Breaking down how the Cincinnati Bengals are evolving after losing DJ Reader and potentially Ja'Marr Chase - podcast episode cover

Breaking down how the Cincinnati Bengals are evolving after losing DJ Reader and potentially Ja'Marr Chase

Dec 20, 202338 min
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Episode description

Jake and Mike (@bengals_sans) Santagata break down how Lou Anarumo made a wholesale adjustment to the way his defense played against the run after DJ Reader's injury. Plus, we get into how the offense continues to show signs of sustainability as they find what Jake Browning is best at, and adaptability, including how they may change things if Ja'Marr Chase needs to miss any time. Join the Locked On Bengals Subtext Community! https://joinsubtext.com/lockedonbengals Find and follow Locked On Bengals on your favorite podcast platforms: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/locked-on-bengals-daily-podcast-on-the-cincinnati-bengals/id1159723162 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7AObc0lh0WmQl5fJVgtajs Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vbG9ja2Vkb25iZW5nYWxz?sa=X&ved=0CAYQrrcFahcKEwio_sXtj8nuAhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAg Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/locked-on-bengals Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors! DoorDash Get 50% off up to $10 value when you spend $15 or more on your FIRST order, when you download the DoorDash app and enter code LOCKED23. Subject to change. Terms apply. PrizePicks Go to PrizePicks.com/lockedonnfl and use code lockedonnfl for a first deposit match up to $100! Gametime Download the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONNFL for $20 off your first purchase. Last minute tickets. Lowest Price. Guaranteed. LinkedIn LinkedIn Jobs helps you find the qualified candidates you want to talk to, faster. Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com/LOCKEDONNFL. Terms and conditions apply. FanDuel Score early this NFL season with FanDuel, America’s Number One Sportsbook! Right now, NEW customers get ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS in BONUS BETS with any winning FIVE DOLLAR MONEYLINE BET! That’s A HUNDRED AND FIFTY BUCKS – if your team wins! Visit FanDuel.com/LOCKEDON to get started. FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

It's the Locked On Podcast Network. Your team every day. Score early this NFL season with Fan Duel, America's number one sports book. Right now, new customers get one and fifty dollars in bonus bets with any winning five dollars money line bet. That's one hundred and fifty bucks if your team wins. If you've been thinking about joining Fan Duel, there's no better time to get

in on the action. The app is super easy to use. There's a wide range of betting options, including spreads, player props, over unders, and more So. Visitfanduel dot com, slash locked on and kick off the NFL season. Fan Duel, official partner of the NFL. Cincinnati Bengals lost DJ Reader early on Saturday, so we got a sneak peek at what they might do to adapt their defense without him. Let's get into it. You are Locked On Bengals, Your daily Cincinnati Bengals podcast, part of the Locked

On Podcast Network. Your Team Day, Bengals fans, and welcome to another episode of the Lockdown Bengals Podcast. I'm your host, Jake. Let's go join today by Mike Santagat as we review the film from a long time ago. Now Saturday, the Bengals played the Vikings. We're going to get into some of the adaptations we might see from the Cincinnati Bengals on defense and on offense if Jamar Chase misses this week. But with the status in the air,

we are going to start on the defensive side of the ball. Today's episode brought to you by the Game Time app, where you can use promo code locked on NFL to get twenty dollars off your first purchase of last minute tickets, lowest price guaranteed. And Mike wants to talk about on the defensive side of the ball, including Mike Hilton fantastic day, Miles Murphy continuing to

trend in the right direction. Some things did go well for this defense, despite Nick Mullins putting up twenty four points, despite some of the things that didn't go so well, and despite losing DJ Reader and the run Dee was not one of the things that for the most part in this game was very

good. They had to change the way they were approaching run defense without DJ Reader, though, what were the big changes we saw from lou Ana Rimo when DJ reader was to clear down essentially wholesale philosophical changes on how you defend the run, where with Reader in they will slow play everything. I mean, but that is guys are controlling their gap. A lot of gay Reader is going to be two gapping or gap and a half. Sometimes they have

