We still barely know Al Golden, what this Cincinnati Bengals’ defense looks like with him as its coordinator, the end game for a system with defensive assistant coaches who come from various coaching trees and what it would really look like if this defense played to the degree that they’re working toward.
Golden took over as the Bengals’ defensive coordinator in 2025, and he ended up spending the season trying to plug a dozen holes at the same time. Last year’s Bengals’ defense was incredibly young, was bad at tackling, didn’t have enough of a pass rush, had very little depth and had many, many more flaws. The defense had the second-lowest blitz rate in the NFL — it’s hard for a unit to show what it’s really made of schematically when it’s so inexperienced and has so much going wrong.
This year, it’s set up to be a different story. An aggressive offseason turned a young defense into a veteran-laden defense. Talent isn’t an excuse for the Bengals’ defense anymore. Now, we get to really see what Golden and this defense are really about.
“What the staff has done is try to put the pieces in the right place for those guys to play their best and be successful,” Golden said. “Tampa Bay is going to try to do everything they can to get us to play left-handed, or away from our strengths. But I think we’re starting to understand who we are defensively and what things guys do well — concepts and techniques. We’re trying to play to those strengths.”
In 2025, even the best defensive mastermind in the NFL wouldn’t have been able to fix the Bengals’ defense on the fly during the season. Golden had to make a lot of concessions to just try to keep a defense with two rookie linebackers afloat.
There was no ultimate solution, but the first sign of what this defensive coaching staff was capable of came after the bye week. The staff made some significant changes toward the scheme — redesigning certain blitz packages, changing third down personnel groups, moving Jalen Davis into the starting lineup and Dax Hill out wide — and there was real progress.
“Having an identity, you saw that identity come to fruition post-bye last year,” linebackers coach Mike Hodges said. “That allows us to get settled in and play fast. That’s what you saw post-bye. To build on that, that’s where as a coaching staff we have to figure out how to get our players in position to do what they do best. Not what we think is the greatest idea. If our guys are executing at a high rate, we’re going to be in decent shape. That’s what we’ve tried to do.”
The evolution continued throughout the offseason.
Before last year, most of the defensive coaches on the Bengals’ staff had never worked together before. That was by design as Golden built a defense with a unique combination of perspectives and backgrounds. But they did all have to get to know each other. That’s not the case entering 2026 with the entire staff returning.
“Now you’re in a whole year where you’ve run it for a season,” Zac Taylor said. “You kind of revamped a little bit of it after the bye week. You went into the offseason and watched all that tape together. The communication, like any line of work, is so much more streamlined now that they’ve been together and they understand each other so well. That’s what’s exciting for me, just to see how seamless that has been over the last six months. And that carries down to the players because they feel that communication.”
In the offseason, the coaching staff identified specific archetypes of players that became priorities: A safety with the tackling skills of Bryan Cook, defensive ends with the speed and versatility of Boye Mafe and draft pick Cashius Howell and backup defensive backs with the length of Kyle Dugger and Tacario Davis. Golden moved defensive assistant Sean Desai full-time to the defensive line room as the Bengals reconfigured the way that they use their edge rushers.
Then, in April, the Dexter Lawrence trade gave the defense a new centerpiece. With so many new pieces in place, as well as the development expected from rising players like Myles Murphy, DJ Turner and Dax Hill, the table was set for the unit to be much better in 2026.
Heading into training camp, Zac Taylor’s “challenge” to the defense, according to Golden, was to find the strengths of the players on defense and capitalize on what they do best.
“In the NFL, it starts with people,” cornerbacks coach Charles Burks said. “Getting the right people in the building. Putting our players in the position to do what they do best. That’s good coaching. As a staff, that’s what we have to do to be our best this season. We have the talent. This is a really good group. We have really good leadership. Really good players. We have to do our job as a staff to put them in position to be at their best every day.”
Taylor designed a training camp that was more situational than it had ever been. The Bengals ran through more late-game scenarios and more clutch situations than they had in any other camp in Taylor’s tenure with the team.
