JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Week 4 was a game defined by the Jacksonville Jaguars winning in the trenches, and one of the most important pieces of those efforts was defensive tackle Arik Armstead.
Armstead had one of his best games since signing with the Jaguars in 2024 in the statement 22-17 win over the Cincinnati Bengals , and he was arguably the top performer on a defensive line that was able to harass Joe Burrow all game long while allowing just 17 points.
"The rush, the front, they get after him, whether it was maybe with the four-man or sending extra and dropping out and knowing you're not going to hit him, the ball was coming out," Jaguars head coach Liam Coen said Monday. "I mean, he was able to get the ball out a little bit, but, I was pleased with the guys up front. I thought [DT] Arik Armstead played one of his best games of the season so far. And really those guys did a nice job disrupting at times."
So, what did Armstead show in Week 4 against the Bengals? We break it own below.
Armstead was able to collect a season-best six pressures on Sunday, with ranked eighth amongst all defenders in the NFL for Week 4 and tied for No. 1 amongst all interior defensive linemen. Armstead's performance was tied for the most pressures a Jaguars defender has recorded in a game this season (Travon Walker had six in Weeks 1 and 3), and his two quick pressures were also tied for the most by a Jaguars player this year.
Over the last two weeks, Armstead has 10 pressures and four quick pressures, giving the Jaguars the type of pass-rush impact they need from the interior defensive line after the unit struggled to produce much pressure during the first two weeks of the season. Armstead has ramped his game up, and that included a sack of Joe Burrow at the start of the second half.
Lined up at three-technique against Bengals guard Dalton Risner, Armstead was able to get penetration and then get off the block to bring Burrow down after Josh Hines-Allen forced Burrow to climb the pocket. It was a clear one-on-one win, and it resulted in one of the Jaguars' two sacks against the Bengals.
Armstead is arguably the reason the Jaguars got both of their sacks on Burrow. On their first sack of the game, Armstead read the play-action from Burrow andthe offensive line and looped inside to get a clear shot at the Bengals' quarterback. Armstead showed terrific burst in space to force Burrow into the waiting hands of Danny Striggow for the sack and one of the defense's top plays.
The fact that Armstead is still showing the knack for making athletic plays in space and getting quick pressures to impact the play is critical toward the Jaguars' success. Liam Coen noted earler this season that quick pressure from the interior can simply change how a quarterback operates on each play, and we saw Armstead have that kind of impact on Sunday.
Take this second-half play for example. Armstead gets another quick win against the Bengals' left guard thanks to a killer inside move. He forces Burrow to speed up his process and attempt to check the ball down instead of keeping his eyes upfield for a bigger play, and the pass results in an incompletion. Even without recording a sack, Armstead showed the ability to impact the passing down on any given play.
It says something about Armstead that he was in the middle of most of the Jaguars' biggest plays on defense. This included Foyesade Oluokun's interception of Burrow in the red-zone, which saw Armstead nearly get home on a stunt by looping around and again closing in on Burrow in the pocket. The Bengals turned the ball over in one of the game's biggest moments, and Armstead was a big reason why.
With the Bengals dropping back to pass over 50 times, and with Burrow getting the ball out at an amazingly fast rate on each given play, the Jaguars needed someone to step up in the middle of the defensive line to quickly disrupt the Bengals' franchise signal-caller. Armstead ended up doing exactly that for the Jaguars, and he turned in one of his best performances of the last three seasons in the process of doing so.
This article was originally published on www.si.com/nfl/jaguars/onsi as Jaguars Film Room: How Arik Armstead's Stellar Performance Shifted the Tide vs. Bengals .