Hill doing that as well. And you're gonna go slow. You're not going to try to get penetration. You're going to try to destroy this block and be able to clog everything up so that these are all one yard games. They tried that for a little bit after Reader went down, but the guys weren ale to do it because he's kind of the key cog there, he's the nose. He's taken up both A gaps tupau. Whoever they had in

there wasn't going to be able to take up both a gaps. And actually they were getting kind of driven off the ball a little bit, so they switched it. And the first thing is that they started kind of stunting a little bit or sending some pressures, and that is going to be playing fast. And there are two different plays. They spiked the end and that is that end is in the C gap and he's just gonna slant inside to the B gap And usually cross the face of the tackle, and outside of that,

you still need a ce gap defender. So out goes a linebacker, and that linebacker is going to come free most of the time because the tackle goes, oh crap, I gotta take this guy so that he's not a free runner. And now, well there's a different free runner. So that happened to get Logan Wilson a free tackle. They got a few run stops doing that, but it becomes a very volatile way to play run defense.

You'll probably get more tea because you're trying to penetrate, you're trying to slant get guys free, but at the same time, you're probably also going to leave some stuff available for these backs to take advantage of when something doesn't work, because now instead of slow playing and letting it, you know, clog everything up and don't allow any holes. While when you're playing fast sometimes those

holes get created. And you can kind of think about how teams played the Bengals not this week but the last two weeks, which the Vikings do fast, but that's a whole different thing. They're way different than any defense. But like the Jags, they took advantage of Jags. They want to play

fast, they get penetration, so let's just trap that guy. So now you have to be able to lookout for those type of things where they weren't trapping the three techs in the Bengals defense very often because they're like, well, that guy's not getting up field. He's reading run, play run, then pass instead of play pass then run, or at least get penetration versus try to hold your gap. It does lead to a more aggressive style of

defense. You saw, for example, on the first play of the second half, where DJ Turner just needs to make the tackle on the edge. Logan Wilson gets a free run through, but the running back is able to react in time and bounce it and everybody's playing fast, like you said, and he's able to try to cut it off of a tight end block that seals dack Hill inside and he has one on one with DJ Turner and makes DJ Turner miss and there's nobody behind it. There's no help. And you

did see that from both safeties and linebackers playing more on the perimeter. You saw the linebackers trying to, like you said, trying to feel faster, trying to find those run throughs, and it does lead to some of those really nice tackle for losses, but also opens you up to some things. On a scale of one to ten, how worried are we about the run

games of the next few opponents? Obviously Cleveland has some injuries on their offensive line and that's a few weeks away, but has presented a tough run game all Kansas City and Pittsburgh in the next two weeks. Though, what's your concern level on a one to ten scale for just runs up the middle essentially for those teams? Uh? Eight? Yeah, I was already concerned, but at least I thought like, well, they won't be able to attack

the a gaps with Reader there. I was like, well, they could kind of attack a lot of places right now, but you could probably sell out a little bit against the Steelers. It's Mason Rudolph. It might be it was a limited participation for Kenny Pickett apparently on Tuesday. Okay, well, whoever, it is not that I'm worried about Kenny Puckett. Whoever it is. It's not a passing offense that you are praying that you're able to stop. It's more so kind of the oes we can't stop that, which

I guess that did happen last Pittsburgh Gay. But the Chiefs. I feel like the Chiefs I have more concerned though, just because they do have a really good interior than Creed Hump for Joe Toney and Trey Smith. They also are going to worry you enough in the past game that even though the pass game isn't what it has been, I feel like you're never really going to sell out to stop the run against the Pat Mahomes led Andy Reid led team.

Yeah, probably probably still going to try to play a little umbrella, keep everything in front of you situation. So I've got quite a bit of concern there. And then the Browns game is like that's their entire offense, I mean, and play action, Joe Flacco underthrown deep ball, pass interference, and sometimes they'll actually hit him apparently this year, but we'll talk about that game in a few weeks when we get there. Mike Hilton stood out

for a really fantastic game on defense. You only had three tackles, I think in this in the stat book, but successfully defended a screen, successfully carried Justin Jefferson on a post that was almost kicked off because Mullin's underthrew it. Had a few really good plays as a blitzer, particularly against the run,

