communicate. Yeah, we're going to lock and level this or we're going to box this off. but if you're no motion, you know, no communication, but there's motion everywhere anymore on the offensive side of the ball.

So they motion, they shift, whatever. You need to be able to communicate that. I thought they did a good job. When somebody motioned into a stack, it felt like they knew what the responsibilities were going to become. If they ever made a change, such as they get on the field and they see like wide wide, wide, what's going on? They would be able to call off, like, get out of man coverage here.

Let's just run cover three sky. Maybe they point to the sky or something like that. I thought they did a good job of communicating. And yeah, you can see it across their. Man coverage requires a lot of communication, too. With those stacks and bunches, you're going to have different, you have different tools in the tool belt to deal with them,

where you have your lock coverage and your top hat coverage, where, and I always think of the one play with Antonio Brown that the Bengals lost this game, like 2019, somewhere around there, where the corner, I think it might have been William Jackson, to look back, yeah.

And he did the class. classic. Was that Jalen Davis, or is that too long ago for it to have been Jalen Davis? There was a depth. There was a depth corner involved with that as well, though. Yeah, and I think he tapped his head to signal top pack coverage, and then the wire series just ran them off and the other wide receiver went underneath. And he was supposed to be on the guy underneath because that's what top pack coverage is.

So that's up to too. But that's a lot of communication you need. You need to be able to have, I think that also brings up a different point of probably need different, you know, signals at times, too, where when you play. you get to Steelers twice a year and you face them once and maybe they went to a stack ten times. You did the same hitting the top of your helmet for top back coverage. Might need some other signal to say you're going to do this so that smart wide receiver

and quarterback don't go like, oh, well, we can beat that pretty easy. A lot of communication needed, and I thought they did a good job of it. I don't know. Did you think they did a good job against Ohio State? To me, some of that is like they were down so many guys. And I still thought the communication was okay. They were just getting beat physically. Yeah, I thought the communication was.

was good. Like, my impression watching that game was this is a sound defense that is not as fast or as talented as a five-star Ohio State offense

where you got a bunch of three-stars out there at that point for Notre Dame's defense. It's not the three-stars are bad. I mean, they got an all-freshment year out of a three-star player. My follow-up was going to be,

how critical do we think the Xavier Watts slash Jesse Bates free safety, deep safety is for this defense? Is this another instance of the Bengals need to go find and replace Jesse Bates. And I know, James, you just mentioned we're sick of talking about it.

But do they need that to make this defense work? I would say that that role is more valuable in this defense than other NFL defenses. I don't know if it's going to be as bad as the Louina Rumo. Like, the defense just doesn't function without it. But you're talking playing so much single high. I mean, that's a lot on the safety. And you can go back to the 2010. where they put the NFL across the league

was putting everybody back as a single high safety who's getting taken advantage of. If you're going to play a lot of single high coverages, you need a guy back there that has a lot of range. I think that's the main thing I think of. I think it's even less than just the communication. There's going to be coverage breakdowns everywhere because Jesse Bates can't put out the fires.

It's just when he asks that guy to cover from number to number, he's got to be a pretty smart guy. You've got to be a pretty smart guy back there and have some range and some athleticists to be able to do it. So that is the one part of think is like, it's probably a little bit more. valuable, but I would hope that communication isn't just coming from the safety position,

corner to corner, linebacker to corner, everybody should be communicating with each other on the back end. It shouldn't just need the one mouth that can somehow get it all to work rather than everybody should be able to communicate with each other. I think is how I would think of that. Not that the safety needs to, you know, line everybody up and get in the right position, but I think that safety might be a little bit important just because of the way they like to play coverage. Is Gino Stone a fit? Let's be honest here. Is he a fit? Well, what we saw this season, I would say not great.

Yeah. We think of single high safety. He's just not that athletic. I think like when he was with the Ravens, there was so much quarters coverage and deep half coverage that you didn't worry about it as much. It was like, yeah, he can cover half the field. He can play a quarter of the field.

He can match with guys. He's a smart enough player. We talk about single high coverage. I started thinking of like, yeah, I saw plays where he couldn't get to the numbers. Even though he's smart, he's moving. He's doing everything right. It's just the body isn't,

moving with his brain. Remember the quarterback meter on Madden? They had it for like two years and Peyton Manning had the whole field. Yeah, the vision. QB Vision. And then like Jake Deloom had half the feet, you know, like that's Gino Stone. He just has half the Jesse Bates range. And so it's, you know.

That was a Mike Vic thing because his thing was like a sliver. Oh, yeah. That's run. That's called turn QB Vision off or just run. But yeah, that's my question. It's like, does he fit? And then if the Bengals, are willing to say, all right, well, he doesn't fit.