“The old adage is you have to learn how not to lose before you learn how to win,” Hodges said. “You see a lot of people lose games.”
Fresh in everybody’s mind are last season’s losses to the Jets, Bears and Bills. The 2025 Bengals’ defense was defined by missed tackles and mental mistakes in the biggest moments. For the Bengals to go anywhere this season, that has to change.
“Part of that is us being better at understanding what we need to get done,” Hodges said. “Beyond that, we can focus on how teams are attacking us. There’s usually a commonality across the league. We can eliminate the big ones and adjust ourselves to the opponent we’re playing. That’s been a really big emphasis by Zac.”
Scheme, play calling and defensive creativity will be a part of that process of being more reliable in clutch situations. It’ll be easier for the coaching staff to put more on the plates of the Bengals’ defenders this year because of how much collective experience there is across the entire unit.
“Once you have the guys that can do it, it makes things a lot easier,” Dax Hill said. “You can move pieces around. You can be more savvy as a playcaller. With time, you figure out what you got. Al has done a great job with not keeping things the same while making it easy for us.”
The buzzword about Golden’s playcalling around the locker room is “aggressive.”
Golden’s acronym that defines his system is “BEST,” and the B stands for ball disruption — you force turnovers by pushing the envelope and taking some chances.
“He’ll dial something out of nowhere,” Bryan Cook said. “He’ll call a zero blitz in a random situation. At the same time, he likes to blitz from the left and right. He understands his personnel and uses it very well, whether it be two interchangeable safeties in me and Battle or two lockdown corners on the outside.”
The 2021 Bengals, a coaching staff that Golden was a part of, exemplifies what a high-flying creative system can mean in the biggest moments of the season.
But, according to Golden, winning the down in these big moments is about so much more than scheme.
“We believe just fundamentally you can put in all the plays you want, but fundamentally, if we don’t execute the technique, if we don’t tackle, if we don’t destruct blocks, you know, if we’re not disruptive on the football, it’s really hard to execute at a really, really high level,” Golden said. “Our staff does a good job in their individual areas of bringing both the issues and providing solutions. I think that’s really important. And then my job is to collectively put it together and balance what’s too much, where do we have to scale back?”
Great defenses need to be able to adapt over the course of the regular season so that you’re playing your best football in January.
The Bengals’ defensive system was built to evolve over the course of the year. Burks says that the keys are knowing your players well, knowing what they do best and letting them do that, even if that means making more major adjustments to your system over the course of the year.
“Who you are at the start of the season should be different at the end,” Burks said. “Each unit evolves throughout the season. The main thing is getting this defense to peak at the right time. This defense has that kind of feel to it. We have to be consistent with our message. We have to have clarity with what we ask these guys to do. As long as there’s clarity and consistency, we have a shot.”
Golden was the Bengals’ linebackers coach in 2021 when the team made it to the Super Bowl. In 2024, he led Notre Dame’s defense to the College Football Playoff championship. Over the years, Golden has spoken about his lesson from those experiences being that a defense needs to be able to adapt in the playoffs to the specific matchup that you’re facing.
Boye Mafe, who won a Super Bowl last year in Mike Macdonald’s system in Seattle, sees that adaptability in the Bengals’ scheme.
“There’s variation,” Mafe said. “There are so many ways to attack teams. So many ways you can use different guys. You never know where we’re coming from and how we’re moving around. There are a lot of variations. We can make any picture what we want it to look like.”
Veteran defensive tackle Jonathan Allen also sees that quality in the defensive system.
“Al does a really good job putting players in good positions to utilize their skills,” Allen said. “I love it. I’m happy with how things are going, and I’m ready to see it in action.”
Ultimately, how this defense is going to turn out is still a mystery. This isn’t the same scheme or the same group of guys that lost 11 games last season.
With the pieces he has around him, Golden gets a chance to be whatever style of defensive coordinator he wants to be.
What does that look like?
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