a number of plays right at the line of scrimmage. He also blew up the little throwback pass by getting into Jefferson's face on that little trick play the Vikings ran, forcing him to rush his process and throw it into the ground. Mike Keilton can help you, and if he's going to play like that, that could be something that if they need to get more aggressive,

more creative with how they're playing run defense. Mike Kelton a guy that is willing to do it both from the slot corner alignment and even from you know, a linebacker alignment. We saw even a couple of times in this game he had a run through the linebackers. It was exciting. But also they ran more saw pressures than we've seen, and that is typically the pressure you

see whenever you see Mike Keilton make some tackle them back. And the saw pressure is both sides, so Sam will saw Sam and Will are coming and so both sides pressure coming. It's actually fun that in a few weeks or next week, Spagnolo, that's what he's known for, are these saw pressures. And now it feels like Ruma's gonna have to lean on those a little bit, and they almost got caught with one. This is kind of a

cool play from Logan Wilson. They almost got caught on one because they brought a saw pressure in the Vikings. Perfect answer, let's start a screen out there because it's two on one for the Vikings not the Bengals. That is a bad situation to be in. But Logan Wilson recognize what was happening so fast. Oh no, he's just gonna sprinting out there, and he makes

a stop for like one yard. That's fantastic player. You're gonna need those plays, and you're gonna need Mike Hilton playing well all to make up for this because they're gonna be sending more stuff and they're gonna be sending me saw pressures. The linebacker's got to have a quicker trigger. But yeah, anyway, they're gonna send more saw pressures because that's at least I think they will, because that's what they did in this game than they have in the previous

few weeks. And all that means is, hey, we might see some Mike Hilton TFLs. It's exciting. It does lead to defensive lineman dropping into mostly like spot drop zones as well, because they're generally dropping guys out when they send those. They're not to sending like zero with the corner blitzes, for example, a couple of Okay, I mean I know that they'll run straight zero for sure. Like the Wilson play was a five man pressure, so they weren't in a zero situation. It was I think it was a

fire zone situation. A couple other guys, and we're not gonna have time to talk about in a great deal of depth. But Jordan battle not perfect, but I thought was pretty good, particularly in run dye. I think

he was there where he was supposed to be. Again for the most part, there's one play that we talked about before we started recording where he jumps into the wrong gap that's exploited a little bit, but continues to play physical and willing to play and getting to the right spot in the run game, which is a welcome change of pace, and Miles Murphy continuing to trend in

the right direction with a couple of really nice plays against Christian Darisa. In this one, we'll continue the conversation about adaptations and get into the offense a little bit, as Jamar Chase might miss some time coming up next. This episode of Lockdown Bengals is sponsored by Prize Picks, the largest daily fantasy sports platform in North America. The easiest and most exciting way to play daily fantasy

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Slash Locked on NFL you can use promo code locked on NFL forty first a posit matchup to one hundred dollars again that's prizepix dot Com slash Locked on NFL promo code Locked on NFL for a first a POSA match up to one hundred dollars. Prize. Pix is Daily Fantasy Sports made easy. What's up, everybody, It's Joe Marino, host of the Lockdown Bills and Lockdown NFL Scouting podcast, and folks, if you like using debit over credit, I

just learned about something that's definitely a game changer. Discover cash Back Debit. It's a checking account that rewards everyone with cash back on everyday purchases, which means you can get cash back on tickets for the game, snacks, team merch all with no fees, making this season a total win. Check out eligibility in terms at Discover dot com Slash cash Back Debit, Discover Bank member FDIC Mike, Let's switch gears talk offense and there's a lot to talk about

in this game with Jake Browning that we can get to. The First thing I want to talk about is how they adapt if Jamar Chase has to miss time, because it's one thing to not have Joe Burrow and it's incredibly impressive what Jake Browning has done instead for Joe Burrow and in Joe Burrow Stead the

last few weeks, and they've done it multiple ways. You credit the offensive coaching staff as well, obviously for things that we've talked about the last few weeks, be it screen game, be it changing up the running game this week, finding dagger as a consistent answer. I think every single time either

team ran any variation of dagger in this game, it was successful. But more notably so I think for Jake Browning in the Cincinnati Bengals, but Jamar Chase leaves a game to Bengals obviously still do enough to win, but Jamar Chase misses twenty snaps in this game and might miss against the Steelers. And if there's a place you're pointing to on the Steelers where you're thinking we can

