Bengals Film Breakdown: Why Offense is Struggling and How They Can Fix it Moving Forward

Cincinnati's offense is a big reason why they're 1-3 this season

Author:
Mike Santagata
Publish date:
Oct 4, 2023 7:49 AM EDT

In this story:

The Bengals have their backs against the wall going into the next two games. If they can beat the Cardinals and the Seahawks, then they head into their bye week at 3-3 and can hopefully have a healthier Joe Burrow for the second half of the season.

This is the most optimistic outcome for the Bengals. If they lose both games, the season is essentially over at 1-5. Splitting the next two? Well, a 2-4 record places them in an uphill, but not impossible battle to get to the playoffs.

This situation is somewhat familiar for the team. Last year they started the season 2-3 before everything started clicking. They were 3-2 in 2021 before making a run to the Super Bowl. The issue is that this year just feels different.

There were glimmers of hope by this point in previous seasons. The team had issues, but they didn't lose games by multiple scores at the start of those seasons. All five of the losses were by three points. They were games they had a realistic chance to win.

After five games, the Bengals still had a positive point differential in both years (2021-22). In half of the games, the team gained over 350 yards and they never scored below 17 points. Right now they’re sitting at a -45 point differential, haven't produced more than 350 yards in any contest and so far have lost two games by three scores. Burrow is less healthy now than he was in the first two weeks of the season.

What can the Bengals do to manage the offense around Burrow?

The Current Offense

Before we look at tweaks and changes that the Bengals could make to make the offense better, it’s worth looking at the current offense, how it works, and why it’s failing them.

The Bengals' current offense was developed in Weeks 5 and 6 of last year. They moved from an under center, wide zone rushing attack to a shotgun only gap scheme run game in Week 5. They also changed the passing game a bit in Week 6 to match the shotgun only approach to the run game. The offense took off after the changes, averaging 28 points per game.

The Bengals shotgun only approach is unfamiliar territory in the NFL. The only other teams who ran that type of system in 2022 were the Cardinals, Ravens, and Eagles: all three of those teams have a quarterback that impacts the run game.

The Bengals didn't really struggle on the ground though, as their rushing attack was top 5 in both success rate and EPA per play post Week 5 when they made the schematic shift. It was one of the worst at generating explosive plays, but it kept them on schedule against light boxes.

The shotgun run game is essentially comprised of two bread and butter plays: duo and tight zone. Both are downhill run plays that have the offensive line working more vertically than horizontally. In the offset gun, tight zone is generally run away from the running back and duo is run to the same side as the running back. Tight zone can be run in any situation while duo requires a tight end to the play side. If you think about that, they can run either of these plays in most situations. The two situations that come up that are more predictable are when there is no tight end in the formation and when the tight end is away from the running back. In both of those situations, duo is not an option for their run game.

There have been runs that the Bengals have utilized to go with these two run concepts and they were generally all gap scheme last season. Various traps, whams, and counter plays were thrown in as auxiliary runs to complement their primary concepts. In the preseason, it seemed as if counter was going to be a staple of the run game for the Bengals, but it hasn't been called with any frequency and hasn't been effective when they do use it.

The pass game for the Bengals has been centered around isolating their best players. They believe that they have the talent to beat the other team whenever they have a chance to isolate their receivers against the opponents defensive backs. After Ja’Marr Chase’s hip injury, they were forced to get into more high-low concepts and three level flood concepts. Burrow was also adapting to how deep defenses played against them with quick checkdowns to allow Joe Mixon, Samaje Perine, and Hayden Hurst to operate in space.

This offseason, the Bengals looked to build upon that foundation. More run pass options and more enticing play action concepts were being implemented to not only be efficient from the shotgun, but also explosive. That plan took a major step backward during the second practice of the season when Burrow went down with a calf injury on July 27.

Why The Offense Is Failing

In short, the offense is not working right now because the quarterback is not working. Take a look at Burrow’s footwork and mechanics on this throw from 2022 vs this throw from 2023.

While I am not personally an expert on quarterback mechanics, it appears as if he is able to drive off of his right leg and transfer weight forward on the throw from last season. He finishes with his weight forward on his plant leg on that throw. He finishes without that same momentum in his throw from this season. However, even without looking at the film, it’s obvious that the accuracy is nowhere near the same.

Burrow finished with a completion percentage over expectation of 3.1% which was the third best mark in the entire NFL for quarterbacks with 300 or more plays. This year, he currently sits at -6% which is the 34th best mark in the NFL. Essentially Burrow went from one of the best to one of the worst in terms of accuracy this season. It’s not difficult to figure out that the calf plays heavily into those issues.

