Cincinnati Bengals: Players to watch vs. Jaguars in Week 9
By Kenn Korb
2. Chris Smith
Jacksonville has been able to finally find success and win games this year even with Bortles as their quarterback because they’ve done just about everything to limit how much of a negative impact he can actually have.
The run game finding success is one piece of the puzzle; another has come from a better ability to keep him upright. For the first two seasons of his career, Jacksonville was abysmal at preventing sacks. They allowed 71 in 2014 (worst in NFL) and 51 in 2015 (fourth-worst). They started to improve in 2016 (34 sacks allowed; 18th in NFL), but with a quarterback as awful as Bortles has been throughout his career, a team must practically be impenetrable.
Surprisingly, they are much closer to that level than anyone could’ve dreamed. After seven games, they have managed to allow only 11 sacks (tied for sixth-fewest). Prorate that across a full season, and it would be about 25 sacks on the year — easily the lowest total seen by the Jaguars with Bortles behind center.
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Jacksonville’s line may be preventing sacks most weeks, but the individual players are pretty inconsistent. Per PFF Edge, only one offensive lineman on the Jaguars grades out as average (center Brandon Linder, with a 73.8); beyond him, there is one below-average grade (Jermey Parnell; 66.1), but everyone else grades as outright poor. Getting pressure on Bortles will be paramount and there will be opportunities to strike. Smith could be the best sign of a consistent effort on that front for Cincinnati in this game.
He’s the lowest wrung of a deep pass rush rotation in Cincinnati, but don’t let that trick you into thinking he hasn’t still played a significant role already. He’s picked up 174 snaps (fourth among the five Cincinnati edge rushers) in seven games, picking up double-digit snaps in every game so far and 20+ in five of them. He only has 1.5 sacks and is the only Cincinnati edge rusher who Pro Football Focus Edge grades poorly (48.2), but his impact goes beyond the stat sheet and even advanced metrics.
His play style is somewhat one-dimensional, but he gives consistent effort and is always kept fresh due to the deep rotation he’s in. He’s also been a key element of many big plays; it’s just that his particular impact on those plays doesn’t exactly get remembered later. A prime example: the final play versus Indianapolis, where he stunted around teammate Geno Atkins to get a clean shot on Colts QB Jacoby Brissett to force an incompletion.
He may not finish with any sacks, but if Smith is on his game it’ll make a deep, healthy rotation all the more dangerous.
Oh, and he’s got an extra bit of motivation here as well: prior to being traded to Cincinnati, he was a Jaguar for a couple years. As his former team continues adding expensive defensive line talents (like Marcell Dareus), he could set out to prove they shouldn’t have given up so soon on a much cheaper (but still useful) player along the way.