Myles Murphy’s Bengals breakout unfolding by the week

The light has turned on for Cincinnati Bengals defensive end Myles Murphy.

Many clichés apply, but that one seems fair. Murphy, a first-round pick by the Bengals in 2023, couldn’t get on the field for more than 40 percent of a struggling defense’s snaps over the first two seasons of his career.

The struggles, at least in part, had the Bengals going back to the pass-rushing well this year when grabbing Shemar Stewart in the first round.

A Stewart injury and continued absence of Trey Hendrickson, though, left the door open for Murphy over the last few weeks.

Not to remain cliché, but Murphy has blitzed right through it.

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Murphy has matched a career-high in pressures with nine over 12 games, plus 2.5 sacks.

But it goes far beyond metrics. Murphy’s athleticism has been on full display consistently:

And on a defense that has struggled to take proper angles at every level, let alone tackle, Murphy had repeated instances of flattening out Lamar Jackson rushing attempts to the sidelines or influencing plays that simply don’t show up on stat sheets.

With Murphy, it’s a case of better late than never. The holdup is a complicated mashup of factors. A coaching change sticks out. So does Murphy changing up his diet and trainers.

Regardless of how things got to this point, Murphy’s sudden arrival gives the Bengals a little breathing room on the edge going into an offseason where they need to do yet another contract dance with Hendrickson while building the trenches around the hopeful development of Stewart.

If this continues, it will be the combo development of Murphy and Stewart, too, which could certainly ease the roster-building budget and spread the cap spend to the interior of the line, second and third layers of the defense that need some help.

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This article originally appeared on Bengals Wire: Myles Murphy’s Bengals breakout unfolding by the week