Bengals' bet on new DC Al Golden has shifted from safe to reckless during free agency

New York Times

13-03-2025

This was supposed to be a rebuild, remember? How could it not?
Maybe the surge of the final five games or the glitz of the award shows honoring Trey Hendrickson, Joe Burrow and Ja'Marr Chase made people forget.
For a refresher, during a critical five-game stretch midseason, the Bengals' defense allowed an average of 35 points per game while going 1-4 and seeing an MVP-caliber season from Burrow sink into the Ohio River.
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Sound familiar?
They tied for most losses in a season this century when scoring at least 25 points in a game. They somehow went 5-6. The NFL winning percentage in those circumstances is 81 percent.
Old players fell off, young players regressed and the quarterback became a weekly embodiment of exasperation while publicly pressuring the front office to pay its stars.
The Bengals brass shared the same emotions.
'We're a championship-level team that didn't get an opportunity and that irritates us,' director of player personnel Duke Tobin said at the NFL Scouting Combine. 'It irritates all of us. It irritates our fans and we're not happy about it and we're going to attack the offseason to make sure it doesn't happen again.'
In response, the Bengals fired defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo. A man once believed to be the club's secret weapon in toppling Patrick Mahomes became its scapegoat.
They hired Al Golden, fresh off a legendary three-year run turning Notre Dame's defense into one of the best in the country and winning the Broyles Award as top assistant coach in college football.
Voices get stale, even respected ones. A collection of recent premium draft picks who failed to develop could use fresh motivation.
Cool. Great. Makes sense.
What's happened since suggests the Bengals forgot what transpired last season. Or, maybe more precisely, have made clear their opinion on what happened last season.
That failure was Lou's fault.
Had to be, apparently. How else would you explain not only failing to add impact players to a defense lacking across multiple deficient position groups but doubling down on players who lived at the scene of the crime?
Blow it up? Nope, that was far from the theme of this week for the embattled Bengals defense. They opted for 'Run it back.'
They brought back defensive tackle B.J. Hill ($11 million/year), along with edges Joseph Ossai ($7 million) and Cam Sample to the defensive line. All fine enough bets in a vacuum, but outside of 330-pound, run-stuffing nose tackle T.J. Slaton ($7 million/year), Cincinnati didn't add a single new player to a group among the worst pass-rushing teams in the NFL.
They didn't go there for the Raiders' Malcolm Koonce (one year, $12 million), Detroit's Levi Onwuzurike (one year, $5.5 million) or even Azeez Ojulari (still a free agent), to name a few who all owned pressure rates higher than everyone not named Trey Hendrickson on the team last year.
Lack of activity cleared the path for 2023 first-round pick Myles Murphy to assume a starting role in the wake of Sam Hubbard's retirement. This comes after touching the quarterback three times in 215 pass-rush attempts last season, contributing zero sacks. For even the most ardent supporter of his upside and win-rate analytics (I sheepishly raise my hand), that zero is hard to look past.
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They didn't add any of the big-name linebackers amid a trade request from Germaine Pratt, who appears out of their future plans. Time still remains for a solution there, but outside of replacing Akeem Davis-Gaither with Philadelphia's Oren Burks, the group currently looks the same.
They could have demanded more from the safety position, specifically last year's free-agent Geno Stone, who only trailed Pratt in missed tackles with 17 and struggled to look comfortable in a new system.
Maybe the area worthy of the most optimism is at cornerback where the Bengals also stood pat with a projected starting group that all either got benched or tore their ACL last season. Try saying that sentence out loud and gauging the response.
All this before mentioning that Hendrickson, the runner-up for Defensive Player of the Year and producer of more sacks than anybody in football, is in a contract dispute and has been given permission to seek a trade to assess his market.
The offseason is a marathon. Riding the daily transaction wire and doom-scrolling 'Do Something' memes isn't recommended. There will be some kind of move at linebacker. One or two potential safety upgrades are available, too.
A draft overflowing with defensive linemen, particularly those capable of bringing pass-rush juice, awaits. It could also deliver an answer at safety and linebacker (and offensive guard). The Bengals only possess six picks.
The 'winners' of free agency are essentially non-correlative to the winners in the regular season. Perhaps this was a knee-jerk reaction to failed free-agency periods of the last two years and a reemphasis to invest in those you know best. Even Slaton was coached by new defensive line coach Jerry Montgomery in Green Bay.
Don't judge a book by the first chapter, of course. You should patiently follow the plot twists between now and September. Those mantras still ring true.
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What we learned about the Bengals' plan to fix their historically poor defense was abundantly clear: Bet on Golden.
Few, however, could have expected a bet this big.
The man with a track record for developing young players, attention to detail and familiarity with the Bengals' model will be given the same core of players that got Anarumo fired last year and be asked to deliver dramatically different results.
Perhaps, along with Montgomery, Murphy develops into a solid No. 2 edge, Kris Jenkins and McKinnley Jackson take a Year 2 leap and Ossai's contract-year December surge proves his new normal. Perhaps this draft class hits the Bengals just right and pass-rush juice comes from two breakout draft picks in the same vein as it did for the Rams with Jared Verse and Braden Fiske last year.
Perhaps young DBs DJ Turner, Cam Taylor-Britt, Jordan Battle and Dax Hill all morph premium-pick flashes into consistency that matches their elite athleticism.
Perhaps.
None of these quantities are known, proven or reliable.
The Bengals believe Golden can make them all three. Even for a coordinator who felt like a safe hire, that's a daring bet. Then the Bengals doubled down on it this week.
How much difference can a coordinator make? The Bengals are about to find out while hoping this big bet doesn't bust another year in Burrow's Super Bowl window.