Locked On Bengals - Daily Podcast On The Cincinnati Bengals - SLOW START CONCERNS? Joe Burrow's Offense Stalls AGAIN vs Bengals' New-Look Defense

Episode Date: August 18, 2026

The Cincinnati Bengals offense struggled again in training camp as the new-look defense wins another day against Joe Burrow, Ja'Marr Chase, and Tee Higgins. Jake Liscow and Joe Goodberry dissect defensive standouts DJ Turner, Jordan Battle and Myles Murphy, blitz pressure that exposed offensive vulnerabilities, and concerns about finishing games with a reliable run game. The guys break down plays from Tuesday's practice and question if these are signs that the Zac Taylor offense is heading for a slow start again in 2026. Photo Credit: Phil Didion Join the Locked On Bengals Insider Community! Where you'll get updates directly to your phone and be able to text the hosts, check it out at: https://joinsubtext.com/lockedonbengals 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/everydayerclub Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors! FanDuel Today's episode is brought to you by FanDuel. Join all the action at https://FANDUEL.COM to play Daily Dingers and make your free pick on who’s hitting a homer this MLB season.   KALSHI For a limited time,Download the Kalshi app and use code [LOCKEDON] to get $10 when you trade $10. Square Get up to $200 off Square hardware when you sign up at https://square.com/go/lockedonnfl! #squarepod Gametime Today's episode is brought to you by Gametime. Download the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDON for $20 off your first purchase. 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 Cincinnati Bengals are meant to be carried by Joe Burrow, Jamar Chase, in a potent offense, but it's been an uneven training camp for that offense. Is it time to sound the alarm bells after another day? The defense seemed to get the best of the offense. 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. He's Joe Gooberi. I'm Jake. Let's go. We've got another Bengals training camp practice to talk about today in which the defense seemed to rattle and disrupt the Bengals offense, getting home with blitzes throughout what we could see from this training camp session that led to interceptions and another big day for the defense. And that leads us to the question, which is, how concerned are we about this Bengals offense? I laid it on a little bit thick in the cold open, Joe. I don't think it's time to sound the alarm bells. It's going to be really hard for me to get to that point, but maybe we need to be talking about the potential of a slow start on the offensive side of the ball because it has seemed to be a bit of a slow start for the offensive side of the ball in training camp. That's where we're

going to start today's episode brought to you by CalShe for a limited time, download the Calci app and use code lockdown. You'll get $10 when you trade $10. And Joe, like I said, for me, the alarm bells are not going to go off for this offense until probably like week five if we get to that point. But you do need the perceived strength of this team to be able to do what they need to do against a strong pair of defenses that they will face to start the season that we've talked about in Tampa Bay and Houston. Yeah, there are two ways we can go about this because we already had an episode because the defense has won many of these days.

And so far, if you were to tally up camp, they're winning pretty heavily. And it sounds like it was another very frustrating day for the offense. At one point, Jamar is doing push-up. up's on the sideline. And when he does catch a touchdown pass, he mockingly punts it into the air as he tends to do, you know, sometimes receivers do that in a blowout like this touchdown didn't mean anything and punts it out of frustration. So if you want to know how it was going for the offense today, we had an episode where

we said maybe the defense is really good and like what the implications of that would be for the 2026 Bengals. So now this is the inverse of that, really. Like what if the offense struggles? What if the offense can't do some of the things they've really invested? in this off season, which is the under center 12 person off. I feel like we've done that, at least in a segment, if not a full episode on that. Today it didn't seem like those were the issues holding them back.

Now, it was a heavy practice. Charlie Clifford, a reporter for the Bengals, says 38 plays today. We didn't get to see all 38 plays, obviously. But if the offense is frustrated themselves, my confidence tends to go with the players, right? Joe Burrell's like, oh, yeah, we got this. like Joe Burrow smoking a cigar like when they draft him that level. I'm like they're going to win the Super Bowl one day.

But if they're looking frustrated on the sideline at their own defense, I kind of go, man, if this defense is really good, that's the positive take. But also maybe we are heading for again a slow start in September. I mean, this is the defense that today was still missing Brian Cook, appeared to be missing Dax Hill again, although we can't say that with 100% confidence. We didn't see him out there today. and the plays that we saw did not feature Dexter Lawrence blowing things up.

