Cincinnati Bengals: Takeaways from Week 4 win vs. Falcons

The Corner Coverage Needs Some Work

To finish, let’s look at something which needs work: the back-end coverage for Cincinnati, particularly from the cornerback position.

To a certain extent there’s only so much any defense can do to stop an offense such as Atlanta’s when they are running on all cylinders. They have a quarterback who was leading a record-setting offensive attack on his way to being league MVP just two seasons ago, multiple multi-faceted running backs, and a handful of high-level receivers with explosive ability.

Still, based on the talents inherent to Cincinnati’s secondary there’s plenty of room for improvement for the players in that group — and this game highlighted all the problem areas.

Dre Kirkpatrick has never lived up to the five-year, $52.5 million contract extension he signed in 2017, and while he can be a decent player he is often the biggest target for a defense to take advantage of each week.

William Jackson III had an exceptional 2017 (90.2 Pro Football Focus grade – subscription required), but he’s not been able to live up to those lofty standards yet as he takes on more responsibilities in 2018. Darqueze Dennard finally touched on his first-round talent by doing well in the slot last year, but he’s back to being taken advantage of yet again this season.

This game put them all on blast. Jackson III (the supposed No. 1 corner for the team) found himself getting beat inside throughout the game, particularly in the second half by former Bengal Mohamed Sanu.

Kirkpatrick continued his habit of getting beat for massive results at some point seemingly every week (headlined against Atlanta by him being beaten by a double-move by for a touchdown). Dennard wasn’t really able to keep up with any of the crossing and weaving of routes by the receivers over the middle.

By the end of the game, the Falcons had a 400-yard passer, two 100 yard-receivers (including one with nearly 175), 29 receptions spread across nine pass-catchers, and three passing touchdowns. Julio Jones lead the way with a ridiculous nine-catch, 173-yard performance, but 2018 first-round selection Calvin Ridley had two touchdown catches, while Sanu had 111 yards on six catches of his own

Other teams won’t have this assortment of talented weapons, but if a team has any sort of interesting play-calls up their sleeve (Adam Gase would fit that bill) they can exploit the weaknesses shown in this contest by Cincinnati’s cover men. If they don’t do better going forward, Cincinnati will likely find themselves on the wrong end of these sort of games more often than not.

For more grades, advanced statistics and more at Pro Football Focus, subscribe to PFF’s EDGE or ELITE subscriptions at ProFootballFocus.com.