CINCINNATI -- There are few phrases coaches utter that drive offensive tackles as crazy as the one they hear each practice and in every one-on-one rep they take against defensive ends.
"Get their hands down!"
Atlanta, Tampa Bay, Green Bay, Cincinnati, San Francisco. It doesn't matter which city a tackle calls home or which team he plays for, he's going to hear those four words quite regularly.
The Bengals' edge pocket protectors certainly have heard them this week and the last, because by the end of this stretch, they will have faced two of the NFL's best ends at getting their hands up and disrupting a quarterbacks' passing lanes. When going against such ends, it's an offensive lineman's mission to prevent their opponent from disengaging, leaving their feet and raising their arms up high.
Last week's challenge came from J.J. Watt, who has been so good at breaking up passes at the line of scrimmage throughout his career that some have started calling him "J.J. Swatt." During the 2011 playoffs, Watt didn't just swat a Bengals pass just before halftime, he picked it off. Cincinnati's wild-card round loss at Houston came after Watt broke free from a guard and plucked from the air an Andy Dalton pass that he returned 29 yards for a touchdown. The Texans didn't look back and routed the Bengals from there, 31-10.
It can be argued that it was then that Watt's legend began.
When the Bengals travel to Tampa this Sunday, they will be facing another defensive end with long, pass-batting arms. Former Bengals defensive end Michael Johnson, signed in the offseason by the Buccaneers, will be looking for his first pass deflection when he gets paired with veteran Bengals tackle Andrew Whitworth. That's right, first. Johnson doesn't have any pass deflections this season, according to ESPN Stats & Information, but he was tied for the league lead with eight last year.
"Like I said [last week] about J.J., it's one of those qualities you can't teach and all of a sudden, this guy knows how to do it," Whitworth said. "If good football players can read a quarterback and feel like he stopped his feet and is releasing the football, they jump. Nothing you can do about it. Outside of if you run a play where everybody is cutting everybody in that kind of play ... there's nothing you can do about a guy that jumps."
Sometimes, Bengals right tackle Marshall Newhouse added, a tackle just has to tip his cap to an end.
"As much as people would like to believe, sometimes guys get their hands up regardless," said Newhouse, the Bengals' new starter on the right edge following Andre Smith's season-ending injury. "But you can do things to combat it. You can be aggressive in your sets to a certain degree. A lot of it has to do with how hard you come off in the run game. There's some things where you can kind -- I don't want to say dive at them -- but be more physical at the point of attack.
"At the end of the day, there's certain times when it's avoidable, and there's certain times when it's unavoidable. We do our best to make sure it's avoidable. Those are rough plays to see, especially when a guy's wide open and the ball gets batted down at the line."
Watt leads the NFL in batted passes since 2011 with 33. Johnson has 11.
Johnson's most memorable deflection in Cincinnati came last October against the Green Bay Packers, when he knocked down a fourth-down pass that helped ice an early-season Bengals win.