Locked On Bengals - Daily Podcast On The Cincinnati Bengals - Joe Burrow and the Bengals had another fun, DOMINANT Sunday against the Cardinals

Episode Date: December 28, 2025

The Bengals dominated the Arizona Cardinals as you'd expect them to, with starters once again taking the 4th quarter off. That's the standard for the Bengals if they're playing their starters and bringing this coaching staff back. But it was a fun-filled game nonetheless, and Jake and James break down the highlights including two touchdowns a piece for Ja'Marr Chase and Chase Brown, an explosive play for Cody Ford, Shemar Stewart's first sack, a standout coverage game from Dax Hill, and a strong overall effort from the defense.Everydayer ClubIf you never miss an episode, it’s time to make it official. Join the Locked On Everydayer Club and get ad-free audio, access to our members-only Discord, and more — all built for our most loyal fans.Click here to learn more and join your team’s community:** https://lockedonpodcasts.com/everydayerclubJoin 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!FanDuelToday's episode is brought to you by FanDuel. So before tip-off, check the FanDuel app and see what’s dropping during NBA Happy Hour — every Friday from 6 to 7:30 PM Eastern.A little basketball, a little action, and a whole lot of Friday energy.PrizePicksDownload the PrizePicks app today and use codeLOCKEDONNFL to get $50 in lineups after you play your first $5 lineup.Click Here: https://prizepicks.onelink.me/LME0/LOCKEDONNFLGametimeDownload the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONNFLfor $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply. Download Gametime today. What time is it? Gametime.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 standard for the Cincinnati Bengals against the Arizona Cardinals was a blowout. They met that standard. It was a lot of fun. Let's break it down. 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 Lockdown Bengals podcast. Part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, now the number one sports podcast network.

He's James Rapine. I am Jake Lisko. We've got you covered here on Lockedong. on Bengals every day, and we've been doing it since 2016. Your best, one-stop shop for all your Bengals coverage, and we've got you covered on YouTube and anywhere you get your podcast. Today we dive into another Bengals win against a terrible team and a game that doesn't count toward the playoff standings.

So there's that caveat. But that aside, I think it was fun. Does it change anything for the off-season priorities for 2026? Not really. But the standard, when you continue to run out your starters and you bring back your coaching, staff in these late season games against teams that you should beat is that you beat them emphatically. And for the second straight game, James, the Bengals got to rest their starters in the fourth quarter because they met that standard.

You're right. They met that standard. This offense tees in me, Jake. It's teasing me. It's like, oh, see, Joe Burrow, and this is the craziest stat I think of all. And you could do like the Joe stats, the Jamar stats, 11 for 11 in the red zone over the past two weeks, like just putting on a clinic right now, I, uh, in that courtesy of the broadcast, if it's wrong, guess what? The broadcast is wrong. But, um, they, they've, they've been playing

at such a high level. This game was never in doubt. It was a wire to wire victory. And again, it is a reminder, I think, of, of what Joe Burrow brings. It, like, this was just like a casual day at the office for him. That's how he made it look. And he just goes out and throws for 305 yards, completes 24-31, two Tuddies. Could have been more if they wanted to, but two Tuddies. Complete and passes the offensive linemen. Ten or 11 different guys got the ball. And the reason I hesitate there is I think Joe Flacco was the quarterback for a couple of them.

But you get my point is they're spreading the ball around. No one had a huge game receiving-wise. Jamar 7 for 60. Chase Brown had 40 yards receiving. He had T. Higgins with 59 yards. Mike Kisicki had some big plays in just under 50 yards. But it was just a surgical casual day at the office where Joe Burrow throws for 300

and has another 129.1 passer rating. In this team, they're cruising and they're beating up on bad teams, which always leads me to go back to me. And had they just gone four and five without Joe Burrow, then they'd be in such better shape because they're five and two with him. and they are a they are a good football team i i know there's flaws they're a good football team

when joe burroughs on the football field and uh man i mean they just kicked the crap out of a cardinals team that has been okay and it has been competent in a lot of ways and uh well they made them look like the the NFL's worst team they've been plucky they've been okay plucky's a word yeah like i they haven't just been getting rolled like this every week right and Yeah, so that's a bit of a difference. They're a bad team. This is what you should do if you're going to be a decent team against a bad team. I think the defense did exceed my expectations in this game.

