“Nick Vigil played his ass off,” Burfict said after the win. “Most of the plays I didn’t see or came to his side, he did a good job of rallying to it. I tip my hat off to him. He gets the game ball from me.”
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Vigil said that performance correlated with Burfict’s return.
“Offenses are keying on him,” Vigil said. “They’re knowing where he’s at all the time so that frees up stuff for me. They have to keep an eye out for him.”
Even before Sunday’s breakout game, Vigil had been one of the bright spots in an 0-3 start, leading the team in tackles in his first season as a starter.
“He’s done a great job,” defensive coordinator Paul Guenther said. “It’s a natural process for linebackers like that, just trying to get lined up, where do I fit, where do I go on this blitz or whatever it may be. Right now for him, it’s clicking fast.”
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The Bengals drafted Vigil in the third round last year out of Utah State, but most of his action was limited to special teams until the final few weeks of the season when the team was out of playoff contention and focused on getting experience for the younger players.
Vigil played 24 percent of the defensive snaps in Week 15, 31 percent in Week 16 and 51 percent in the season finale.
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“The more reps you get, the faster you play,” he said. “The more times you see it, the more you recognize it and you can diagnose the play faster. That’s been a little better for me this year. The more reps you get you understand where your leverage is at, where you have help is, where you can miss and where you can’t.
“I feel like I did a little better this week,” he added. “I still missed a couple. Still have to clean up that. That’s probably one of the things I have to focus on the most. Tackling.”
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Vigil is proving he can do more than tackle. He’s got the speed to get to the edge against the run and cover running backs in the passing game, which is why he rarely comes off the field. And why he drew the praise of head coach Marvin Lewis, who said he didn’t need to go back and watch the game film to know how impressive Vigil was against the Browns.
“He was involved a lot of times in coverage, where he was in the right spot, and forced the ball to go underneath, which is kind of an error we had made in the past,” Lewis continued. “So we had some growth and steps yesterday, which was good.”
Vigil’s emergence is a big reason why the Bengals rank third in total defense (273.3 yards per game) and scoring defense (16.8 points per game).
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“I think we’re playing well,” Vigil said. “The first couple of weeks we gave up a lot of shot plays, a lot of big plays that killed us. This past week we really didn’t do that. We didn’t give up any big touchdowns. It was good.”
Burfict embraced Vigil from the moment he arrived in Cincinnati, calling him “Luke” in reference to Carolina Pro Bowl linebacker Luke Kuechly — a Cincinnati native who at 6-foot-3, 238 pounds is built similar to the 6-2, 235-pound Vigil and even wears the same jersey No. 59 — and helping him adjust to the NFL.
“It’s good when one of the best players on the team kind of takes you in and helps you out and helps you learn stuff and accepts you in the group,” Vigil said. “It’s something that really helped me out early on.”
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And that help continues, only this time it’s on the field instead of in meeting rooms.
“He helps me out with tips before the snap, and then when we come to the sideline we talk about it,” Vigil said. “It helps you out throughout the game.
“He’s just seen things so many times, he comes out and sees the offensive formation and where guys are lined up and he can pretty much tell you what’s going to happen most plays,” Vigil added. “Most of the times he’s right. It’s not very often he’s wrong. Might as well just trust him, and if something else happens just play it out.”
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