Bengals

Bengals LB Barrett Carter recorded eight tackles, a half-sack, and a forced fumble in Week 1’s win over the Buccaneers. Cincinnati’s LBs coach Mike Hodges said Carter should’ve had three more tackles, which comes down to technique and fundamentals. 

“I told Barrett he should have had 11 tackles, a half-sack and forced fumble and he didn’t,” Hodges said, via Paul Dehner Jr. of The Athletic. “Some of that was technical and fundamentals.”

Bengals DC Al Golden was pleased with how their defense managed to tackle an elusive running back like Tampa Bay’s Bucky Irving.

“I am encouraged by the tackling,” Golden said. “Number one, I think Bucky is as elusive lateral step as there is … there are a lot of good players in this league. You have to give them credit. You can’t be perfect, but I thought we were physical. We ran to the ball, we populated the ball so it was on the ground and we got it.”

Bengals HC Zac Taylor also praised their defense for swarming to the ball. 

“There’s gonna be moments where we got to do better, come to balance and get guys to the ground,” Taylor said. “But I thought the effort was there. I thought guys did a good job of leveraging the ball. I thought our vice tackling, you saw a lot of jerseys around the ball.”

Browns

The Browns suffered a one-sided 34-10 loss to the Jaguars in Week 1. Cleveland EDGE Jared Verse thinks their pass rush struggled because of “self-inflicted wounds” and not playing as a unit. 

“It looks worse than what it was. It was just self-inflicted wounds, myself included. We weren’t rushing as a unit up front, wasn’t getting to the quarterback quick enough. Our DB’s can’t cover forever; that’s something I got to chalk up to us up front. I’m gonna put a lot on me, I gotta be better than that,” Verse said, via BrownsWire. 

Ravens

The Ravens finished with 506 yards of total offense in their 41-23 win over the Colts in Week 1. Baltimore QB Lamar Jackson believes the amount of motions in OC Declan Doyle’s system was a big part of their productivity. 

“[It creates] more explosives [and] advantages. They do not know if I am going to run it, [if] Derrick [Henry] will run it. Is it a run play? Is it a pass play? [It is a] disadvantage [for the defense] each and every down, and we need that. We need that with this type of system,” Jackson said, via RavensWire.

Jackson reiterated that frequently moving players kept Indianapolis confused on who to pinpoint. 

“The confusion [the offense] is creating with the motions. [Our opponents] do not really know how to pinpoint a guy on our offense. This guy might be the strong suit on this play, and it isn’t that. It [can be] any given guy. That is [how] I feel like our offense is giving [the defense] that disadvantage,” Jackson said. 

Jackson wants to continue keeping defenses off balance and feels they still have room to improve. 

“What I take from [watching] film [and] from us doing all of that [is to] keep getting sharper, just keep getting better, keep making things look [better and] keep trying to confuse the defense as much as possible. It is a long season. That was only game one, but we just have to keep going, keep getting better at practice and hopefully our season keeps doing what it is doing right now,” Jackson said.