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October 23, 2025 • 14 mins
Chad Brendel from BearcatJournal.com joins Lance and Rocky to talk about UCs homecoming game this Saturday at Nippert Stadium against Baylor.

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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(00:42):
toph On seven hundred WLW the home of the best
Bengals coverage.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
All right, here we go, second of three hours unfolding
on a Thursday night, hanging out a long Next in
rich Wood, Lance Pacallister, Rocky boymen, We've covered Bengals. This
is the hour we sprayed all fields. Little U see football,
a little bit on the high school football scene, the
fantasy football scene, and more. Get into the Bengals in
our next segment, and much more at the eight o'clock hour,
but without further Ado, let's talk to you see Bearcats

(01:11):
number twenty one in the country, winners of sixth straight,
one of two unbeatens in the Big twelve, and at
home at Nippered for homecoming on Saturday versus the Baylor Bears.
For more on that from Bearcat Journal Chad Brendle. How
are you?

Speaker 3 (01:28):
I'd like to request the trade.

Speaker 4 (01:32):
What franchise would you go to? Chad?

Speaker 3 (01:36):
Oh, I'm so when Nick got hired at UCLA, I
got offered the site to be the publisher of the
UCLA site, but Kelly was sick at the time, and
Kelsey was little and I couldn't do it. So, you know,
give me another year or two, and I'd love to
go back to la I lived out there in my
twenties and it was fabulous there.

Speaker 4 (01:56):
You go, very cool.

Speaker 3 (01:58):
All right.

Speaker 2 (01:59):
Since I'm gonna ask you, and we're gonna talk a
lot about offense, let me start with defense because you're
the perfect person to ask this because you deal with
it every day. There is a there is a a
certain level of hand ringing within the fan base with
this bend. But don't break three three five defense? Is
it is it nitpicky or is their merit to concern
for the defense in your.

Speaker 3 (02:19):
Mind, well as a fan, it is incredibly annoying. Let's
just acknowledge that right out front, like the other team,
almost every time they touch the ball, good duc territory
to the thirty five to forty yard line, and then
some action happens. Then they start tightening up. They're getting,

(02:41):
you know, getting off the field on third and fourth down.
Although it feels like nobody's kicked a field goal against
Cincinnati all year, everybody goes for it. I think there's
they've played seven games. It's either twenty three or twenty
four fourth down attempts in seven games, which feels like
a ton. So I think that adds to it. The

(03:02):
main thing for me is are they keeping teams out
of the end zone? Are they limiting because the point
of playing this defense is to keep teams from getting
over the top of you, beating you deep. And really,
outside of the two plays against Kansas, they haven't given
up a ton of explosives. They have kept teams in

(03:24):
front of them, made teams work long drives down the field,
you know, and you're more likely at some point in
time to make a mistake when you have to do
that every series throughout a game, so in that sense
it's working, but I get it. It drives me nuts
sometimes as I'm watching a game, like are they ever
going to get off? Like this offense is hot? There

(03:45):
have been two games where they you know, the Iowa
State game, in the UCF game, the other team had
the ball at the end of the half, the other
team had the ball at the start of the second half,
and they went over an hour without the offense touching.
That is annoying, but the end result is they are

(04:05):
fifth in the Big Twelve in points allowed, and that's
the point. You're keeping the other team off the scoreboard.
Does it drive you crazy to watch? Is it? Is
it viewer friendly? No? Absolutely not. But it's effective and
with the talent that they have right now, they're working

(04:26):
with what they've got.

Speaker 4 (04:29):
And chat. I'll tell you this just from talking with
defensive coordinators you know for the last however many years.
You know, the guys they've been around a while used
to say or they would say, you know, you used
to you know, kind of care how many yards you
gave up and what your passing yard was. And they're like,
with with modern rules and modern offense, it's do they
score touchdowns? That that's all you care about, right, you

(04:51):
know the stats for these defensive coordat and the ones
that understand that and don't go crazy when oh my god,
we gave it four and fifty yards of offense, but
one was it. Don't go crazy on that are the
ones that are going to stick around for a while.