The offense did about what I thought it should do against the Cardinals defense. It was never very good in the first place and also is just injured like crazy. Joe Burrow, speaking of Joe Burrow stats in this game, when he was kept clean according to initial PFF charting, which was 71% of his dropbacks today, he was 23 of 24 that's a 96% completion percentage he had 293 of his 305 yards when he was kept clean today

wasn't as good under pressure today as we were accustomed to seeing from him there weren't really many plays made under pressure had two touchdowns on those plays 12.2 yards for attempt pretty good pretty good pretty tough to beat that number was a hundred and forty five you know 145.3 pass a rating when he was clean today

And to your point, about it looking casual, like there are a number of times I tweeted during this game. Like, he just like this got to feel easy for him sometimes. On a number, like Jamar Chase's second touchdown on the slant where you got the corner plane outside leverage, no help inside. Like easy. Candy from a baby. The quick out to Mike Gaseki from the shadow of your own goalpost where you know that end is dropping out. Like he sees that end dropping out. And the timing is just like, it doesn't matter.

You're dropping into the passing window where I want to go, but you're going to be too. slow. I know where this ball is going before you're getting your eyes back to me. You're not going to be in position. I'm going to put this ball where I want to put the ball. The Bengals quickly get out from under the shadow of their own goalposts, gain some yards. And there are a number of moments today that look like that for Joe Burrow. And that's what it looks like when you go 23 or 24 when you're clean. Again, the pressure performance wasn't great. There were a number of throwways. I think when he was pressured, he had a couple of throwaways when he was pressure. Took a few sacks of protection. When Amarius Mims was out of the game, especially, wasn't as good as it

should have been against the Cardinals. Calaisus Campbell, popular player on this podcast, had a couple of good plays against Dylan Farad. Dylan Perrott also got his late in the game, had a couple really nice spots on Calleus Campbell, one of those on Chase Brown's seven-yard touchdown run. But yeah, I mean, this is what this offense should be against bad defenses. And like I said, for two straight weeks, they've put this together enough that they can sit in the fourth quarter, which is what it should look like if you're going to take this approach to these late season games and not tank and not sick guys and your back to coaching staff and all these things. This better be what it looks like.

Again, it doesn't change your expectations for the off season and the things they need to do in the off season. And we're not going to sit here and say, yeah, they should be in the playoffs. It's the best team not in the playoffs. Like, some of that stuff matters. We'll let other people say it. Are people saying that? Oh, yeah. That's out there.

Like Bengals are perennially, the best team that doesn't make the playoffs. Like, I don't care about any of that. And he's saying that as a jab more than anything else. But there's stuff like that out there for sure. Gotcha. Interesting. Yeah. Whatever.

One and eight without Joe. Right. And so they didn't do enough. They didn't do enough last off season and put themselves in position this season with this coaching staff to overcome not having Joe Burrow. And so however you want to say that. But to your point at the beginning, it was fun. There's a lot of fun today.

And there was fun on defense. There was fun on offense. It's fun watching Joe Burrow. That's what I, this week especially, because it's a holiday week, a lot's going on, and all those things. It's like, well, you go to the stadium, get to watch Joe. You know, how many times during those nine games, especially the Jake Browning experience, where we like, man, if only Joe.

Burrow, we're out there. It wouldn't be 555 to nothing in Minnesota, right? Like, either. So you, you got to take it that way. I think that's part of it. I also think that we know where the Bengals floor is as far as drafting goes. And so these final games, it's like, all right, well, we know they're not going to drop lower than 13 coming into Sunday. Like, that's it. And so the other nine, and that's moved since entering Sunday, they were nine. 10 now with the win Kansas City jumps to 9 yeah and so but that

that does take a little bit of pressure off because now of a sudden you're not sliding down to 16 like 13 to 16 feels much bigger to me than 11 to 13 because I never thought that they were going to end up ninth in the lose even if they had lost their last two games and they have four wins they would lose a tiebreaker with the other two four win teams they'd be picking eight

so the difference is two spots right now because they've won those two games So no five-win teams in the NFL. So it's two spots right now because they've won the two games. I got you. So, yeah, the Dolphins versus that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So these two wins.

