Cincinnati Bengals: Takeaways from big loss in Week 7 vs. Chiefs

Speed Kills (This Defense)

This Cincinnati defense has a fatal flaw: they are slow — very, very slow.

It was readily apparent for those who watched the game, but for those who didn’t see it themselves, Kansas City is devastatingly fast on offense and looked unstoppable to a new degree against Cincinnati’s defense because of that speed advantage.

Here’s something worth a look in this conversation: of the 32 defensive players Cincinnati has the rights to (including practice squad and IR players), only 13 of those players had a 40-yard dash time which beats the average at their position.

That’s made up of five defensive linemen (Geno Atkins, Michael Johnson, Carl Lawson, Carlos Dunlap, Jordan Willis), three safeties (Shawn Williams, Jessie Bates, Brandon Wilson), three linebackers (Jordan Evans, Vincent Rey, Malik Jefferson), and two cornerbacks (William Jackson III, Devontae Harris).

One of them is currently on IR. Three of them are age 30+, so they’ll likely have lost a good bit of that top-end speed. Five of these players haven’t had big roles this year (less than 200 snaps).

All this means the team only has seven players who should be expected to have any semblance of above-average speed on their roster who have played a meaningful role for them this year. On top of this, just having those players take snaps doesn’t mean they are making a positive impact. Jackson III is the best corner here, but hasn’t been quite as good as his elite 2017 season. Evans is quick, but pretty bad in coverage. Lawson is a strong pass rusher, but is a sieve against the run.

This, of course, means the team is not just average or worse in terms of speed on two-thirds of their overall roster, but they end up with some of their slowest rostered players in major roles. Vontaze Burfict (5.09-second 40-time) and Preston Brown (4.86) formed perhaps the slowest linebacking corps in the NFL when the two were the main starters against Kansas City.

And even when the currently-injured Nick Vigil is available ,he doesn’t raise the speed ceiling much at all (4.72). Two of the main snap-getters at cornerback (Dre Kirkpatrick and Darqueze Dennard) aren’t under 4.50. Atkins is still freakishly speedy now, but no other interior linemen comes close to being “fast”.

All of this has left the defense in a precarious spot: do they play faster guys who may make more mistakes elsewhere, or play the slower players who hold up better in other aspects of the game? Whether this is strictly due to their beliefs as a coaching staff or entirely based on the talent available to them at the moment, they seem to have decided to lean more in the latter.

Unfortunately, that means teams with fast, explosive offenses will be a terrible matchup for them, especially over the middle of the field. That’s how they were so easily obliterated all night when the Chiefs put their offense out there.