Bengals' Defense Strategy and AFC Title Odds for 2025

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00:00DRS, bottom 10, Cincinnati last year in both scoring points per game allowed

00:04and yardage allowed as well.

00:07Al Golden, a very arduous task as he is trying to form

00:11and make this defense look better than it was a year ago.

00:14But without Trey Hendrickson, Sam Hubbard retired earlier this offseason as well.

00:19And without being able to replace that with Shamar Stewart,

00:22how exactly do you do it?

00:24If Trey Hendrickson and Shamar Stewart sign their deals

00:28and are ready to go by week number one,

00:30I am betting the Bengals at a 10-1 price to win the AFC Championship.

00:34In fact, I think that price might shorten when those deals are inked.

00:37Am I overly confident that both of those things happen?

00:41Not necessarily by the time we get to early December.

00:45There is no doubt that even with these large questions defensively for the Bengals,

00:50they are still expected to be a double-digit win team.

00:53They are still expected at minus 152 to be a playoff team.

00:56And who is the only active quarterback in the National Football League,

01:00but better yet in the AFC, to beat Patrick Mahomes in an AFC title game?

01:06It's not Lamar Jackson.

01:07It's not Josh Allen.

01:08It is Joe Burrow.

01:11So if he is healthy, I trust the Bengals' offense.

01:15And if Trey Hendrickson and Shamar Stewart are there,

01:18I will have enough belief in the Bengals to be at least an above-average defense

01:22to be a true contender.

01:25That is my thought on Cincinnati for the moment.

01:28Without Hendrickson nor Stewart,

01:30I would still think, DRS, they can get to 10 wins and be a playoff team.

01:34But with those two critical defensive pieces,

01:36that elevates the ceiling to be a true conference contender around the AFC.

01:41Hey, here's the issue I have with the Cincinnati Bengals again.

01:44And Joe Burrow says the same things.

01:45Like, it's nice to not have distractions.

01:48And it looks like they're, again, going to have distractions.

01:50The reason I say this is the Bengals aren't run like any other football franchise

01:54where you say, you know what?

01:55The fans get upset.

01:57The ownership gets upset.

01:58The general manager gets upset.

01:59And the player gets upset.

02:00Like, they all want to be pulling in the right direction.

02:02When they want to make their money, but they want to be in camp with the fellas on time

02:05and sort of build for that championship.

02:07The Bengals are an organization that will say,

02:09Trey, you don't want to show up?

02:11We don't care.

02:11We're not going to pay you.

02:12And you're not going to accrue a year into free agency, per se.

02:15The same thing with your rookie and steward here.

02:17We don't care.

02:18This is the contract.

02:19If you don't want to play, you go sit on the sideline.

02:21When most organizations think, we have to facilitate this.

02:24Either we move them and get players in here who can play,

02:25or we sign them and get them into camp.

02:27The Bengals will be just fine if Hendrickson doesn't play an entire snap this year

02:31so they can prove their point on the next contract that somebody tries to do the same thing.

02:36It's the wrong way to think about an organization,

02:38and the fans always end up paying the freight for that,

02:41and also the football team as well.

02:42You tell me right now, Hendrickson shows up tomorrow,

02:44and Shamar's like, you know what?

02:46Maybe I start to believe in him a little bit more right now.

02:48But when I always have a team with question marks,

02:50specifically, Ben, on a defense that can't afford a single question mark,

02:55we're getting these here.

02:56That's why I can't take the Bengals seriously to make a deep playoff run.

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