I've been able to handwaves some of this by saying, you know what, Dexter Lawrence is really good. And he's so disruptive in these practices when he gets one-on-ones. He's making things look bad. That was not the case today. For the plays that we saw, Dexter Lawrence is on the sideline. And I didn't see a single clip, in fact, Joe, on Tuesday. It's Tuesday, right?

Yep, Tuesday of Dexter Lawrence on the field, blowing things up the way we've seen him. throughout practice. So this is DJ Ivy out there at corner for Dax Hill. This is Kyle Dugger, who's shown that he is a very capable backup to Brian Cook, I think, from what we've seen from him in practices and his time on the field in the preseason debut. That's kind of what the expectations would be. Like, that's a really good backup if Kyle Dugger's just a backup. But this is a defense that's missing some of its top players that is still creating interceptions, getting pressure on Joe Burrow, and disrupting the.

offense. So yeah, I mean, is a slow start something that we should come to expect? I think maybe we'll have an opportunity to change our tune on Thursday. This Bears joint practice, if the offense goes out there and they face a defense that hasn't seen this offense for years or at least for weeks for the newcomers and is pretty attuned at this point to what the offense is trying to do and they can go impose their will a little bit against the Bears defense. I don't think anyone is projecting the Bears defense to be one of the best defenses in the NFL. I think people think the Bears will be good. Ben Johnson expects to score a lot of points on offense, but if the Bengals can go out there and have a really nice practice against

another team on Thursday, maybe we're talking differently about it. But if they don't, well, I think at that point, we're kind of expecting the slow start to some degree. You know, it's funny. I hadn't thought of that yet and how much impact it could have on the vibes heading into the season. Like if the defense is good against the Bears, we're going to be like, oh, yeah. This defense is really good. And offense struggles make a bear's offense are so high. So if it does this to another team, Ben Johnson's team, then yeah, we're like, okay, yeah, that makes us feel better.

And yeah, and then we're like, how the offense will be fine. They'll be okay, right? Because it's just this defense is truly elite. But it was some big time players making plays today. Like DJ Turner had an awesome play that could have been an interception. It's also failures on offense that I think hurt my confidence the most. if I were to say that, where you see them not be able to pick up certain blitzes or stunts. Or T. Higgins had a drop over the middle of the field today.

You know, we saw that clip and we saw some deep balls earlier in camp where T doesn't go and get them, right? It's just off these fingertips on deep passes. And you kind of wonder if this is just veterans going through camp and trying to get through it. And the light bulb will just turn on. The switch will be flipped and comes week one. Is that how it works? I actually, this is really the first time I'm hanging on every clip, every play, every moment of camp. I watch this team in depth every year, but I've always had a job.

And, you know, this is my first time going full time on this stuff. And I wonder, Jake, if you remember previous years where it felt like the offense was in a funk or a slump for so long. Like, this seems weird to me for them to, they've had moments, they've had drives. They stalled in 11 on 11, had to settle for a field goal today. Even the touchdown to Jamar, when we watched it in slow motion, we're like, oh, actually Jordan Battle probably gets a sack on this play. So even these plays have felt like, yeah, but continued struggles. Yeah, I don't think it's been this extended in previous years.

I've been to camp the last few years. Joe Burrow wasn't practicing in one of those seasons, and that was kind of a worthless experiment. Like, you don't, Joe Burroughs not out there. Jake Browning's playing quarterback. in these games. I mean, there's nothing to see there. Last year, it felt like there were days that the offense did get back. And this year, we haven't necessarily seen those get back days.

And that's kind of what we got accustomed to in previous years. Like, there was a day that the defense clearly won. There was a period that the defense clearly won. The offense would tend to get back and get their revenge and go out there and have a really nice drive or set of plays or whatever it was. but the offense has never really looked like it was clicking on all cylinders in training camp either. So that's part of this too is the Zach Taylor approach to coaching. And I can't remember who was talking about this, but the result is in terms of who he was emulating,

I think there were some Bill Belichick comparisons that were referenced for Zach Taylor's approach. It leads to peaking later. And that is something that we have absolutely. absolutely seen from the Cincinnati Bengals through Zach Taylor's tenure. And you compare that to teams like we'll just say in the division, the Baltimore Ravens or even the Pittsburgh Steelers, Mike Tomlin era, Pittsburgh Steelers where the Steelers were like the most fraudulent 10 and O team of all time a few years ago.

