Trevor Lawrence said as much in his presser: “I don’t know if we’ve ever thrown the ball to that running back out there.” Cordarrelle Patterson is the “running back” with the most such targets on this route (seven), and he doesn’t really count. Since 2021, for example, Aaron Jones has run this vertical route 22 times-he’s been targeted three times, with no catches. Not a lot of teams throw a vertical route to that running back. | /qemQ1fvKSa- Jacksonville Jaguars October 29, 2023Ī lot of teams run empty sets with running backs flexed out wide. The one touchdown that the Jaguars scored in this game, however, was sick. (Not even the fun kind of slopfest, like Giants-Jets, where you can laugh at all the bad plays. It’s the little things in football that matter the most-zany plays, small victories, and some laughs. But independent of any playoff odds or current records, this Bengals team, for the first time all season, looks like the team of consecutive AFC championships. They can’t afford to make mistakes down the stretch, and they have the fourth-toughest remaining schedule in the NFL. The Bengals are 4-3, and with a mighty fine Ravens team that sits atop the division at 6-2 (and the Browns and Steelers both still in the 4-3 ranks), their path to the playoffs is anything but easy. For much of the game, this Bengals win felt like all those Bengals wins over the Chiefs or the Ravens from the past few seasons: a tough game decided by a few Burrow heroics and timely turnovers. The defense continues to shut down top offenses, as it has always done under defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo. This is how Burrow is supposed to look, and once he’s right, the entire Bengals team comes to life. That calf injury (knocks on wood, throws salt over the shoulder, supplicates the football gods) feels like it’s behind us. (Maybe they do, I dunno.) Nothing can quite match the feeling of just watching Burrow move. Bengals fans don’t read “10.5 percent explosive pass rate” and feel their butts unclench. They had a 61 percent success rate-that’s the fourth-best game of Burrow’s career, period.Īll of this is good news, but the numbers don’t truly matter. He had a scramble on 7.9 percent of his dropbacks, another season high. He had an explosive pass on 10.5 percent of his dropbacks, more than double the Bengals’ previous best this season. The full offense was back, and Burrow shined. Sunday against the Niners? A 77 percent gun rate. That’s how the Bengals offense became that quick-passing, dink-and-dunk monstrosity that seemed to hinder its own star quarterback. Add in Burrow’s immobility, and deep patterns are generally not worth the risk. (It’s schematically tough to run from the gun when you don’t have an option quarterback.) Without an under-center running game, play-action wasn’t as dangerous. With the under-center wing of the offense temporarily shuttered, the Bengals couldn’t run the football very effectively. Burrow took at least 94 percent of his snaps from the gun in each of his first six games this season-he has only two such games in the previous three seasons of his career. Burrow took a shotgun snap on 98 percent of his Week 1 snaps, a career high (until Week 2, with 98.2 percent). We talked about it in Week 1, after a messy performance in the rain against the Browns: He clearly wasn’t able to play.īurrow’s calf injury did more than affect his play it limited what the offense could call. Still recovering from his preseason calf injury, Burrow was confined to the pocket, unable to extend plays. That’s not revisionist history or schematic criticism-Burrow could not do this a few weeks ago. He was absent for much of the season up to this point. This is the guy who had all of the answers for the Bengals offense, the timely scramble, the off-platform dime. This is the Burrow we fell in love with, right? Playmaker Burrow, gamer Burrow, big-moment Burrow.
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