Like, that's it. Now, there's a whole other discussion on next week that Zach Taylor put an end to right away. But as far as watching Joe Burrow, I had no doubt that he was going to put on a show today. I did wonder if Jamar Chase was going to get in the end zone in Snap history. He made some history. I think there's something worth notice. there you mentioned what happened when amaris mims went out and who came in for him well it's a guy who should just be jamar chase's backup clearly uh so we'll we'll talk about that as well and uh then yeah

we got to get to this defense because i'm excited to talk about this defense because i think they went up against a pretty good offense today so we'll do all of that as we roll on coming up next today's show was brought to by prize picks if you're like me and eliminated in season long fantasy leagues and you didn't make your your super bowl well prize picks is exactly what you need to do because prize picks is awesome it's daily fantasy the way it should be it's a daily fantasy app where you build your lineups based on player projections you don't have to draft you don't have to wait all you do is pick more or less and play your way you don't have to think about injuries you go oh joe bro against the cardinals he's going to throw for more than his projected

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today, James, obviously Cody Ford is who we're talking about here. I just want to really quickly thank all the everydayers out there who continue to make Lockdown Bengals part of their everyday routine. We've got a new everydayer club. I've joked about it in the past and people have asked me, hey, is that a real thing? Well, now it is a real thing. And if you're interested in getting an ad-free version of this podcast, you can check out supercast or sorry, lockedonbengles.com.com. For the details about how you can join, you can get an ad-free audio version of the podcast. You can also get access to our members-only Discord channel where we're hoping to kick up some conversation about the Bengals.

You can trash talk with the other AFC North teams, whatever you're interested in doing. Again, that's locked on Bengals.supercast.com. Cody Ford caught a 21-yard pass today, James. And if I had told you that on any day that Cody Ford has played for the Cincinnati Bengals, You would not believe me. He was pretty impressive doing it. I tell you what, he attacked that ball in the air. He came back to the line of scrimmage,

got upfield, transitioned into being a runner quickly, and used his offensive lineman power, which we would love to see more on display as an offensive lineman, but I don't mean to take a shot as a wide receiver when he broke tackles and dragged guys downfield for an explosive play. Love it. Love everything about this play. I love the play design.

We were like, oh my God, Cody Ford is, lined up like because we saw it in road to like cody ford his lineup did they highlighted on the broadcast like what the heck is going on before the snap yes they mentioned that cody ford was split out yes okay so he's all the way out and we're like what is he doing in like pose like posing like a wide receiver and you're like oh he's just going to turn and no he he did his little comeback hitch route came back to the ball i mean and kind of just ran three yards and turned let's yeah yeah he could use some work code They said run a hitch.

He was like, they said run a hitch. And I said what? And he said, run around and turn, run there and turn. And he was like, oh, okay, I could do that. And so I asked him, I was like, after you caught it, what did you think? Like what was going through? He said, run. Meanwhile, Zach's like, get down.

You see Joe Burroughs's face light up and just kind of think in shock at how well it looked. Shout out to my guy, Jay Morrison, who had this stat. It's the third longest, tied for the third. longest reception for an offensive lineman since 2000 so there you go and it was all yack baby on that list jake fisher right yeah jake fisher yeah don't remind oh jake fisher that i just think it's cool did the bengals have two linemen on the longest reception yeah but by the way since we're doing this both were second round picks the bengals wasted their second round pick on jake fisher the bengals actually uh didn't have to do that with with cody oh yeah okay yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

Um, but yeah, so stay away from offensive linemen in the second round is what you're telling me. They're really receivers. Jackson, Carmen's going to be a receiver back in that. No, look, I think it was really cool. And the thing that what I thought was awesome. And you talk about like, is there meaning in these games or not? The crowd starts channing for chaining Cody, which is just awesome. He's going to think about that forever and he said as much.

