The Bengals Defense Keeps Giving Joe Burrow SERIOUS Problems...
The Cincinnati Bengals defense continues to be one of the biggest stories of training camp, and another strong practice against Joe Burrow and the Bengals offense has created an important question ahead of Thursday's joint practice with the Chicago Bears: Is this defensive improvement for real?
Video Transcript
Breaking down.
The Cincinnati Bengals are already in the heart of the preseason, but training camp is still going on, and they're preparing for one of the biggest days of the entire off season.
I'm John Scheeren of A to Z Sports Cincinnati.
This is A to Z Sports Cincinnati, covering your Cincinnati Bengals leading up to the 2026 regular season.
Outside of final cutdown day, which is gonna be Sunday, August 30th in the afternoon, this week and this, these stretch of days are the most important for the Cincinnati Bengals leading up to the 2026 season.
You have obviously a handful of practices before the Bengals take on the Chicago Bears in their second preseason game.
The second preseason game of the last six years since the preseason was dwindled down to three games has always been the most important.
It is now considered the dress rehearsal game.
But, and the Bengals have done this in the past as well, sometimes that dress rehearsal game essentially gets replaced by a dress rehearsal intra-squad scrimmage in which you have a joint practice between the two teams set to play in their second preseason game, and that happens to be the case for the Bengals and the Chicago Bears.
Bears are gonna play the Bengals in the preseason game on Saturday night, but on Thursday they are going to have a joint practice intra-squad scrimmage, and that's most likely gonna be where you see the bulk of work done by Joe Burrow, Ja'Marr Chase, and the other stars and starters on this team.
It's a more controlled environment for both coaching staffs to get in, get out, get what they want to have accomplished.
It's not the exact same obviously as an actual game on the field, in the stadium, and all the operations and everything like that, but this is It has become a more preferred method for a lot of coaches around the league to get in serious work against another team, and it almost essentially replaces what the value of that second preseason game has become.
So that's gonna be on tap Thursday, and before we get there, there was one more major practice that the Bengals had to get through, and it seems like a lot of themes from early on in training camp continue to be the case in today's session.
I wanna keep heaping on praise for DJ Turner throughout this training camp and ramp-up to the season.
I've just been so impressed with what he's done in practice while having this contract negotiation loom over his head that we just haven't really heard anything about, and that's exactly by design from both the Bengals and Turner's side of the negotiation.
But it's just been awesome for him to be such a star and emerging player who emerged last year but continues to get better and better and to prove that he is going to be here as a good player for the long haul.
Just day in and day out making plays on the ball, either making interceptions or this near interception that we saw in Tuesday's practice.
I just, I can't stress enough how impressive it is to continue showing up like this against the Bengals wide receivers, specifically against Ja'Marr Chase day in and day out.
We don't know if a contract extension is on the verge of being completed.
It could come out of nowhere.
It could lead up all the way to the proposed deadline of right before the regular season.
But we know that it should be a major priority for the Bengals to get done, and I'm sure that Turner is pushing for it as well behind the scenes.
But you wouldn't know it by how much he's playing and how much he's participating and how well he is practicing.
He is locked in, in focus.
He's probably really freaking motivated as well.
But it's just been so impressive to see him show up day in and day out and look this good with all that going on.
And the secondary winning the day seemed to be the general theme because outside of plenty of connections from Joe Burrow to Ja'Marr Chase and I believe 38 plays ran by the first team offense, it just wasn't that much going for them targeting Tee Higgins and basically any other receiver aside from Ja'Marr Chase.
You had an uncharacteristic drop from Higgins.
You had really tight coverage from the entire Bengals secondary, and you had the pass rush continuing to get home and into Joe Burrow's face.
In fact, according to WLWT's Charlie Clifford, nine of Joe Burrow's 13 completions in practice were to Ja'Marr Chase, and none of them found the hands of either Tee Higgins or Andre Joshivosh.
Like at one point you saw Ja'Marr Chase doing pushups after a Menzel error.
Agai- again, like you just didn't see the standard accuracy and placement from Burrow, on this day particularly.
It was just the secondary putting up pretty good coverage, and again, like the pass rush led by Dexter Lawrence, Jonathan Allen, you saw Chris Jenkins get some reps with the ones as well, penetrating the Bengals offensive line and making life tough out there, which has been the consistent theme throughout this training camp thus far.
The positives for the offense seem to surround the second team wide receivers.
Dante Myers continues to show up, continues to catch everything that's being thrown at him.
