Patriots rookie Craig Woodson exposes another Bengals draft miss on defense

One reason there is such clamoring for Ohio State safety Caleb Downs to come to the Cincinnati Bengals via the NFL Draft goes beyond just him being a good football player.

The fan base has lost trust in the front office's ability to make a valuable defensive pick beyond the first round, after striking out in that category over the past couple of seasons.

And while Cincinnati struggled all season with missed tackles, one of the things we should have learned from watching the New England Patriots’ fourth-round draft pick, Craig Woodson, is that there is talent available on day three of the draft who could come in and help right away.

Craig Woodson another draft diamond Bengals can’t ignore

Woodson came in and started 15 games as a rookie on the Patriots’ defense, which will now play in the conference championship game.

Some of us, well, at least one of us, in Bengalsdom argued that Woodson needed to be on the team’s radar. And perhaps he was. But that beacon should have been bigger, brighter, louder. 

The Patriots selected Woodson with the 106th overall pick in the fourth round. The Bengals drafted Shemar Stewart, Demetrius Knight, Dylan Fairchild, and linebacker Barrett Carter with the 17th, 49th, 81st, and 119th overall picks, respectively. 

So, who should the Bengals have not taken in favor of Woodson? 

Yes. The answer is yes. 

Missed tackles are the Bengals most embarrassing problem

Here’s a wonderful (hopefully you can feel the sarcasm) Bengals stat coming off the Patriots-Texans divisional playoff game. The Bengals had more missed tackles than the Texans and Patriots combined. 

On the season, Woodson recorded 79 tackles. More importantly, from a Bengals standpoint, he had six missed tackles and a missed tackle percentage of 7.1.

The Bengals, on the other hand, were not so fortunate in those two categories from their safety duo.

Cincinnati, as a team, led the NFL in missed tackles by a large margin. 

The Bengals will move forward with Jordan Battle at one safety spot next season. However, he had 21 missed tackles and a missed tackle rate of 14.4%.

Battle’s running mate, Geno Stone, had 26 missed tackles and a 20.0% missed tackle rate. Stone was outdueled only by Seahawks safety Coby Bryant’s 21.4% for “top honors.” 

At one point this season, as the great Jay Morrison pointed out, the Bengals had four of the top six players in missed tackles.

The rate of missed tackles is one of the reasons why Bengals fans are so excited about the possibility of getting Caleb Downs in the upcoming draft.

However, there exists a scenario in which Cincinnati would not have had to spend a premium pick on a non-premium position in the draft if it had taken him with one of its previous picks or traded up to get him earlier in the fourth round.

As for the two linebackers Cincinnati selected instead of Woodson, Demetrius Knight and Barrett Carter finished the season with missed-tackle rates of 14.5% and 13.8%, respectively. 

The team did not address the safety position in the draft.

Fixing Bengals’ defense starts with tackling fundamentals

After a disappointing 2025 NFL draft effort by the Bengals, we were reminded several times of what-could-have-beens in the selection process throughout the season.

Watching Craig Woodson's performance to help propel the Patriots into the AFC championship game is just another painful reminder that twists the knife in a what-could-have-been season.

Hopefully, now that the problem is glaringly apparent, the front office will go out this off-season and seek players who can rectify a significant weakness for the league's worst defense.

And the best place to begin is focusing on collegiate players and potential free agents with low missed-tackle rates.

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