Al Golden Reveals New Bengals Injury, Takes Blame For Rough Defensive Showing in Preseason

 Bengals defensive coordinator Al Golden spoke to the media on Thursday and revealed Demetrius Knight Jr. is dealing with a "lower-extremity injury" that kept him out of practice.

He referred all other follow-ups to Zac Taylor as Oren Burks took first-team linebacker reps in the session. Also of note on defense is an undisclosed injury to cornerback DJ Turner II.

"Had a great camp. I wouldn't trade forty-four or forty-nine for anybody in the draft," Golden said about Knight and Barrett Carter. "I think both those guys are learning. They're growing. We're putting a lot on them, obviously. But again, I keep reminding those guys of what Logan [Wilson] was like as a rookie in terms of just the learning curve, and, you know, trying to expedite that, and that's what we're doing right now. But both of those guys, physical gifts, love the game, and prepare like crazy every day."

Golden had plenty of thoughts on the Bengals' defensive performance across the opening two games, where the entire unit allowed 51 total points. The first-team offense got gashed repeatedly, though. With no game action coming their way Saturday, the starters went through a more intense scrimmage session today.

"Any blame on that goes absolutely on my shoulders," Godlen said about the defensive struggles. "That's a decision that we made in conjunction with Zac [Taylor] and just trying to limit anybody's purview in terms of what we're doing. So again, from that standpoint, we have to do better in every phase of the game. We need to tackle better. We need to take the ball away. We need to be situational, where all those little things are really what the standard is in terms of what we're trying to get done in these games, but not necessarily trying to out-scheme somebody."

Golden's front seven got smacked in the mouth across both outings. In the two games combined, Cincinnati's starting defense has allowed 13 carries for 141 rushing yards (10.8 yards per carry).

There is plenty to keep working on, but Golden isn't entirely discouraged.

"The games are a change-up for us," Golden noted. "To be honest with you, I'm spending all of my time evaluating based on what we see every day in practice. We just had a 51-play scrimmage, and had all of our tools at our disposal. We weren't static. If there's anybody to blame in that situation, it's me, because they're very static looks, and they're very easy for the offense to scheme. And that's the choice that I made. I got to live with that. And right now, just the guys are focused on getting better each day, learning our system, and then obviously transitioning to Cleveland here pretty quickly."

Cincinnati has a few weeks to get things straight as training camp wraps and regular-season practice schedules begin.

"Our ones probably did 35 plays," Golden said about the starting workload in today's practice. "What did our ones play the other day? Eight plays or whatever. So, I'm excited to go upstairs and look at every situation."