exploit this, it's probably in that secondary. How do the Bengals go about doing that or what signs do we see from them last week against Kings that you can see them go back to if Jamar Chase has to mess I do think they have an understanding of what Browning is most comfortable with, and like you mentioned, dagger, but not just dagger, but also the wrap ends on rays, spools, whatever you want to call that. It's also part

of the Cobo concept. But they got to that a lot. They got to a lot of intermediate middle of the field stuff and is typically some type of twelve yard in or fifteen yard in that they just hammered these guys with. And Jake Browning is good on that. I think they're learning that Jake Browning is not very good with the pick aside type reads where they cut it down the middle. It's like millfield open, this's middlefield closed that way.

What he is good at is hitting all this stuff in the middle of field. But what he's even better at, I think, and this has actually got him into trouble, is how he threw the pick. But he he is very willing to throw an alert and what that is is basically a lot of times it's something that quarterbacks kind of just skip past, like the deep

ball on something that's really just designed to clear something out. But then Charlie Jones Charlie Jones, and that's why I was I said this in our post game, so I was incredibly impressed with the read from Browning there to make that throw. Because we've seen Joe Burrow pass that throw up a number of times. Yeah, and the first throw of the game, the Higgins deep

ball that he dropped. That was also the alert on the plane. It's like, typically not something that you're gonna throw, but you know, he kind of hangs there. He's like, if it's there, I'm throwing it. Type of thing where I feel like a lot of especially backup quarterbacks, are kind of terrified of doing that, Like, no, I need to run the offense exactly how it's here so that I keep a job. Browning doesn't really have that. Running has kind of like a whatever, man,

I'll just toss the deep ball. They'll be happy when it's his hands. So I like that. I like that they're finding what works best for him. I think maybe we just cut out smash concepts. Well, so let's let's stay on topic here. What we're talking about first is what they did and what they can do in the absence of Jamar Chase. Okay, well, I think you get to that. I think you still get to the rap ed, you get to the dagger concepts. You work intermediate, middle

of the field, high low reads. It's what he's been the best at his entire time here and that's like the wrap stuff. That's the dagger stuff. That's everything. Whether it's three levels, two levels, it doesn't matter. Maybe they work some drive concepts in there as well. This past week.

I don't think they really did much with them, but I feel like drive would be the outside receiver is going to run kind of like a drag underneath shallow route quick and then the guy inside of him is usually going to do outside release, go for about ten yards and then cut in and just what you're thinking. Hilo linebacker stays on the comes down and tries to drive on that shallow route. You can hit the ind behind them. They stay

back because they know that's cheese. And then you just take the underneath thing and then usually try to get somebody that can actually run as the underneath guy in there, so that you know it's not just three yards you can go create, but working all this stuff that he feels comfortable with. That's what

you're going to have to do against Pittsburgh. Is what they didn't know that they could do against Pittsburgh last time they played, because they had him go out there in empty and run dragon line, which is a Burrow loves that Burrough loves dragon line slant flat plus double slant. I know exactly where I need to go, and he knows leverage and you know, middlefield, open,

millfield, clothes whatever. There was a very specific example that they ran that, and Browning starts on the wrong side in this quick game, so you kind of have to go throw something over there, like I can't reset completely and go to the other side because the offensive lines thinking this ball is coming out in two seconds, so let me just get this ball out Turfit. Now you're not seeing that as much because he's more comfortable with the stuff

that they're trying to run. So you kind of hit that with or without Chase. I think the one big change you're going to have is, well, let's talk about two changes. One. I don't think the Steelers are going to like play a lot of too high coverage with Chase, even though Higgins is a great receiver. I think they're going to sell out to stop the run, kind of like they did the last time they played. That feels bold to me. When you're missing your two starting safeties, probably I'm

kind of expecting it. Well, one thing I talked with Luke about in the crossover last week was something that the Vikings hadn't seen a lot when they send these blitzes is when a quarterback's hot is throwing the vertical. The Bengals did that a couple of times. It didn't always work, but Jake Browning willing to push the ball down the field, and I think that that was