And this is his birthday. It's his birthday, 29 years old. but after the game in the locker room chance of Cody breakout as he's getting the game ball and I'm sure video I'm sure the Bengals will have video of it but like that's just such a like core memory like holy smokes

it doesn't get any better than that in a lost season where you know you're not going anywhere you're not doing anything it's like oh well Cody Ford makes a huge play it obviously set up a touchdown and one of the Chase Brown touchdowns and put a stamp on what was an emphatic win by this team. Yeah, the crowd was so disappointed. Cody Ford didn't get one shot on the fullback dive.

You know, every single Bengals fan in Madden is putting Cody Ford at fullback and calling fullback dive in the stands. Do you think the Cardinals would have tried to fight if that happened? I'm dead serious. It's the most dis... Dude, it is the most disrespect. Like for me, if I was in that secondary and Cody Ford was like stunning on us, something would- Better tackle him, man.

Dude, I know. I know. It seemed like the Cardinals were not playing with the ton of- Mailed in. Yeah. Oh, my God. I would fire Jonathan Gannon today. And I didn't feel that way coming into today.

I don't know how you could keep them. Like, they didn't even show. There's nothing like, nothing after the whistle or anything like that. You know, there's nothing like that. nothing like that happening. I wasn't paying like I wasn't checking to see if guys were jogging during plays, but I just mean if they had been like, all right, now we're going to go to Cody

Ford again. Like when Chase Brown's touchdown was when Chase Brown's touchdown was short if they had if they had thrown at the Cody instead of Noah. Like if that would have been Cody. Oh yeah. That's what I mean. Like throwing it to him twice? I don't know.

And a blowout and lining up for the extra point Cody Ford yeah speaking of extra points and special teams real quick aside on the special teams is good lately and uh yeah keeshire very good has what was awesome on that punt return the wherewithal to collect it on a line drive kick the bounce right to him get up field awesome punt return there sets up a touchdown i believe for the bengals on that drive yeah i mean what the bengals offense had two drives where they didn't score a touchdown before burrow left is that right they punted once early and kicked a field goal from 57 yards was and then there's one that was the end of the half was that it was another uh was there one other one you're putting me on the spot so they punted

punted field goal and then they had a no that's it with burrow yeah that's it with burrow they scored three straight touchdowns with burrow before he left yeah and because they like to talk about looks quite easy at times part of that is chase brown was awesome today both as a receiver and a runner good 140 total yards-ish. It might have been 141. 141. 141. 141 on 25 touches, two touchdowns. I think PFF had his initial charting at eight

missed tackles force. Five is a runner. Three is a receiver. Really nice game for Chase Brown. Call him Cody Ford. Yeah, I mean, you could. Cody Ford probably had two missed tackles for us on his one catch. I think he was in the initial grading. Cody Ford is the highest

graded receiving grade for Cincinnati Bengal in this game with one miss tackle force. credited. This is proof grade sucks sometimes. Apparently he ran two routes because he had 21 receiving yards and 10 and a half yards per route run.

So there's more Cody Ford receiving stats than you ever thought you need it. Chase Brown was really good in this game. Dalton Reiser continues to make a case to be a guy that they should probably be extending this week. Why not? Get ahead of it. Dylan Fairchild, like I mentioned earlier,

did get got early in the game on a couple pass rushes from Callias Campbell. But on Chase Brown's 7 touchdown run got five yards of push on the veteran, the only really good defensive player on this Arizona defense. So I thought Fairchild was strong in this game outside of the couple of pressures. There's really only a handful of plays. Somaget Piran getting back into the game after he left with what looked like a pretty ugly injury as he and Cody Ford, one of the two of them, missed a blitz pickup. Comes back into the game, absolutely levels of blitzer later in this game.

