Cincinnati Bengals Preseason Review: Week 1 vs. Chicago Bears

Forcing Turnovers

Last season saw Cincinnati become inept at forcing turnovers. After that aspect standing as a strength as recently as two seasons ago (28 forced turnovers in 2015 — No. 6 overall in the league), the Bengals have been on a downturn in terms of making these sort of game-changing plays.

2016 saw them drop into a tie for No. 19 with 20 turnovers forced, but 2017 was about as low as things can go: 14 forced turnovers — tied with Oakland for the second-lowest total in the NFL (Cleveland was worst with 13).

It’s somewhat inexplicable how things reached such a low point. For much of the year, the defensive line was among the best in the league at forcing pressure (and doing so without blitzing). At the same time, they saw one of their young corners emerge as an elite-level player in his first professional action (William Jackson III), another corner finally show signs of being a capable contributor (Darqueze Dennard) and the secondary as a whole play at least competently for most of 2017.

Of course, there are reasons for this. The emotional leader of the defense (Vontaze Burfict) began the year suspended, and would miss three more contests due to injury. The linebacking corps was worse than expected even before suffering through a slew of injuries. Top corner Dre Kirkpatrick proved that his recent big-money contract probably was a mistake, as he was routinely taken advantage of by the opposition. Combine these issues with random chance working against the team to a startling degree, and you get what happened last year.

Just due to the law of averages, things should improve on this front for the Bengals, but the change to Teryl Austin at defensive coordinator should hopefully apply a boost as well. Austin’s Detroit defenses, while often no better than average after Ndamukong Suh departed, tended to outperform their talent level. Last year, that came out in terms of turnovers: while the team was no better than No. 18 in overall/passing/rushing defense rankings, they forced 32 turnovers (third-most in NFL) to help the team reach 9-7, just missing out on the playoffs.

This Cincinnati defense has a much deeper well of talent than Austin saw in all but maybe one season with the Lions. With more talent, Austin should be able to lead his unit to much higher levels than Cincinnati has found the past couple seasons.

Hopefully, this game could be a harbinger of the future. Bennie Fowler fumbled the ball away during a lateral at the end to give Cincinnati a turnover to end the evening. More importantly though, on two straight drives, the Bengals forced the Bears into interceptions (one by linebacker Brandon Bell, the other by corner KeiVarie Russell) to cut drives short and give the Bengals offense another possession. It was by backups against backups, but each of those players has a chance to make the final roster this year. Showing an ability to be in the right place at the right time reflects positively both on the players and their coach.

What went into those plays can mostly be planned and replicated going forward. Assuming it is — and that the team has some better luck overall — the turnovers which were so fleeting before could start to come in with a lot more frequency in 2018.