Speaker 3 (05:06):
And this is why this defense was designed. What people
forget or don't really consider. This defense was designed by
Matt Campbell and his staff at Iowa State that included
Tyson Bite. In a period of time where Big twelve,
almost every score was fifty six to fifty three, you know,
and they had to come up. They came up with

(05:27):
something that they felt like would put an umbrella on
the other team's offense and limit the explosive plays, limit
the fifty sixty seventy yard touchdowns. And that's what's happened
in Iowa State has been the best defense in this
conference year over year for the better part of a
decade playing this defense because they don't let you put
points on the board. Cincinnati has played seven games the

(05:51):
opponent has scored twenty or less in five of those
seven games. It's working now you're playing better offenses coming
up down the stairs. So we'll see. But so far
it's working all right.

Speaker 2 (06:03):
On the offensive side, they have so many different weapons,
and I was struck by something Scott said and his
coaches show this week that they don't with all the weapons,
they don't feel the need to have to feed somebody
to keep them happy. That a Cyrus Allen can go
from one catch for I think minus three yards against
UCF to three touchdowns last week, and there's just that

(06:27):
general shared success of those weapons on that offense.

Speaker 3 (06:31):
Yeah, And I mean Rocky can probably speak to this
a lot better than me. When you go into a
team meeting and you're scouting the next opponent, the number
one thing is the previous game, right. Cyrus Allen was
teams at the beginning of the year. Coming into the year,
they bracketed Joe Royer because Joe Royer was the big
name returning guy. They bracketed him, tried to take him away,

(06:55):
and then other guys started having success, mainly Cyrus Allen.
So then team started saying, all right, we're gonna roll
coverage desires Allen now, Jeff Caldwell's open now, Noah Jennings
is open now, Caleb Good is open now, Joe Royer
is back open again. And that's one of the great
parts about Sorsby is he does a really and more importantly,

(07:16):
maybe the offensive line because Sorsby is having time back
there to read the defense. I mean, you go back
to that third and sixteen that really kind of put
things on ice against Oklahoma States. Or he said that
was his third read Jeff Caldwell over the middle for
six for thirty eight yards in a first down. He
doesn't get to his third read if he doesn't have

(07:37):
the time that the offensive line is giving him. So
it's a it's a multi faceted deal. And I mean
the twenty twenty one guys aren't going to be happy
with me, and we'll see how they finish. But right now,
I think this is the best offense I've seen at
U seasons two thousand and nine.

Speaker 2 (07:55):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (07:56):
Wow, big statement. Ched. Look, obviously this time of year,
as you're getting into November, health is a big part
of this thing. You look at the UC injury report,
no injuries they you know Corleone's back that had no
real devastating injuries. How big of a factors I'm moving forward.

Speaker 3 (08:16):
It's a major factor. And it's a huge testament to
Nico Palace that eat the strengthen conditioning coach, to Aaron Hendler,
who I've never been around someone better at their job
than Aaron Himler is at his He's phenomenal. And also
there's a reason you spend one hundred and fifty million
dollars on that training facility because those guys get to

(08:38):
get in there on Sunday and Monday and Tuesday and
they're in the recovery tubs, and they're they're in the
cryo chambers, and they're doing all the different things that
help guys rest and recover. So you're not playing on
lingering injuries as much as maybe you have been in
the past. I think it's been a huge factor, all
three of those things working in Unison to have gotten

(09:01):
them to this point. They're seven games in knock on Wood.
They haven't really dealt with it. A Ton.

Speaker 2 (09:09):
Baylor's offense productive, Baylor's quarterback dangerous. Yeah, tell Bearcat fans
what they need to know about that Baylor offensive attack.

Speaker 3 (09:19):
Well, if you didn't like the defense giving up a
bunch of yards, might want to watch something else. Saturday
at four because Baylor's gonna get a lot of yards.
But guess what, when you dig into the numbers, they
are not good scoring touchdowns in the red zone. And
that has been one of the strengths of Cincinnati's defense.

(09:42):
So keep an eye on that. If they don't, let
you know, they can keep Baylor from doing what Kansas
did and hitting a couple of those splash touchdowns. If
they can make them work all the way down the
field and get into the red zone and score, that's
been a strength of Cincinnatis. It's been a weakness of bailers.