T. Higgins catches a deep ball from Joe Burrow down the left sideline. T. Higgins catches a slant for a first down. Jammar had his couple of touchdowns, including the one play, the slant is just taking candy from a baby. But the reason the Bengals have those little, we're just going to throw it to Jamar when there's off coverage and he has a one-on-one because he can make a guy miss. And then he'll get like six, seven yards. But sometimes they'll make multiple guys miss and score a touchdown or just be off to the races, right? Like we've seen that from him enough. That's why that's in the offense.

And it's hard to get too frustrated with when later in the game you see stuff. Like sometimes I throw that little quick flat to Jamar and he gets tackled for a one-yard loss or no game. But sometimes he turns that into a big play. And on first down, that's why that plays in the playbook. For sure. And both Jamar and Joe both said, I knew I was scoring. I knew he was scoring after he made that first guy miss. And it's just, it's so hard to tackle him after he picks up some steam.

It reminded me it's longer. It's a longer play than the one Chad had. But in 2006, in 2006, this is a pool. Chad was on the cover of SI. It's the famous tiger, like his arm is tiger striped on the cover of SI. He had, they were struggling on offense. He guaranteed he was going to score. And he took a little screen, broke a tackle and dove.

It was like an 11-yard touchdown. Scored a touchdown against the Falcons. Anyway, it reminded me of that. but like on steroids because it was from 19 yards and there was a third defender and it was that much tougher and it was a touchdown streak that that ended and it ended on the first drive of the game when he three days prior at his locker two days prior to his locker is like man I need to end this I need to end this touchdown the streak that puts a lot of pressure on you to do that when you're like I need to do this now.

Jamar does what he says he's going to do if there's anything we learned about Jamar said he does what he says he's going to do I have one more note on the offense here, James. I have a Jamar note on the other side. Go. All right. We got a couple notes on the offense. We'll get to in just a minute.

We'll start with a Jamar note from James. Then we've got to get to this defense. Exceeded expectations. That will be the discussion to finish this show coming up next. Today's show is brought to by Gusto. No one starts business for the joy of calculating tax withholdings or managing payroll spreadsheets. But that's where Gusto comes in.

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your first payroll. That's right. Three months of payroll free at gusto.com slash locked on NFL, GUSTO.com slash locked on NFL. Slash a locked on NFL. One more time, gusto.com slash locked on NFL. All right, Jake. The note on Jamar, it's very simple. And you know it.

You had to have seen it. But me and tracks at it. First player in NFL history. First five seasons, 80 catches, 1,000 yards, seven touchdowns. First player. No Chris Carter, no Randy Moss, no Jerry Rice, no Chad Johnson, no whoever. And you said Jamar does things that he says, well, said he's going to break every record that Chad, AJ,

and the rest of the Bengals top receivers in team history had on draft night. This is a record no one has had ever. And he was able to do it. And do it going eight games without scoring a touchdown. He hadn't scored a touchdown since October 16th and was still at five, gets two today. And just like that, we're talking about a 1,300-yard season, a 110 or no, excuse me, 117 catch season. And, yeah, clearly to me the best receiver in the NFL. One game to go.

We'll see what else he can do. If this was a more competitive game, I wonder how it would have gone. The Browns are a different beast here. And that'll be a topic of conversation probably on Tuesday's show where we're going to talk about the fact that Zach Taylor is saying that he's playing Joe Burrow and these guys against the Browns in the season finale. I'm not surprised by that move from the Bengals. I don't know that I agree with it. We've talked about this one before. We will talk about it more on Tuesday.

The last note for me on the offense was that I was pretty intrigued and pleased to see them doing some things on offense that they haven't necessarily done a ton of. There was more play action, boot action for Joe Burrow in the Bengals' first two drives. And you typically see from the Bengals in an entire game. Saw a lot of extra linemen stuff, two extra linemen stuff in this game. I thought they had some pretty interesting wrinkles and success. When they went to that package, we saw some 13 personnel. We still see the two back personnel where Samaj and Chase Browner on the field together. So I like that they're getting to some different concepts here.

They're mixing things up as they're kind of the offense we're expecting. a lot of continuity in the next year. And so when you can put these ideas out there and test them in a real game, get an idea for how some of this stuff that you don't always do a lot of, get Joe some experience doing some things where he looks a little bit awkward sometimes, a little bit uncomfortable sometimes doing some of these play action, boot concepts, some of the under center stuff. Getting those reps is going to be valuable, I think, in the long term.

