HOUSTON _ A few minutes after the Bengals loosened their 20-6 stranglehold on the Texans Sunday, Dexter Lawrence II sat at his locker pulling the tape off his fingers much like he tore through the Houston offensive line and saw quarterback Joe Burrow on the floor stretching out his back and his thoughts.

"Great job, Joe," Lawrence said, and Burrow smiled and pumped his fist as the two Bengals leaders savored a 2-0 start that is uniquely theirs.

With a nod to the Super Bowl run of 2021 and a whiff of their division sweep of 2009, don't look now, but the Bengals are the only unbeatens in the AFC North.

"It feels like early on in 2021," said Burrow after posting a gutty 105-plus passer rating reminiscent of the grimy-but-good kick-start win in Denver five years ago. "We've got a really good defense, and try to stay in front of the sticks, not turn the ball over, kick field goals, put points on the board, we're going
to win with our defense."

With Lawrence stacking it up in the middle like they did in '21 with a game-extinguishing four sacks in the final nine minutes, and cornerbacks Dax Hill and DJ Turner II combining for six passes defensed like Leon Hall and Johnathan Joseph in '09, the defense stoned the Texans on 12 of 17 third downs and kept quarterback C.J. Stroud out of the end zone on four bloody red-zone trips.

"I don't know what the hell is going on. I'm just cheering for the defense," said All-Pro wide receiver Ja'Marr Chase, who conjured up his 2021 Rookie of the Year season with an already legendary touchdown catch.

"I've been saying it since camp. Our defense is really, really good and they're showing it every week now … They set the tone in week one. They set the tone every week. They capitalize every week. They're showing they're one of the best defenses in the league."

For the second straight week, defensive tackle Jonathan Allen, after another sack and two other tackles for loss, found himself explaining that Lawrence's influence can't be felt on a stat sheet. The scribes wanted to know just how Lawrence makes a difference. They were looking at him. Allen has two sacks after having 3.5 all last year in Minnesota.

Lawrence set the second-half tone on the first snap  when he backed the O-line into Stroud for an incompletion, and he signaled the beginning of the end when he worked a stunt with edge Boye Mafe and had Stroud by the waist when he was called for intentional grounding with 10:50 left.

But it was that fourth-and-two-inches stop on the Texans 18 in a scoreless second-quarter game that, Allen agreed, shifted the game.

"I didn't see it. I heard it," Allen said. "It was loud."

Loud enough to serve as a wake-up call for the rest of the loop?

When will they start talking about this defense after they beat the three-time playoff Texans at their own game of a bullying top-five defense and big play offense?

Suddenly, the Bengals defense is third in rushing and eighth in scoring in those two smashmouth AFC North categories. With the best safety play since '21 (and '22 with Jordan Battle and Bryan Cook combining for 12 tackles), the Bengals stoned the Texans backs for 18 yards on 14 carries, allowing defensive coordinator Al Golden to unbutton his shirt on several zero blitzes that computed to a staggering 43% pressure rate.

It all went back to Lawrence's fourth-and-one stop. No shade on the center. No angles. No game.

"Head up. Ran straight," said Lawrence, which is exactly where he is taking this defense.

"Just the care we have for each other," Lawrence said. "We encourage each other a lot. We've got a lot of leaders on the defense. We talk all game about situations when we are in the game. It's hard to beat that when your mind is there all game.

"The last game, (the Texans) ran it 30-something times. We wanted to out-physical them and play hard in the run game."

Just like he did in '09, special teams coordinator Darrin Simmons made sure his specialists matched the ebb-and-flow of a blue-collar game. Back then, he had the franchise's most accurate kicker in Shayne Graham and a rookie soon to be the club's all-time punter in Kevin Huber.

He got an '09 game in '26. Punter Ryan Rehkow drilled four punts inside the 20 and kicker Evan McPherson upped his percentage to near 70% from 50 yards and beyond with bullets from 51 and 57.

"We were at 57 and a half," McPherson said with a smile. "If I were an offense, I wouldn't want to play our defense right now. We feel like if we pin them inside the 30, we're going to stop them."

The Bengals led, 17-6, with 12:16 left in the game and when a miss from 57.5 would have let the Texans back in, head coach Zac Taylor and everybody else had no qualms about rolling Money Mac to the bank.

"That was our line going in," McPherson said. "At the 40."

That was 18 straight, three shy of Graham's club record.

"I've got to hand it to our special teams unit," Taylor said. "Our punt team, I think they had seven possessions inside the 25, 8-yard line, 10-yard line, 12-yard line. That's a long day. That's the type of defense we want teams to have to go 90 on and we feel like we've got the offense to capitalize on it."

You could say this win went through Hillcrest's McEvoy Park in Cincinnati. That's where both Cook and Texans running back David Montgomery played youth ball before they joined forces at Mount Healthy High School.

The estimable Montgomery, one of the NFL's most seasoned and productive backs coming off a three-touchdown Texans debut the week before, couldn't even get to Hamilton Ave Sunday. Not on six carries for 10 yards.

"I'm not just saying this because he's my big bro," Cook said. "The plan was to stop him. He's been doing it for a long time. We wanted to get CJ in situations where we'd keep him in the pocket."

Cook can sense it. There is confidence building after allowing two touchdowns in the first eight quarters.

"We've got some swag now," Cook said. "It's what I told you before the season. We're going to be stingy. That's our motto. Stingy, fly around, and play together."

Burrow called his outing "incredibly average," but seeing that it came against the Texans' terrorizing pass rush, that was a bit of an understatement. It was, actually, incredibly courageous because in a week he basically sat out with a tight back, he got sacked five times, hit five more, and joked with Texans sack ace Will Anderson Jr., after it was over by thanking him for putting his rib back in place.

The Bengals went in planning to give their tackles help against Anderson and Danielle Hunter, and the protection got better as the game went.

"We didn't really change anything," said tight end Drew Sample. "It was like, 'Here's more plays we like,' whether playing on the hash, depending on who is in. I don't think we changed a lot. I'm sure it was potentially in Zac's head to probably prioritize those calls with help on those guys. But we had a mix of everything."

No one has played more Bengals games on this roster than Sample. He agreed it was throwback-type, complete-game stuff.

"I think the first two games on offense we've done some great stuff," Sample said. "It's been a mixed bag. We still have room to get better and to still be 2-0, I think that's huge. I think it's a testament to how the defense is playing."

Playing well enough like some memorable seasons. Lawrence ripped off the last bit of tape and reflected.

"We knew we had to play vertical and physical," said Lawrence, who doesn't seem to have an equal in their recent past.