And then they fell off a cliff because they started as strong. Great. But who cares if you're not like you could tell with that team that, yeah, they're winning games, but it's not going to matter. They're not going to be contenders when these teams are really hot in the winter and in the playoffs and stuff like that. So I think there might be a tradeoff.

There are very few teams that are hitting on all cylinders in week one and still hitting on all cylinders and healthy by the end of the year. So there is a tradeoff there. And maybe that's all this is. It could be as simple as Zach Taylor still getting these guys as ready as he can for the season with an eye on longevity and trying to peak in December, January, February, when things will really matter. But at the same time, man, we're sick of these slow starts. It'd be nice to feel a little bit more confident about the offense going into the

season. Yeah, no doubt about it. That's the only reason I'm even starting. I wasn't worried the first 14 or so practices, first two weeks because you had so much time. Are you worried now, though, like actually worried? I still am not really that concerned. We have too long of a track record of Burrow being good, Jamar being good, T. Higgins being good, Mike Keseki being a capable weapon, Chase Brown being good. Charlie Jones said they broke off two long runs today, so we should say that. Mike Keseki did have a nice, deep, sideline, high point grab where he got both feet down. Looks like he may have scored also.

So it wasn't all bad today. You know, there are plays there. And again, it's our question just really comes from, it looks like, the frustration of the offense themselves. But there are a bunch of plays I still want to break down in this episode. So Jake, let's do all of that coming up next. We're sitting here trying to make predictions about the Cincinnati Bengals offense based on training camp. And before the season starts, everyone is making predictions. Who's going to win the division?

Who's going to make the playoffs? Who's going to lift the Lombardi? Well, on Calci, America's number one prediction market platform, you can trade those predictions in a live market. If you think the Bengals are going to win 11 games this year, maybe not get off to this slow start we're worried about today. A $100 trade will pay out $205 if they, they get to that 11 win mark.

On Cali, you're trading against peers in a live market. There's no house. And as a probability changes, you can buy in and out of your position. You can trade the draft pick, the game, and more on Cali. Download the CalShe app and use code locked on to get up to $10 when you trade $10. K-A-L-S-H-I-Chal-Sheed trade on anything. 18-plus-only restrictions and eligibility requirements apply. Event contract trading involves risk and may not be suitable for all investors.

Cal-Shee products are not available in all jurisdictions and prices, values, and availability. available markets may differ from those mentioned. For more information, see calci.com slash regulatory. Jake, today seemed to be the defense winning with a lot of blitzes, or at least it helped create some big plays for the defense, getting interceptions, getting their hands on the ball, maybe even stopping that touchdown to Jamar Chase, as we said, and that it looked like there were maybe like a five-yard line to me off the video, a really tight goal line situation, burrows fading back away from the blitz, trying to buy it.

enough time knowing Jordan battle is unblocked and just fades it up to the far boundary back of the end zone, knowing Jamar's going to get there. We can't see his route on this play. I assume it's kind of like he fakes in and then goes out. We've seen that route from them a bunch. And he lays it out there perfectly. Jamar gets both beat down. But I think the maybe series that's emblematic of today's win for the defense was the four minute offense drill. Now this is something the Bengals have harped on and said, we want to be better in four minute. What's four minute, four minutes when you have the lead. There's about four minutes or so on the clock.

It could be five. We've seen to do it with six minutes back in 2021. But you want to drain this clock out. You want to end the game on offense. You want to win the game on offense by running the ball and keeping the drive going. If you can have 10 plays, get all four minutes off the clock, maybe kick a field goal at the end to win it to completely finish it. That's a successful four minute drive.

Well, the Bengals get stuffed on their first two runs, first and second down. One of the criticisms of the run game, whenever we say, hey, their efficiency, their EPA looks really good, is that when it's time to do it, and the defense knows you're running the ball, can you still pound it and run it? Well, here they couldn't. So it gets to a third down.