their mentality. Like you think about the quote that you know, Browning said, Callahan told him before the game, I think you're going to throw for five hundred yards. Like their approach to that game was They're going to be aggressive and Jake Browning is going to find a void his zones and throw to them. And I think somebody had the stats like against pressure, Browning had a dot of like eighteen yards. Yeah, yeah, I think that was Nate Tice or Robert Mays, one of those guys on the up Play Show,

the Athletic Show podcast. But yeah, like I think that. But if I was guessing what the Steelers did, like what were we successful with last time? Keep it eight in the box, stopping the run, making that guy throw, And maybe they're not ready. They're probably gonna watch film and see some of the stuff, so maybe they're gonna try to take away some of the middle of field stuff and that gets into the whole chess game.

But if I was, if I'm them, I'm kind of kind of thinking and confident of like, yeah, let's stop the run and make him throw because that's what they did last time. It's like, yeah, we trust our guys, So I think they're not gonna get as much too high. We'll see, but I think they're going to sell it to stop the run. And then the other part of not having Chase is you might not

try to run so much isolation stuff. For say, haven't done a ton of that's more of a Burrow loves doing that because he's so good on like back shoulder balls and turns those fifty to fifties into eighty twenty whatever you want to talk about. So maybe you're not going to see a ton of that. But at the same time, they are going to have the opportunity if they do play a lot of single how to just toss the balls up to

Higgins if they want to. But that's what I'm thinking is just the two things here are we're going to probably try to work more true drop back conflict concepts versus try to work isolation concepts. And they're probably going to have to have stuff that's going to beat a lot of single high plus one in the

box stuff. That's a small thing, but they also lose some of the Jamar Chase motion gravity stuff that they like to use to move defenses and kind of set stuff up away from that motion or even they try to go to him. They also lose some of the quick you know, RPO alert or RPO access stuff that they would run with Chase, where they just get chase the ball at the line of scrimmage. Maybe there's a blocker over there to help, or usually there's a blocker over there to help, and you're trusting

him to make a guy miss because he's very good at that. They might still try to do that a little bit. That hasn't been as big a part of the offense in recent weeks second level, so they can still hit those if they want. Against Jacksonville, they could, but that's something they went away from, and I think that's such a game plan specific thing. That's why I struggle to draw too many long term conclusions from any individual game,

because they are very defense reactive. Right now, they're changing what they're doing on offense I think quite a bit to account for what they're expecting to get in a matchup perspective. In that chess game aspect is quite interesting. But one thing that is encouraging is how well Browning has been distributing it to

a ton of different targets. You go look at the number of players that had catches, a number of players that had targets against Minnesota, and even really for his entire tenure playing quarterback for the Bengals, he's pretty comfortable throwing the ball to anybody, and so you do lose some of the individual dynamism and playmaking from Jamar Chase. But maybe that's a sign of sustainability. We'll

talk signs of sustainability. What else we've seen from this offense in Jake Browning that could lead you to buy in a little bit to finish up the show coming up next. Today's episode of Lockdown Bengals is sponsored by the game Time app, the fastest and easiest way to buy tickets to a Bengals game.

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get fifty percent off your first month. Again, that's promo code NFL at Filo dot tv for fifty percent off your first month. Mike, let's stay on the offense, finish up the show here, and if there's anything that we need to revisit on the defensive side of the ball, they're always happy to do that. But the big topic for me that I've been thinking about that a lot of people have been thinking about. I mean, look at the volume of Jake Browning analysis videos on the internet this week from Underdog,

from JT. O. Sullivan, the airtime that the Bengals are still getting on the Athletic Football Show, and those are the ones that I ingest. So if you're one of the people out there watching cable, watching NFL Network and watching ESPN, I don't know how much they're talking about Jake Browning there. I don't really care, but I do care about how sustainable things are. They're not playing the best teams. They're playing backup quarterbacks. That continues.