There was one play in which the defense wanted a holding call on the offense, and Myers just went off the s- off the snap, was able to catch the ball, and just accelerated up field.
I believe he also caught a touchdown from Joe Flacco as well.
Colby Young continued to play well.
I believe he was right behind Yoshi in the order of just going through individual drills, so maybe he's wide receiver four right now.
Maybe he was today with Mitchell Tinsley taking more of a step back.
But as part of the defensive line really showing out today, Boye Mafe, he's going to be billed as this undersized pass rusher, 34 outside linebacker, and he just didn't get enough credit in my opinion for how good he was as a run defender with the Seattle Seahawks.
But you turn on the tape, and he is frenetic.
He is consistently around the ball.
He is shedding blocks.
He's getting off blocks.
He's putting himself in the gap.
He was widely underrated in my opinion stopping the run in his time with the Seahawks, and I do expect that to continue with the Bengals.
And he showed up today stuffing a first and 10 run in the red zone drills going up against left tackle Orlando Brown Jr. Who- As most of you know, it has been a little bit up and down of late.
But Mafe, again, like he's going to be paid to rush the passer and do all the things that a 34 outside linebacker does, but do not sleep on him in terms of stopping the run.
I think him replacing Trey Hendrickson is going to be most felt in this regard, because Hendrickson was not the best edge setter.
He was not the best at, you know, getting off blocks and making stops in the run game.
That is going to be something that Mafe brings to the table consistently week in and week out, and I think he deserves a lot more credit in that regard.
He is an emerging pass rusher.
He's supposed to be even better in this regard now that he's getting more opportunities as a starter, but I think he's always been a solid and active run defender, and it's good that he proved that again in practice today.
I mentioned some of the second string wide receivers had some good plays, and for the most part, I think that offense, that unit was moving the ball pretty well.
But you had both Dakario Davis and Josh Newton making some plays on the ball, including this interception from Josh Newton over Jo- Joe Flacco.
Newton obviously played a lot in the first preseason game as one of the first quarterbacks off the bench when the second team came in.
There were some injuries, obviously, with Jaylen Davis not playing, Dax Hill not playing, so depth was definitely tested.
But that is the opportunity, like we talked about last week with Newton, that he needs to continue taking advantage of.
It seems like he's building some momentum here late in camp, late in the ramp-up to the regular season.
He's probably still on the outside looking in with final cuts because I think DJ Ivy has just been more impressive and more consistent in, in camp and in the preseason.
But Newton is still here.
He still has two more weeks to really, you know, show himself, and I think he's going to be someone that we definitely need to be watching when the Bears twos go up against the Bengals twos.
If he can continue making plays on the ball, I think that's only gonna help him.
And yeah, it's just impressive to see him continuing to make plays, knowing that, yeah, it's gonna be tougher him to make this team, but he's not going down without a fight.
If you're concerned about the Bengals offense right now, I understand it.
After the first preseason game, Zach Taylor made it an emphasis that mastering the four-minute offense, being able to churn out the remaining clock and finish games with the lead is going to be a huge emphasis moving forward as we get closer to the regular season.
That was something the Bengals continued to struggle with on Tuesday against their first team defense.
It comes down to the offensive line giving the running backs enough room to get some yardage and create some yardage for themselves in order to keep ahead of the chains and not always rely on Joe Burrow dropping back.
That is something that needs to get better, but that is something that is continuing to be worked on against a really impressive and a really deep defensive line.
And that's what I'm looking forward most to seeing against another team, against their starters.
Ben Johnson and the Chicago Bears, they're gonna be relying on their offense once again this year, and that scheme with Caleb Williams entering his third season with an offensive line that's built from the inside out, it's gonna be a really good litmus test to see just how far along this defense is.
Because right now, on the surface, it looks pretty good because it's giving the Bengals offense plenty of fits.
And if that is the case, then the Bengals offense are gonna have a lot easier time of moving the ball and generating positive movement against defenses that aren't their own.
It's better to have these concerns and worries and work through these issues in the middle of August compared to the middle of September when things are now flying at you for real and there are very few weeks that you can afford to mess up.
But I'm very excited to see this Bengals team go up against the Bears in what is really gonna be the final proving ground for many of these key players before final cuts actually happen.
We're gonna talk a little bit more about it tomorrow as we get ready for the intrasquad scrimmage and the joint practice Thursday against the Bears.
Tune in next time right here on A to Z Sports Cincinnati.