And again, Jordan Battles blitzing off the edge, comes unblocked. He actually gets a contact on Burrow. I think Jake, we should talk about that a little bit, but Burrow throws it away and they punt. And it's an unsuccessful four-minute offense. And honestly, that has plagued them,

even with their defense being as bad as it has, the offense not finishing games has been a big problem. We talked when we watched Zach Taylor in the locker room after the Bengals preseason win about Zach Taylor harping on finishing games and running to finish games and not giving the ball back to the other team when you're in a one-score game. The Bengals, they give the ball back. They managed to win their preseason game. We don't really care about the preseason results.

Zach Taylor is going to make that a coaching point. And I told you, Joe, I didn't really like. the emphasis on that coaching point. And here I am just a few days later with a 180 because it's been critical to this team in previous years. So when you talk about running the ball, there's the established the run crowd that's like, you got to run the ball better early in games so that you can get teams to respect it. You got to build your offense around the run and play action.

Those are your Kyle Shanahan, Lamar Jackson offenses, Ben Johnson, is they want to make you react to the run action on every single play. Sean McVeigh's offense does a lot of this too, right? So there's that camp of things. And then there's the way the Bengals have played offense and the way that I've always thought about the run for this team, which is that you need to be able to run the ball in the fourth quarter. At least the last few years, that's the way I thought about this team. Like I have not bought into the idea that and maybe I need to a little bit more than I do,

that they need to run the ball better and more consistently early in games. but you do need to be able to pick up four yards when the other team knows you're running the ball in the fourth quarter. They haven't been able to do that since Joe Mixen departed, and they were able to do it a little bit with Joe Mixing at running back and the way that those teams were put together in 2021, 2021, 2022 in particular. And since then they haven't been able to. So, yeah, I'm back to agreeing with Zach, agreeing with you when we talked about it, not on this episode, not not on air, about that being a point of emphasis,

because if the offensive line and the run game progress that we saw last year is real, and if that's going to matter for this team, they're going to need to be able to run the ball in those situations. And that situational aspect of this offense is probably the most lacking in terms of situational football on this offensive side of the ball. Situationally, if you were to criticize this offense, and, you know, there are many ways to criticize it, to be honest with it, it's been a pretty successful offense in the Joe Burrow era. You're right. it would be a lot of times finishing closing games, whether that's you're down by four and you need to

drive and have a touchdown or you're up by a few and you need to salt the game away and put it away. So yeah, I think, you know, when we go all camp here and there's been a lot of reports and even coaches saying they have run the ball really well. And the defense has been frustrated at times with how well the Bengals have run the ball against them. Those are good things. But when you put the situation into it, and that's why coaches do these drills and it's like seven on seven or red zone if it's move the ball if it's third down if it's two minute offense if it's four minute offense you do these things because it puts the situation into the minds of not only the play color but the players as well it heightens what

you need to do and yeah you want to defend the run on any random play in the middle of the second quarter but when it's four minutes to go and the only way your team gets this ball back is if you stop this run, that's a much different situation. It's why it's important that they drill. It's why it's important that the Bengals can succeed here. And so getting that report today was a little discouraging. You know what's interesting? I just pulled up some stats while you were talking for 2025 because I was curious.

And at first, I'm like, oh yeah, this is really bad for the Bengals in the fourth quarter because they have the second or actually tied for the worst yards per carry in the NFL in the fourth quarter in 2025. But as we know, yards per carry don't tell the whole story. so I go look at success rate. The Bengals were actually the third highest success rate. Weird. Teams rushing in the NFL in the fourth quarter.

However, the two teams ahead of them, the Buffalo Bills at 49.7% success rate rushing the ball in the fourth quarter. And the Los Angeles Rams at 48.6% success rate rushing the ball in the fourth quarter, 3.8 yards per carry, 4.5 yards per carry, respectively, had 60 and 70 more carries in the fourth quarter than the Bengals. So the Bengals only ran the ball in the fourth quarter 93 times. in 2025, which has got to be near the bottom of the league and his second least in the NFL, only the Las Vegas Raiders had. That makes sense, right? Fourth quarter runs.