So that was nice to see today. On the topic of the defense, James. Let's get to it. Dax Hill was awesome. The coverage unit on the whole outside of the microcontractors. Wilson touchdown really good. I thought they did a great job on Tray McBride in this game before the starters left. And Dax was a big part of that. Dax had yet another in what's been a series of really strong performances from him since he moved back outside with the exception of that

New England game when he had a couple penalties was awesome again this week with at least two, if not three past breakups. And three. The number of plays we didn't see on the broadcast. where Dennis had a lot of coverage pressure in this game. Coverage sacks, covers disruption to the quarterback where the coverage holds up long enough that the pressure is able to get home. So that speaks to some of the stuff we didn't see as well. But even when he was targeted,

Dax was awesome in this game. And a huge shout out to him. DJ Turner also, I think, was good in this game. The corners continue to stand up. And that's something that we can feel, I think, pretty confident about at this point because that's been the trend for quite a well. Yeah, love it. I love what I'm seeing from Dax and DJ.

talk with DJ after and I was kind of walking with him, just walk and talk. He was like, I mean, Dax always felt like we, this is what we felt like we were doing in Michigan. It doesn't feel any different now. And I know their roles, especially with Dax, it is different, but they are, DJ is as confident as they come. They combine for four past breakups and really neutralize. I mean, Marvin Harrison Jr. was on the field today. Did you notice him? I know he did a couple times.

Did I notice him? No. Was he targeted? Yeah, he was. He had one of the Dax's, the Dax breaker. Yeah. And Dax was all over him the whole time and had a nice little, nice little grab at the top, super physical, like stuff that you want to see, like not penalty, but physical, make them feel you.

And really believe in those guys. Really believe, by the way, in 99. Just every week now, it feels like Miles Murphy's doing something and you're noticing Miles Murphy. And he is, uh, he's in his Sam Hubbard. era got that hustle sack number of run stops he's he's showing that he's a

solid plus player for sure six catches or six catches six targets or geez oh Pete's six tackles there you go I'm thinking about I'm thinking about wide receivers and Cody Ford hey 101 everybody but leaves the lead

leads the team with six tackles one sack one quarterback hit had that that TFL that we talked about and and then Shamar as well. You see Shamar Stewart, man. He gets his sack. He got his quarterback hit where he gets his hand near, near the ball on the one. I think it was a, it's been a big couple of months for Miles and his confidence. And you just continue to notice him, which again, is something, a huge step up from what we had seen prior. But for Shamar to get his first NFL sack, that's really noteworthy. And something that does matter when you talk about the future of the Bengals. You didn't want him to go. go into the off season, man, I need a sack. Like that's just mentally, that sucks as a pass rusher. Even if he was hurt, even if he missed time, all of those things.

Just not where you want to be. Yeah. I thought the bull rush showed up a few times for him. The tackles for the Cardinals not good. So you take into account the quality of competition. I would have actually liked to have seen the Bengals Edge guys went a little bit more given the guys playing tackle for the Cardinals. But that being said, the flashes were there.

certainly for Samar Stewart Cedric Johnson getting a lot of run had five pressures leading the team according to PFF they were really close

on a couple sacks between him and Isaiah Foskey when Foski went into the game he racked up some pass rush wins as well so nice to see some guys flashing if nothing else

against an offense that has been better than this in their last few games like they haven't been good plucky right there's that word again they haven't been good

but they've been making plays DJ Ivy making a play on Michael Wilson down the sideline when the Bengals have pulled their starters. That was nice to see. He played 27 snaps in this game because obviously the backups got in there at the end, but he played a lot. And the plan they had for Trey McBride, like I said, how bad they've been against tight ends all year,

knowing Trey McBride is going to be a weapon, knowing that Michael Wilson has been good. And they did a good job against those guys for the most part. Gino Stone had at 1.3 of the Bengals four missed tackles. At one point, it was two of three. And then he missed another one, like shortly after I tweeted that. The Bengals ended up with some more mistackles as the backups were in the game late. They missed some sacks.

