Every autopsy of Cincinnati's 2025 defense has pointed at the same two suspects: Joe Burrow's absence forcing the defense onto the field longer, and a pass rush that couldn't compensate. Neither of those explains what actually happened. The Bengals sacked opposing quarterbacks on 6.13% of dropbacks in 2025 — essentially unchanged from their 5.93% mark in 2024. What broke was the underneath game, and it had been quietly breaking for two years.

Cincinnati finished 2025 with a defense that allowed +0.130 EPA per play, the 4th-worst mark in the NFL, behind only Dallas, the Jets, and Washington. That's a jaw-dropping fall from +0.037 EPA/play in 2024. The mechanism, hidden in the air-yards splits, was a chronic tackling failure on short throws that finally metastasized into full catastrophe.

Table of Contents

1. The two-year YAC problem
2. The 2025 breaking point: behind-the-line passes
3. The short-throw collapse
4. Where the "pass rush" and "downfield coverage" story falls apart
5. The takeaway

The two-year YAC problem

Split every 2025 pass thrown at the Cincinnati defense by air yards, and one thing jumps out: opponents didn't need to throw downfield to move the ball. On passes with 9 or fewer air yards — checkdowns, quick slants, screens, dumpoffs — the Bengals allowed 7.70 yards after the catch per completion. That's the highest figure in the NFL in 2025, and it wasn't a fluke: they were also the worst team in the league at this in 2024, allowing 5.81 YAC per completion on the same ≤9-air-yard bucket.

Two years running. #1 worst, both times. On the same throws.

This is not a coverage failure — a receiver catching a ball behind the line of scrimmage doesn't need to be uncovered. It's a tackling and pursuit failure. And the trend line is the point: it got worse.

The 2025 breaking point: behind-the-line passes

The single ugliest cell in the Bengals' 2025 defensive spreadsheet is the behind-the-line-of-scrimmage bucket — screens, swings, dump-offs to running backs. Cincinnati faced 103 of these throws. Opponents completed 89 of them, an 86.4% completion rate, and threw zero interceptions. The result: +0.181 EPA per play allowed, the worst mark of any defense in the NFL on behind-LOS throws in 2025.

For context: the Dolphins were second at +0.158, Arizona third at +0.063, and after that the field drops fast. The Ravens (–0.102), Packers (–0.095), and Buccaneers (–0.025) treated behind-LOS throws the way they're supposed to be treated — as low-EV plays.

And 11.26 yards after the catch per completion on behind-LOS passes. A quarterback dumping the ball to a running back a yard behind the line was clearing 10 yards, on average, before the ball-carrier was brought down.

Compared to 2024, when Cincinnati saw a nearly identical 104 behind-LOS throws, EPA allowed went from –0.058 (below average, but respectable) to +0.181. Same play type, same volume, no interceptions in either season — 0 in 2024, 0 in 2025 — but the tackling floor gave way.

The short-throw collapse

Zoom out one notch to 0–9 air yards — the true "underneath" bucket where most NFL offense actually lives — and the year-over-year change is worse.

EPA per play allowed on 0–9-yard throws jumped from +0.060 to +0.247. YAC per completion went from 3.93 to 5.94 — more than two extra yards after the catch, on every completion, on the highest-volume throw type in football. That is not a scheme quirk. That is a defense that stopped tackling.

Layer the two buckets together: on all throws with ≤9 air yards, Cincinnati allowed 7.70 YAC per completion in 2025, ranked #1 worst in the NFL, up from 5.81 (also #1 worst) in 2024.

Where the "pass rush" and "downfield coverage" story falls apart

The nuance worth flagging: Cincinnati graded poorly at every depth level in 2025, not just underneath. On intermediate throws (10–19 air yards) they allowed +0.439 EPA/play (10th-worst), and on deep balls (20+ air yards) +0.354 (19th-worst). No one is arguing this was an elite coverage unit downfield.

But the concentration of the damage was underneath. The behind-LOS bucket was where Cincinnati ranked dead last in the NFL, and the ≤9-air-yard bucket accounted for 358 of the 533 pass plays they defended — 67% of the volume. Opponents did not need to attack them vertically to score. They took the free money underneath and Cincinnati couldn't get them on the ground.

And the pass rush numbers say what they say: 35 sacks in 2025 on 571 dropbacks (6.13%), versus 36 sacks in 2024 on 607 dropbacks (5.93%). Slightly higher sack rate, in fact. The rush wasn't the problem — it was the same rush, on a defense whose tackling had cratered.

Meanwhile, the Bengals gave up 28.94 points per game across their 17 games. When your defense allows an 86.4% completion rate on behind-the-line throws with no interceptions and double-digit YAC per catch, it doesn't matter what the pass rush does.

The takeaway

The tempting story about the 2025 Bengals defense — Burrow got hurt, the offense stopped scoring, the defense got exposed — flatters the defense. Cincinnati's pass defense EPA jumped from +0.042 in 2024 to +0.165 in 2025 (4th-worst in the NFL) on the same underlying weakness they had the year before: they were the league's worst YAC-allowed defense on short throws in both seasons.

In 2024, opposing offenses left yards on the table — averaging 3.93 YAC per completion on 0–9-yard throws is bad, but survivable. In 2025, offenses stopped leaving them there. YAC per completion on that bucket jumped to 5.94. Behind-the-line passes stopped being neutral plays and became +0.181-EPA gifts. And a defense that had been quietly leaking underneath for two years finally drowned.