The last thing I wanted to look at, yeah, it does make sense. The last thing I wanted to look at was EPA for play in the fourth quarter runs. The bills at the top here, 0.16 EPA for play, which is insane running the ball in the fourth quarter. The Los Angeles Rams are third in this category. The Bears who the Bengals will be practicing against and playing against this week. we're second at 0.15 EPA per play in the fourth quarter. Bengals all the way down at 17th in this category.

So where they're finding some success and they're kind of staying on schedule, the explosive runs aren't there. They're not there for the bills either. The explosive runs aren't there. And the yards per carry, I think, even if you're successful, that is a factor here. So four minute offense, rightly focused on. I think given the struggles that we're seeing in camp, the struggles at the end of the preseason game and given they're in their third string at that point, right? And and the reflecting on the

stats here in 2025, pretty interesting trends. You know, this is not a stat I've looked up, but I bet if we went digging for this, Jake, this is how it goes, right? First, we have football observations and a lot of times we go and look up the data and I'll try to see if it's true or not. But I bet explosive runs in the fourth quarter or in the four minute offense, especially increase your win probability more than anything, right? Because you're trying to run the ball here. Every team is if you can rip off a 30-yarder, you're in field goal range pretty much. Like those explosive plays have to be worth so much, especially with, and I bet they happen

because defenses are loading the box and stop the run. So if you could get these, I mean, the Bengals aren't getting them. So we know their EPA is going to be a little bit lower. I bet their win probability, if you could correlate that. is lower in the fourth quarter when they got assault games away. So, yeah, we may spend some time to see if we can dig on that at one point. But that wasn't going to be the focus of this segment. We got a couple more plays to look at and think about and get to.

And we'll do all that coming up next. This episode of Locked on Bengals is brought to you by Game Time. There are more live events than ever worth seeing right now. Games, concerts, comedy shows, festivals, the hard part isn't deciding what you want to want to attend, or even if there's anything to attend, it's getting the tickets and avoiding the long wait lines, the queues, the checkout processes that I absolutely hate, the surprise fees that I hate even more. Buying tickets can sometimes feel harder than it should be.

I just want the tickets. That's why so many fans are turning to game time. That is why I've turned to game time. The app is built to make buying tickets simple, easy, as upfront pricing. You can view your seats before you buy. It's everything you want. That's why I use it. Honestly, I want to know what everything is on the table, what my view looks like,

what it's going to cost in GameTime gives that to me. Take all the guesswork out of buying tickets to every type of event with GameTime. Download the GameTime app today. Create an account, use code lockdown for $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply. Again, create an account, redeem code, L-O-C-E-D-O-N for $20 off. Download the GameTime app today. A bit of a theme for the Bengals in this.

practice that we're talking about on defense and that's that these blitzes were working and a lot of them were safety blitzes. You talked about Jordan battle on the potential sack of Joe Burrow on the touchdown pass as it was counted to Jamar Chase today. That very well could have been a sack. You got Jordan battle getting in on that pressure that yeah, we need to talk about this. This is where we're going to start and forcing the Bengals to punt in that four minute situation that led to our side track of looking out some stats about running the ball in the fourth quarter. I treated this, and I'm going to say it. I'm sick of seeing these guys near Joe Burrow in practice from the bull rush,

from Cassius Howell that leads to Orlando Brown going to the ground near the quarterback to numerous plays. You've seen Dexter Lawrence make contact. We saw Jordan Battle make contact today. And Joe's not going to the ground on most of these. When Dexter hit him, he went to the ground. It didn't look very severe. He went to the ground pretty soft. But like the follow through is coming near helmets.

for Joe Burrow on some of these throws. And I don't want to see Joe Burrow follow through and then jam his pinky on Jordan Battle's helmet and then have a broken pinky in a training camp practice. And you sent me a clip of Mike McDonald going after one of his past rush for getting too close to the quarterback for using a ball wash quite simply. They recall. They just extended them.