To go with his lack of accuracy, he also can't move as well, which limits his mobility within the pocket. Typically, Burrow would avoid sacks behind one of the worst offensive lines in the league because he had great pocket movement. Now he’s a complete statue because of the injury. Take this sack for example.

Last year, Burrow would have most likely avoided this sack and been able to make something happen here. Right now, he doesn't have that ability. This makes life harder on the offensive line as they cannot get help from the quarterback and statistically they have had a rough start to the season.

With both of these issues in mind, the Bengals drop back offense has moved from one of the most efficient and potent in the league to a poor unit. They can't dropback and allow Burrow to dice up defenses on the way to a touchdown. Burrow is averaging -0.177 EPA per play this season on pass attempts (30th). Last year, Burrow averaged 0.163 EPA per play which was 8th best in the NFL.

The terrible dropback passing game has turned this offense into one of the least exciting in the league. The run game, however, has had more success.

So far, the Bengals have the 13th best rushing attack based off of EPA per play. The success rate for the season is below average (21st) but this past week against the Titans it was 62% which is in the 99th percentile (that’s very good). The main issue for the run game is a lack of opportunities.

The Bengals have the second fewest rushing yards in the league (280 yards). Joe Mixon has 247 rushing yards and while the Bengals are averaging 3.7 yards per carry on the season, the former Pro Bowler is averaging 4.2 yards per carry. Mixon also currently has the 12th best explosive play rate for running backs according to SumerSports.

It’s not perfect, but the Bengals' rushing offense has been solid. They haven't committed to the run game, despite having some success. The Bengals currently have the second fewest rush attempts in the league. So why have they refused to find more opportunities for the part of their offense that is functional?

They have only handed the ball off to Trayveon Williams, Chase Brown, and Chris Evans a combined four times for 29 yards in four games. There’s a clear lack of trust in the backs behind Mixon right now which makes it hard to pound the rock. To go with that, they may not believe that a true run game can be established from the shotgun due to the tells and tough angles for the running back. Lastly, they may not lean into the run game enough because they haven't adapted to the struggling pass game yet. The Bengals have faced light boxes on 70% of their snaps this season. They have thrown the ball 80% of the time in those situations (Stat Courtesy of Andrew Russell).

Leaning into the run game could allow the Bengals to have a functional offense without Burrow playing at a high level. If they don’t believe in the shotgun run game and if Burrow is too uncomfortable to go under center because of his calf injury, how could they expand their rushing attack?

The Pistol

The pistol includes any formations that have the quarterback lining up at about 4-5 yards behind center with the running back behind him. That’s closer than the 7 yards that the quarterback is typically set up in the shotgun formation. The running back setting up directly behind the quarterback hides any tells that come from the offset shotgun position.

In this formation, the Bengals could run to either side of the formation. For example if they wanted to run tight zone, they could run it to the left or the right. If they were in the offset gun, they could only run tight zone to the opposite side of the running back. This also allows them to dabble in wide zone if they want to get back to that idea. They have attempted it out of the gun, but the angle from the running back makes it very difficult to cut back. If they ran it from the pistol, the angle would be the same as it is with the quarterback under center. They also could run it to either side based off of the front that the defense presents rather than being dictated about what they can do based off of the defense.

While Burrow will most likely be too uncomfortable to get under center to run the ball more effectively, he should have no issues with running the offense from the pistol. This should give the Bengals a more effective run game and could even create the run pass conflict that they have been searching for since defenses adjusted to their deep balls last year. In fact their only deep completion this season came from a play action pass from the pistol.

The defense respects their ability to run when they operate from the pistol, even though they haven't ran it from that formation. Look at how the defense reacts to a shotgun play action look that they had this past week compared to their play action out of the pistol:

The linebacker on this play never takes a step forward and just freezes during the run action. He is then able to roll over and find the receiver to get in the window to ruin the pass in the intermediate area of the middle of the field. When they ran play action from the pistol in the example before this, both linebackers reacted so much to the run action that they were unable to get in position to defend the pass.

The Bengals got in pistol for one play against the Titans as well.

Both linebackers take steps toward the run action on this play putting them in a disadvantageous position to react to the screen on the opposite side. The Bengals need more plays like this where life is easy on Burrow. Part of the issue with the offense is that teams do not respect their run game. If pistol formations make them respect the run, then the pass game will thrive despite Burrow being limited. If teams don’t respect the run out of pistol, then the Bengals should be able to run even more effectively than they have over the past few weeks.

The pistol is not a cure all for what ails the team right now, but it may be the change they need to move this offense from one of the worst in the league into a functional unit. It’s basically meeting halfway between what the Bengals are comfortable with and what they may need to do to make things easier on Burrow.

They need to do something to change the trajectory of the team starting on Sunday in Arizona.

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