We brought Allen for a reason. We might have been open to keeping Gino, but maybe we don't now. Or maybe we were going to demote him to the third safety role, whatever, you know. And it's not even so much like you answered about communication and then you skewed away from it. And that's what I'm thinking is it's not just communication. It's also ability when you are isolating that free safety deep so often. How important is that role in general to the defense, not just from a communication perspective, but as you point out, Mike, from a range perspective, from a responsibility perspective,

does it have increased importance when they're asked to do more, or asked to play a ton of cover ones where you've got a free deep safety? Do we need to see them go spend a premium pick on a safety? Or is a marquee free agent signing a safety who has that range after letting Jesse Bates walk is why we come back to that question time and time again? Let's continue the conversation by talking about what we can expect in terms of changes beyond just to cover one stuff because I think that inevitably there will be a necessity to modify that coming to the NFL. And we can take some other notes from the other things we saw from Al Golden in Notre Dame.

We'll finish the show on the back part of this defense coming up next. What other changes do you anticipate? Let's talk about some of those changes. on the back end, Mike. So you guys have alluded to it. I just want to point out, like, the cover one has to decrease. Where over 50% in college, the highest in the NFL was the Lions at 37%. So even if they're going to push 35% be one of the highest in the league, that is still a pretty

significant change to go from that's almost 20% down in cover. So he has to have his change up used a little bit more frequently. I think of all the time you would have to spend to get so good at Cover 1 that your fourth string corner is able to play it really well. That kind of takes away your time to be able to teach your zone coverages. So it felt like watching his zone coverages was a little bit more meat and potatoes. It was more just drop this area, keep your vision on a quarterback, move with him. They weren't doing a lot of quarters match stuff. They weren't doing a lot of three match and also it was just we're going to look like we're in cover 1.

then we're going to drop to Tampa 2 or drop the safety down and run three buzz or just something where it's like we're going to play zone, but it's not going to be something that you need to spend a lot of time learning the rules about. You're getting to this area, you're putting your vision on the quarterback, moving with him, trying to get a feel of the routes, but you're not reading the route distribution and knowing three's in, two is up, I have to take number two type of deal. It's just get your eyes on there, play your area, and have a feel for this route distribution. So that is I don't know if that'll stay. If that'll just be, he's just going to run spot drop vision zone coverage at the NFL,

or maybe he has to realize like, oh, maybe our zone coverage has to be a little bit different at the NFL level. And we have to be able to run match coverages and stuff, which he already did hot pressures and these fire zones that were put in, maybe schematically, maybe game plan wise. But when I think of his change up and what he's going to have to do, it's going to have to change up into the zone at times. and that's where it's interesting to me, where are they going to run, which right now, like the most popular one is to run quarters and try to match and play your quarters, is he going to try that?

Is he going to try to play quarter quarter half? Is he going to try to play these different zone coverages where safeties do have to know all the rules and responsibilities within this coverage and the different adjustments to three by one in formations that are out there? At Notre Dame, you didn't really have to, but I wonder if in the NFL that has to be a small change he has to make. And it shouldn't be a foreign concept, right? He was around with Luana Rumo's defense for a couple of years. This is stuff that Luana Rumo's defense did. This is part of the coverage family or coverage breakdown that they should be familiar with that he had some

exposure to with Cincinnati previously. You've got the same safety's coach. You've got the same cornerbacks coach. So if they need to be a little bit more or a lot more complex in terms of the kind of zone systems at the running at the NFL level versus what he did in Notre Dame. I don't think that was surprised anyone, and it seems like they should have the coaching staff in place to do some of those things, but something that caused my ears to perk up a little bit and kind of leaves me to thinking about change-ups and ties back into our first conversation about the kinds of pressures we see from the Notre Dame defense. You talked about those hot pressures, and I was thinking about, you know, the bleeding edge defensive

the coordinators in the NFL or the psychos, depending on who you listen to and thinking about Brian Flores there, as you wrote about in your piece, what are the changeups for Al Golden, at least at Notre Dame where you see this dramatically man-heavy defense? Obviously, we're expecting that to change with the Bengals, but what are some of the wrinkles, some of the third down bits that we saw from them on the back end or as part of that pressure package as we're talking about as it involves the coverage families that we've talked about so far? So yeah, he loves to send pressure, and that doesn't just come in the form of field pressures and green dogs and man blitzes and cover zero.

It also comes to these hot zones and these fire zones where I'm going to category as fire zone is going to be sending five defenders and playing six guys on the shell end of that. You're usually going to match because you have to because you don't have the bodies, but it's sending an extra guy to heat up to quarterback. And that works when you're doing cover one ideas because you line up like you're playing man coverage, send a guy drop into a different area. Maybe that is the viper that we talked about a little bit. Maybe he drops out and he sent two guys.