They're playing flawed offenses. That continues even with the Chiefs. But at three games now of pretty good play from Jake Browning, not perfect by any means, but he's shown you his ceiling, I think, or that he you can reach a pretty high ceiling at least. What are the things that look sustainable for you after three weeks versus what are the things that you think

still need to be cleaned up or give you some pass. I thought this game gave you a little bit of the uh, a little bit more feeling of sustainability because he worked a lot of drop back and that was one of the big concerns before this week, where he's always ahead of sticks. You know, he's always got the run game. Almost everything is play action two man concept type stuff, and I don't know if that's sustainable. What about when the run game's not working. It's not that the run game didn't work

this past week. It was perfect, but I thought it it wasn't as bad as what it was against Pittsburgh earlier this year. Well, and they got way behind on the game script. Yeah, that's a huge problem. They fell behind the game script, and that asked the question, Okay, can you drop back and pass when they know you're going to pass? And they were able to. Now is it going to carry over week to week?

I feel like that is there's a sample size question here. There's also a question of can he get through a game without throwing the interception that it's like, nah, it's Nick Tice. Once. I've talked about how his feet are tell like Josh Allen's feet will tell him no one something. He throws it anyway, and you do see on that play is in the side of Jake Brown kind of like shuffle shuffle throws it anyway. It's it's like, I know I need to move off this read, but it is what

it is. Can you get through that he did it without Chase. There are questions about it, but I do think that it has looked fairly sustainable the past three weeks. I think you're looking at different ways to win against different defenses, against some one very difficult defense. In the Vikings, they're running as they have a lot of the tenure of a healthy of a healthy Joe Burrow is a lot of you know, solid concepts that makes sense and

work. A guy that is in Browning doing his best in terms of getting to the right read, working, you know, with what's given, finding the open guy, and then a little bit extra sometimes with like how he hangs on alerts a little bit and was willing to throw those and probably does a little too much stunt double stuff where he's trying to run around crash into people. But overall it looks sustainable. It's just a question of can it be consistent? Can it work week to week? And now you're facing the

team that really made this not look like it's gonna work. Can you go and into Pittsburgh and do that against them? I think that's a big question. And you hope the second time around with Pittsburgh helps. The offensive line has been playing way better. You hope that helps. You hope that that continues. They against Minnesota, Browning talked about took the responsibility of setting the

protection off of Jake Browning and let Ted Carris do it. Yeah, maybe they've been doing that all along, but it was notable that Jake Browning took time this press conference to shout out Ted Carris for handling a lot of that work. And if Ted Carris can do that again, it lets Jake Browning think about other things. He doesn't have to worry as much about setting the

protection. He has to hear the protection call so he knows where he needs to be hot and all those things, of course, but it gives him the opportunity to think more about what's the defense showing me, what are the things they like to get to out of this look against the Vikings. You never know what they're going to play based on the pre snap look. Like that's the thing about the Vikings. If you go watch these ex quarterbacks Colt

McCoy and JT. O. Sullivan breaking down Jake Browning's tape this week, what impressed him so much was how he was able to deal with pre snapost snap decision making, and how he was able to get the ball to the right place against these very exotic and difficult to figure out looks pre snap. And Pittsburgh doesn't do as much of that. I don't think anyone does as

much of that as Brian Flora's defense in Minnesota. But where Pittsburgh challenges you certainly with their pass rush and making things uncomfortable for you in the pocket, but without the safeties in Pittsburgh, the weakness clearly to me is in their back seven. So if you can protect, can Jake Browning settle in? Can they find that rhythm for him earlier in the game, because that's really what it is, right, It took them so long to figure out where

those plays needed to come. Some of the plays they could have had early in the game. You have the Charlie Jones slow down on the alert ball that we talked about earlier. We had the t Higgins drop on the other alert pall that we talked I guess there's a couple of alert balls. The cunt receivers off guard and Browning wasn't seeing things great. I messaged you during

the game that it felt like he was treading water. It felt like he was drowning a little bit, until suddenly he wasn't, And so you got to get to that suddenly he wasn't a little bit earlier in the game, like more of the Colts game and find the right time to pull those levers. The other thing that's going to be interesting is how the run game continues to involve, because it did feel very different as we said it would.