So this is like a good player. And Mike McDonald said, sorry to break it to you. I'm running practice, right? like if I say you get too close to the quarterback, you're too close to the quarterback, you're coming out. And I think we're past a point of needing to see that with the way that this is happening, with Joe Burrow having some near contact or actual content, contact in training camp practices. Yeah, you're not wrong for this. When the Cassius Howell play happened, we're all like, whoa, look at this.

This is awesome. Look at Cassius Howell and some others that have played, you know, like, what was it, Jeff Schwartz? He's not supposed to do that. Yeah. And we're like, really, you're not supposed to bowl rush? Like, come on. And then you see the highlight, yeah, from hard knocks. And you see coaches like under no circumstance.

Like I know you've won that rep. I don't need to see you bull rushing and lifting this linemen into the quarter. It doesn't need to happen. The point for McDonald was there's a time and a place for a bull rush and this is not it. You want to do that and your one-on-one's fine. You want to do that in 11-on-11 with the quarterback back there? Uh-uh. That's not where you use a bull rush.

And that was a good learning moment for me as well. And there was a play today. So we're on the topic of blitzes and creating plays for the defense. And it's a second team offense. Again, Jalen Rivers was at left tackle. So I'll keep you updated on that. But Flacco takes the snap out of shotgun. Russ Yeast, number 39, the most experienced player on the roster that we don't know about.

And I keep saying that because he's played a lot in this league. But he's playing because PJ Jules is out, still, I presume. He blitzes right up the middle from death, untouched up the middle. There's other guys they got to pick up, right? The running back, whoever it was. It was a P. Ryan picks up Warren Berks and I might have been Taj Brooks either way. When Yeast gets through, he lets up.

He understands I'm not supposed to hit the quarterback here. Just getting close to Flacco to let him know I'm here. When we watch the tape, the defensive coach will credit me with a sack, or at least they hit on the quarterback at the very least. But Flacco fades away, tries to hit a crossing route or a dig to Mitch Tinsley, has to really throw it early and float the ball. And Josh Newton gets in front of it and intercepts that pass. But that's an example of a player, a veteran player, knowing not to get too close

the quarterback, but then the Blitz also getting home and creating a big play. So shout out to Josh Newton, who on this play, I thought that he did a good job getting in front of it, but I thought Blacko probably missed on this throw more than anything than it was just timing. Yeah, it was more of misplaced ball that got past Mitch Tinsley's hand as he's reaching out and Josh Newton ends up in better position to catch it. He's actually trailing, I think, on the play. and is behind Tinsley and just manages this to collect after Tinsley can't get it. Yeah, just a bit too far out in front of the in-breaking route as he's trying to throw with anticipation. It's a good read, I think, and just not quite executed with the accuracy you need when staring down a gap pressure from a safety.

And this is one of those witses where the ends are dropping out on both sides and the linebackers both blitz, they get picked up. But the safety in this case, this would have been, was it Russ Yeast, Blitzing on this play? And he also had an interception today. Is that right? No, this was a Josh Neat interception. Yeah, confusing things. But, yeah, Russ, yeast, blitzing, untouched up the middle. And then you get the confusion with the offensive line and the protection.

But we've seen the blitz is dialing up some confusion for the protection, which, you know, makes you think two things. one, you would like, like you said earlier, you would like to see the protection stuff ironed out a little bit better. Two, I was pretty critical of some of the blitzes from Al Golden. That's a good call. In his first season. And I thought a lot of them looked over-engineered. Teams were picking up on them very easily because there's a lot of just single replacement pressure stuff. And maybe with actually going to the three, four base, there's a little bit more comfort for Al Golden with what they're doing.

and how they're designing these pressures because I assume also that Mike Moon and Jerry Montgomery, the guys working with the defensive line are also helping with some of these pressures. And I think Jerry Montgomery in particular comes from a three-four system. So maybe they're just more in their wheelhouse with the current scheme and the direction they've gone

with the defensive front. Yeah, and they're getting advantageous looks, I think, in a bunch of ways. Number one, oh, actually, Jaylon Davis blitz a bunch. I remember the practices from the weekend. there were a lot of clips of Jalen Davis blitzing. He batted a pass also from a slot blitz. So this is something they're definitely going to lean on this year,

more than just sitting back, which I felt like El did too much at Alabama. I think of the final play against Ohio State. Anyway, also another play here. They get Boy A Mafé lined up against Andre Yosevash on a run play, and Yoshi cannot block a D.N. But again, if they're treating him like an outside linebacker, We have seen plays where Yoshi is blocking outside linebackers based on the alignment and the positioning of him. And maybe this was that again because you're moving mafia around a little bit.