But this is just one of those things where he loves to be aggressive, at least he did at Notre Dame. And it's a way to be aggressive while being just a tiny bit safer on the back end than a cover zero or even a man free with five, six guys rushing, keeping that safety deep in man coverage is where hot pressure, we talked about a few times. That to me is sending six guys and playing five on the back end, so even less safe. And it's one of the more popular things to run right now,

which is just a quarters variation or a palms variation of that, where you've got four deep and one underneath and sending six guys. That's what Brian Flores. Brian Flores does that a lot. There's some other coordinators that do it too. But like you said, that style of defense, six guys, and Golden did this too. Four deep, one underneath. It's dangerous, but it's a little less dangerous than if you,

wanted to send pressure and just play man coverage behind it. So that works as a change up because your man beaters also aren't going to work against those because you're not matching guys immediately on the route. You're not stuck with this guy. If he leaves this way, you zone it off and maybe take somebody else so these switch concepts and stuff won't work, just running guys into each other. So I think that works as a change up at least enough on third down to where you know if you are going to run cover one all the time on third down, there's ways to beat that. And the best teachers will know, like I talked about with the man match thing, a way to counter the counter. But also, you could just throw the change up, throw the change up and just run a zone pressure instead.

Even though you're still going to send five, six guys. I think he does a great job of knowing the offensive protection scheme too, because he got a lot of free rushers in these looks. Sending the guys didn't usually get picked up and then get gashed four seconds later down the field. So if a team is trying to beat all your man concepts, you just zone it off and run a fire zone or a hot pressure, that still gets your pressure and it's a change-up. So that is what I would expect as like the third-down type of fun they can have where he did blitz on first and second down too.

But I feel like third-down is where every defensive coordinator really lets their stripes show. What do they really like to do? How do we talked about Geno Stone, how it doesn't fit? Jordan Battle to Mike Hilton potentially, even though I think he's probably signing elsewhere in free agency. And then all of these cornerbacks that we know are going to be around, whether it's Dax Hill, Cam Taylor, Bred, DJ Turner, Josh Newton, third day John Anthony in there, Tyson. How do a lot of these guys? You don't have to go guy by guy, but especially the starting level guys, how do you think they fit in everything that Al Golden is going to ask out of his secondary?

Think about the cover one. I think Jordan Battle is interesting fit. I don't think he's not a fit. In the same way I thought Gino Stone was like, well, he's going to play free safety. I just don't know if he's athletic enough. He's going to have to play man coverage on tight ends. And that went up and down for him, I felt like last year.

If that improves with the teaching of Al Golden, like we talked about, his guys did just play more disciplined man coverage at Notre Dame than the Bengals guys played in Cincinnati, then I think he's a fit. If he can't cover tight ends man to man, that becomes a little bit tricky because he doesn't really have the range on the back end to be the free sideline-to-sideline-side-safety you can play all this cover one.

Your safety does have to man up tight ends in this situation. Mike Hilton, less of a fit than he was previously. Just think of all the man coverage. Mike Hilton was an amazing fit for Loo with all the zone coverages and the nickel pressures. I think that part still fits. He can still be a zone. He can still blitz. He can still fit the run.

That part fits. But if you're going to play a lot of cover one, he's manning up the slot receiver, not as great. Not as great of a fit that he just not as athletic as he used to be. That's why on our last show I mentioned the Green Dog. You put him at that linebacker pressure. Mike at Mike at Mike Linebacker. We talked about it.

They don't have the size requirement. $59.180. Love it. Yeah. I don't know if he's a perfect fit. And then the other guys. I know, I know. I mean, we've seen him take on pulling guards.

He can play linebacker. He took on Orlando Brown. Last question for me, Mike, is around the idea of disguise. And you kind of hinted at this a little bit with some of the ways that they're showing man and getting to different kinds of pressures in Notre Dame. But a very hot topic, I think, with NFL defenses is how well do you disguise? Can you trick quarterbacks by showing something and then playing something else? Is this a strength?

For Al Golden, is it something that we should expect to see at a high level with the Bengals defense in 2020? I don't think it's a crazy strength because to me he just lined up and cover one and this is the disguise where it's just like he's running that a lot of the time and then the disguises he lines up like that and just runs something else. So it's there, but I don't think it's as crazy as some of these like too high type of, I don't know, some of these defensive coordinators get, you know, everything looks the exact same. I think that happens at times with Al, but I don't think it's, I don't think it's a crazy strength either. I'm going to not make myself look silly by asking a question about Big Fangio here. We'll wrap up there if you want the full breakdown of the back end of this Bengals defense or Al Golden's defense in Notre Dame. Check it out at bengals talk.com. Find Mike on Twitter at Bengals underscore Sands for all of his great work.

Working on draft prospect reviews now so you can check those out, of course. there and on bengals talk.com. And that's going to do it for this episode of the Locked-on Bengals podcast. Until next time, thanks for listening. Ho-Day. Have a good one.