Against Minnesota. They didn't do as much of the trap wham toss punished opposing defense for getting upfield. They did have a pretty successful toss play Jase Brown's best run of the day, but it was a lot more of the mixing kind of game. The patient, set up your blocks, bounce it outside,

and they do need to run the ball better. Against Pittsburgh. I think it's noteworthy that they got it back on track with Jake Browning being a drop back passer, more pure progression stuff, not splitting the field in half like you talked about earlier. But they did it without running the ball. They didn't establish the run. They got some solid workout of the run as a game went on, but they got back into the game throwing it with

Jake Browning. But if you have a run game going the way it was going against the Steelers, that does make things harder because then there's I mean, they got nothing against the Steelers that needs to be better. What changes can they make there? Do you think schematically to help the run game have more of it? Shot? Yeah, I think, well, one, you're just going to be better execution, because I thought a lot of the concepts that they kind of dialed up against Pittsburgh made sense to me. They're

trying to run long trap, they're trying to run counter. They're trying to and if you watch the Bill's Cowboys game, it was almost all long trap and some counter stuff, and they're playing a similar idea. They're playing an odd front. They're playing five guys up front, and well Pittsburgh was playing two and sometimes a safety walk down to make three guys eight guys in the

box and Dallas is kind of the opposite. They had five guys on the line and one guy behind it. But still you're in a situation where those angles line up so that that play is going to work. Your guard will be able to get to that end outside linebacker whatever you want to call him, and open up a hole. But you need everybody else to kind of work out on that because those concepts that they're getting to aren't really concepts where

most most of the guys on those concepts can't completely fail their block. You can lose the block, you can lose it slow, you could lose leverage, but you can't lose so bad a guy crossed your face and you don't even have a hand on him anymore. So that felt like the big issue against Pittsburgh last time was that Alex Kappa would lose across his face to Keanu Benton. The tight ends and wide receivers didn't give him anything in the run

blocking department. Which I also think that the Higgins is probably their best blocking receiver and he missed that game, so he'll be in this one. So maybe you can use him to dig some guys out that they weren't able to do last time. I probably even without Chase, try to throw on a little bit of motion, sprinkle ins, a little bit of eye candy in there. Yeah, just go away from that. You have to, just because I don't think that the spine, especially the linebackers and safeties for Pittsburgh

are going to be a strong suit. So you give him a little something to look the wrong way. They might take it, especially without Minca, like Mink would be a guy like I don't think he's going to fall for that. But now the other guys, yeah, and Minka might not even play, so I think, well, I think that he's been I think sure, I think it would be very surprising if he plays. Okay, But you know, let's mess with their eyes. Let's hit the angles.

Let's kind of work this so that it's the angles work out. Your running back is going to have to find reads on a lot of these plays, so you can use brown or mix, and I think more brown would make sense in this game to just try to generate an explosive in there. For if this all hits, he's hitting open field against the backup safety and he might be able to make that guy miss and go for a huge game.

One of the most impressive plays for Chase Brown, and I mentioned this I think on the post game show was running through the cameraon Binden tackle on the screen early in the game personnel too, that was two running backs. Just just love seeing that power from him because I didn't really see a ton of that in his game prior to the last couple of weeks, So nice to

see that element coming along. The last thing I'll say then we're going to get out of here is I've been really impressed with the coaching staff the last few weeks, finding answers, finding the right levers to pool at the right times, and that includes on the defensive side of the ball. That includes

on the defensive side of the ball against some vikings. I thought that Luna Room for the most part, not always because you're not always going to be right as a defensive coordinator, but I thought he mostly called a pretty good game and then just didn't really get the execution he needed out of some guys

on the field at some times. And then justin Jefferson just went berserk at times where you know, Mullins would float a ball out there to Jordan Addison that turned into two touchdowns that were two of the stupidest touchdown passes I've ever seen, and some of that's execution right, Like you have a chance to make plays on the ball or to at least make a tackle there for Jermaine Pratt and for DJ Turner, and DJ Turner had a game that he's going

to need to learn from and improve from. But I did think that on both sides of all the coaching staffs have found some pretty good answers and have called some pretty good games lately. But that's going to do it. For this episode of the Lockdown Bengals podcast. You can find Mike at Bengals Underscore Sands on Twitter on It's always Game Day in Cincinnati the podcast. Until next time, Thanks for listening to this episode of the Lockdown Bengals podcast. Who

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