(10:03):
It also means the bailer's going to chew up a
crap ton of yards between the twenties and you're probably
gonna want to pull your hair out. But that's where
Cincinnati can win this game. They kick a lot of
threes and leave points on the board when they do
get into the red zone, because obviously the field shrinks
and now you've got eight guys in coverage and people

(10:26):
aren't running into open spaces, and you can make them
earn it a little bit more in the red zone
and Sorwyer Robertson's not standing back there just picking you apart.
So that's gonna be the interesting part for me. But
they've got a great quarterback, they've got really good wide receivers,
and the running game is okay. But they run so

(10:47):
many plays that they're still averaging one hundred and forty
yards a game on the ground, So you can't forget
about the run game. But they want to pass, make
no mistake. They want Robertson to stand back there and
throw the ball all day long. You just have to
make sure it's for ten fifteen yards, not forty fifty.

Speaker 2 (11:05):
Last question, it's got to be about hoops. And as
much as I learned my license last year of not
putting much stock in exhibition games, after what they did,
do Oiowa State give me a takeaway, just something that
jumped out at you. In the win over Michigan last week,
I was.

Speaker 3 (11:21):
Really impressed with there's two true freshmen and a red
chair freshman. I was really impressed with how they handled
the atmosphere. Shawnabajev, Keshan Tillery, Tyler McKinley. I thought all
three looked like they belonged the other big thing for me,
and those three were a part of it. There were
moments that different guys took over and had their little window.

(11:43):
They had their period. It was bobon Miller early and
Shawnabiev right before halftime, and Dayde Thomas towards the end,
and Kurt Curse. They hit a couple of big shots.
We talked at nauseum last year about that team just
failed to have others step up. Felt like every game
and there was one guy that was playing well, one
guy's playing okay, and then like seven guys that couldn't

(12:04):
Tyler shoe and chew gum at the same time. This
team needs three for I mean, there were six guys
in double figures against you know, a Michigan team that's
gonna be really good. Nobody's good at defense right now.
They're not where they need to be yet. But I
felt a lot better about the number of guys that
have the ability to step up and have those four

(12:26):
or five minute stretches where they're playing really well.

Speaker 2 (12:29):
All right, tell everybody about Bearcat Journal dot com. Keagan
Nickolson been kicking butt this week, and while I'm thinking
of it, congratulations on the the five hundredth edition of
the Bearcat Journal podcast last night.

Speaker 3 (12:41):
Nice that's a lot of Dave Simone and I talking
like I is. Thank you, thank you for all the
people that have listened. But my god, what are you
doing with your life? Kegan? I missed being in my
early twenties, Lance, I said, Keegan to Kansas City. So
he's driving sending to Kansas City for Basketball media Days,

(13:05):
he laughed, basketball media days today. When to Sayethville, Arkansas.
They'll be there for the UC Arkansas exhibition tomorrow night
and then he's got roughly sixteen hours to make the
ten hour drive back to Cincinnati. He said his goal
is to be in his seat at four o'clock for homecoming.

Speaker 2 (13:24):
Holy cow man.

Speaker 3 (13:27):
Oh to be twenty four again, no doubt about that,
no doubt he is.

Speaker 2 (13:32):
Chad Brendel, Bearcat Journal, Bearcatjournal dot com. Yes, finish your
thought up.

Speaker 3 (13:36):
Sorry, go and support Kegan. He's working his butt off,
no doubt, no doubt.

Speaker 2 (13:43):
Thank you, sir. We'll talk next week.

Speaker 3 (13:45):
Thanks gentlemen, appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (13:47):
Chack Brendel, Bearcat Journal, Bearcat Journal dot Com. Up next,
a little bit of what Charlie Goldsmith told me last
night on Sports Talk about this Bengals run game. The
decision to go with you from the defensive side of
things and thoughts on what has happened to Cam Taylor Britt.
That is all Ahead, He's rocky, I'm Lance.

Speaker 3 (14:06):
It's long.

Speaker 2 (14:07):
Next to in Richwood for the Roundtable Show seven hundred
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