It's a three, four defense. You could end up in these situations. But that was a blown up play for the offense. We got a couple others here, notes from Charlie Clifford, who did a great job in his after practice notes. Also, shout out to Caleb. No, I thought he posted the most clips for anyone of Cincinnati Media. And I appreciate that. But he says that Miles Murphy beat Amarii.

Mims for a sack, Jake. We could have let off with this. Marius Mims loses a rep. We didn't see it yet. I'm sure somebody will have it at some point. And then Ticario Davis also tipped a Joe Flacco pass that led to an interception. So more plays for the defense here, even Amarius. No one is safe from this defense today, Jake.

It's a second time, I think, in the entirety of training camp, that anyone has shown us or talked about Amarius Mims losing a rep. Impast protection in particular, but maybe period. Like Amaris has been great. So good for Miles Murphy to get that win. A couple other notes here from me. We saw the continued experiment with the second team offensive line that involves Jalen Rivers playing left tackle.

You've got Brian Parker continuing to play left guard. I was looking to see if Jacob Baer was in with the twos at guard. And I did not see that as the case. I think Connor Liu is getting the work. with the twos right now. We'll see what the rotation looks like in this preseason game number two if they continue to try to get a look at Jacob Bayer at guard because I thought he looked fine at guard.

Those were the first guard snaps he's taken in the NFL. I went back and looked at his previous preseason. So he, in his previous preseason action as a rookie, he only played center. So Bayer first preseason snaps, first snaps in the NFL at guard came in that game. The other thing that I think was really interesting today is, the clips we saw we did not see Dexter Lawrence on the field mentioned that earlier. What we did see a lot of was Chris Jenkins with both the ones and the twos in Nickel looks. And this could be simply because, yeah, this could be simply because BJ Hill isn't doing 11 on 11 work yet.

He is back to practice. If you miss that, he's off the pup list. He's back in back in practice, but not back in 11 on 11 quite yet. could be that he's just in for BJ Hill on those plays. But while I agree with you that that's not the role for Chris Jenkins, he is not a winner for you in those situations. He probably shouldn't be that guy. That should probably be a mix of just your top three defensive tackles or defensive end.

Maybe he's smart Stewart, if he's healthy would be in this role. On the other hand, this is a vote of confidence, I think, in Chris Jenkins. It says, hey, yeah, you're definitely ahead of Landon Robinson right now, even with what we saw in that first preseason game, Chris Jenkins. And that shouldn't surprise anyone, second round pick versus seventh round pick. Chris Jenkins clearly ahead right now in the death chart. Yeah, but even when we went back and watched the film, Jake, you and I did this. And we thought Landon had a couple of really nice and clean wins.

This is the upside for him eventually. If he is going to be that guy, I think it's going to be one of the pass rushers and nickel, you know, maybe in your three or so down the line. But I'd like to see him get those reps. And for Jenkins, he never had the profile of a pass rusher. And even his sack, he got the full sack in that preseason game. I thought McLaughlin just let him go at some point. And, you know, he cleaned it up.

So I don't know, I don't feel great about that. But you're right. You made a good point. It's probably many players that were not participating ahead of Chris Jenkins on the depth chart for that role. And they just weren't there today. So I'm not going to cry about it too much. Wednesday is going to be a light practice.

So we might be looking ahead a little bit to the Chicago Bears joint practice coming up on Thursday. We might be thinking about some more of these big picture themes. And we'll have an episode for you tomorrow regardless. And then wrapping up with the joint practice on Thursday, might even hit you with a couple episodes coming off that joint practice, depending on just how much content we have to share with you and how many takes we have to get off after that joint practice. But we'll be back with you here on the lockdown Bengals for all of that as we're in.

in a preseason week number two. Until then, thanks for listening to this episode of the Locktime Bengals podcast. Hootet! And have a good one.