Boskey had a couple. I think Cedric Johnson ended up with one. So some of the defensive linemen had some. But the one touchdown, man, like Gino Stone continues to be a guy that clearly needs to be replaced on this team. didn't work out. And the priorities for the defense remain clear. Nothing's really changed for me in this game, but that being said,

it was nice to see some guys flashing a little bit in the corners, continuing to stack performances as we've become accustomed to those strong performances from them lately. Yeah, I don't understand. Like Jordan Battle, you're talking about the Michael Wilson touchdown. Yeah. And it's annoying because overall I thought the defense played well, but the one tweet that they're going to see from me

is going to be that. one because it's embarrassing and so we tweeted about it and i tweet and in and that's the one that i guarantee is going to get the most views and in they should be embarrassed jordan battle completely stops can't stop keep keep running toward it didn't he didn't he just stops hate it there's one two gino stone should have easily made the play like easily it should have been a very routine play instead he throws his little shoulder out there trying to bump shoulder bump for whatever reason i don't it's like something i would i would do with you uh as we're walking out the training camp it's joking yeah Like, that's how he tried to, like, what are you doing?

And then three, Barrett Carter, you're right there, man. You ran it down. Like, you ran it down, Barrett. Grab him. Make sure he gets out of bounds. And so. And I thought Barrett harder actually had a few plays in this game too. He did.

He did. But that one stands out. And that's what sucks is it's like, oh, well, really nice coverage here, Barrett. And then that, you know. Yeah. And we'll see how these linebackers look on film review. I think that's something that'll be interesting this week.

I think there's going to be some fun stuff on tape, though, this week. Like on the defensive side of the ball, it's been quite a while since I said, yeah, like, tape might be fun. They bottled up that Cardinals running game, which have been, you know, a little bit below average, but not dreadful. It was pretty dreadful in this game. T.J. Slayton with three stops credited by PFF, to go with Miles Murphy's three stops to be tied for the team lead in this game.

Barrett Carter, Demetreisite. The linebackers had a couple of taxes. and or hits in coverage that led to incomplete passes or stops for short gains. So nice to see the effort from the linebackers still, again, not saying that I think the Bengals are set at linebacker or anything like that. But when these guys make plays, we try to credit the positives as well. Jordan Battle, I thought, was another solid game for him. So, you know, when we talk about the offseason, we look ahead,

there's still the same clear needs, I think, on defense that there have been. But nice to see some guys play and flash in this game to give you the chance that some of them can develop into more than what they've been this year. For sure. That's it. What does it mean? It could mean something. It could mean that this defense has pieces, and I'm confident in some of those pieces. And, well, the offense continues to show with Joe Burrow that they're one of the best offenses in the league.

and man, if five and two, even if they fought a five and three, it'll be like the Bengals are five and three. I'm going to write that all offseason. The Bengals are five and three with Joe Burrow, one and eight without him. Like,

that's going to be, that's going to be something I just have in the back of my brain that we're talking about a lot because it'll be like, oh, well, they need to build a better team around Joe, and they can't be so relying on him where if he misses a few games,

they can win game, you know. That's what the theme of the offseason is going to be, Yeah, and just like finishing games in general. Well, like having good defense. Yeah, like, well, that's it. I mean, they got to add to all three levels still. Either way, it's fun to talk about Cody Ford catching passes. Yeah, it's fun, but it's fun.

It's fun. Pretty straightforward, right? Fun. One more game for the Bengals this year. We're going to be talking about the starters playing in that game. Probably on Tuesday's episode. Probably got film coming out for you tomorrow. And then we got one more game to cover James.

us to the off-season plan where we will not be talking about a coaching search, but we'll be talking about what this team needs to do. Should we be talking about a coaching search? Maybe. That's a topic. That's a topic. It's probably a topic. It's one we will talk about. One we will talk about. That's going to do it, though, for this episode of the Lockdown Bengals podcast. Until next time, thanks for listening. Hoiday. Have a good one.