Why the Bengals aren't panicking after a mostly ugly preseason performance by their defense

CINCINNATI -- If the Cincinnati Bengals are going to be a serious Super Bowl contender in 2025, their defense is going to have to show some serious improvement over what it did last season. 

If you watched a Bengals game in 2024, you may have noticed just how bad things got with the defense, but if you didn't notice or if you didn't watch Cincinnati play, here's a small taste of just how bad things got: 

• The Bengals scored 27.8 points per game in their losses, which is the most by any team in a season in NFL history. 
• Joe Burrow threw 43 touchdown passes, which made him just the third quarterback in NFL history to throw at least 40 TD passes in a single season and not make the playoffs (1986 Dan Marino, 2012 Drew Brees)

The man tasked with fixing the defense is Al Golden. The Bengals' new defensive coordinator was hired in January to replace Lou Anuramo, who just happened to be on the sideline Saturday as the opposing defensive coordinator when the Colts smashed the Bengals 41-14 in the final preseason game of the year for both teams. 

How to bet on the Bengals in 2025: Super Bowl odds, win total, props, best bets, picks for Cincinnati

R.J. White

The Bengals did NOT play their defensive starters against Indy, but the starters were on the field for the first two games of the preseason and it wasn't pretty. In Week 2, Jayden Daniels had a 19-yard TD run that might go down as the easiest 19-yard TD run of his life. 

Here's how Cincinnati's defensive starters did during a preseason where they essentially played four drives (Two came in a 34-27 loss to the Eagles in Week 1 and the other two came in the team's 31-17 win over the Commanders in Week 2). 

• Drive 1 vs. Eagles backups: nine plays, 75 yards, touchdown
• Drive 2 vs. Eaglers backups: six plays, 47 yards, field goal
• Drive 3 vs. Commanders starters: four plays, 74 yards, touchdown
• Drive 4 vs. Commanders backups: four plays, 44 yards, touchdown

With the 2025 Bengals playing a lot like the 2024 Bengals, that started quite the panic in Cincinnati, a city where Golden's popularity dropped by roughly 112% during the month of August.

Bengals fans might be worried by how the defense played during the preseason, but no one on the coaching staff is panicking. During the preseason, NFL teams generally use very vanilla concepts, but the Bengals almost didn't even do that. With Golden implementing a new defensive scheme, he didn't want to give anything away about what his defense is going to look like during the regular season and that led to a lot of "static looks."

"If there's anyone to blame in that situation, it's me," Golden said of the team's defensive struggles in the first two preseason games. "Because they're very static looks and they're very easy for the [opposing] offense to scheme and that's the choice I made. I have to live with that. Right now, the guys are focused on getting better each day, learning our system, and then obviously transitioning to Cleveland here pretty quickly."

Another big reason Golden isn't concerned with how the defense played during the preseason is because the unit went toe-to-toe with the Bengals offense during nearly every practice of training camp. As a matter of fact, there were several practices where the defense simply outplayed the team's high-flying offense. 

"I see it every day [in practice] and I see it against a really good offense every day," Golden said of why he thinks the defense can be good. "That's all I need to know."

The Bengals held their final practice of training camp on Aug. 21 and that was a day where Golden essentially ran through the entire defensive playbook in an 11-on-11 period against the offense, and he came away impressed by how the unit responded. 

"That's what's exciting about these last two days," Golden said of practices on Wednesday and Thursday. "We're done with the playbook. Now, we're settling in, and to me, that's fun. I gave them a good run at the whole call sheet and they responded with very few errors. I think that's important. That's kind of where we're at. It's time to just settle in and get those guys to play fast."

Although Golden has been a head coach on the college level and an NFL assistant, this season marks his first stint as an NFL defensive coordinator, so he'll be looking to prove himself by improving a defense that simply wasn't good enough last year. 

Golden's unit has plenty of support from head coach Zac Taylor. During an interview this week, Taylor made it clear that he's not going to jump to any conclusions based on a few preseason games. Taylor pointed out how Ja'Marr Chase's career started: During the receiver's rookie year, he was dropping everything in training camp. 

"I've never read too much into a preseason," Taylor said. "If we read into the preseason, Ja'Marr wouldn't have played a down for us. I still go through my notes on how we felt [in August] about some of the rookies we've had in the past and the growth they've shown over the end of training camp and once the lights come on in games and they play a full 70 snaps and what that does for them as opposed to playing 10 snaps."

The Bengals defense has also been missing several key players during the preseason, including Trey Hendrickson, who has sat out every practice due to a contract dispute with the team. It's still up in the air about whether his situation will be resolved before the start of the season, but even if it's not, Taylor still likes his defense. 

"I'm just really excited about the direction of the defense," Taylor said. "I think there's a lot of positivity there. We believe in everybody on this team."

Golden is coming off a 2024 season where he was the defensive coordinator for a Notre Dame team that made it all the way to the College Football National Championship game. He was also an assistant coach on the 2021 Bengals team that made it to the Super Bowl. He knows what it takes to be successful and when you hear him talk, he definitely sounds confident that the defense is going to turn things around this year. If his confidence translates to success on the field, it could be a big year for the Bengals, but if the defense struggles again, Golden will likely be the one blamed for wasting a year of Burrow's prime. 

The pressure will on Golden will start immediately and that will come in Week 1 with a matchup against Joe Flacco and the Cleveland Browns. If the Bengals defense can't stop the 40-year-old Flacco, then it might be time to panic in Cincinnati. 

It's a lot of pressure for a first-time NFL defensive coordinator, but the grizzled 56-year-old seems ready to handle it.