Bengals defense had players only meeting after historically bad performance vs. Jets

The Cincinnati Bengals had one of the worst losses of the NFL season on Sunday when the winless New York Jets came from down two touchdowns in the fourth quarter to win their first game of the season.

The Bengals defense has been bad all year long, but it reached a new level on Sunday.

On Monday, the Bengals' defense reportedly had a players only meeting, which is usually a time for the leaders to step up and speak to the rest of the players on the team.

Bengals defense has players only meeting

This week of practice will be telling for Cincinnati and the Bengals' Week 9 matchup with the Chicago Bears will be interesting.

The Bengals' defense has been absolutely awful through eight weeks, and they gave up 39 points to the worst offense in the NFL on Sunday.

Bengals defensive players just got out of a players only defensive meeting.

After Week 8, the Bengals' defense ranks last in the NFL in points, yards and rushing yards per game. Cincinnati is giving up more than 31 points per game, 407.9 yards per game and 151.9 rushing yards per game.

The Bengals also rank in the bottom three of the NFL in sack rate, third down defense, yards per play allowed, red zone stop percentage and EPA.

So, on Monday afternoon the Bengals defense had a players only meeting to make sure everyone was on the same page and take accountability.

Bengals linebacker Demetrius Knight met with reporters after the meeting, and said the leaders on the defense stood up and spoke to the team about recognizing what went wrong against the Jets and being better moving forward.

Only time will tell how successful that meeting was, but something had to be done after the defense's putrid performance on Sunday.

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