Re-Tooled Bengals' Offensive Line Ready to Protect Joe Burrow: 'Block for However Long it Takes'

Cincinnati is hoping to be much better in the trenches this season.

Author:
Elise Jesse
Publish date:
Jun 3, 2022 7:45 AM EDT

Last season the Bengals won their first playoff game in over 30 years and competed in their first Super Bowl since 1989, but the most talked about aspect of their season revolved around a single stat: sacks.

Nobody is denying that there were too many of them (70 total), which ramped up the conversation surrounding the need to improve Cincinnati’s offensive line as the team continued to win. In the Super Bowl alone, Joe Burrow was on his back seven times and was sacked 19 times in four postseason games.

The Bengals' brass knew something needed to change in 2022. They signed right guard Alex Cappa, center Ted Karras, and right tackle La'el Collins this offseason to improve Burrow’s chances at staying upright.

“The mindset is to block for however long it takes. We don’t play to a play clock down here,” Collins said. “There’s a man in front of you and you have to shut him down. That’s my mindset and that’s the mindset of the unit. We’ve got to give Joe (Burrow) and every ball carrier the time that they need to do what they need to do. No matter how long that is, we've got to keep playing until the whistle blows.”

The offensive line’s run blocking efficiency will be just as important as their ability to pass block with Joe Mixon in the backfield. Mixon has been a big proponent of Frank Pollack’s and it seems the feeling is mutual. Pollack and running backs coach Justin Hill have been spending time together to make sure Mixon has another 1,000+ yard season in 2022.

“I’ll meet with coach Hill and we will collaborate on a lot of things,” Pollack said. “I’ll tell him the intent of the play and how we are blocking it, and this is how I see it, this is how I’ve always phrased it and then coach hill can phrase it more specifically from a running back’s view since he’s played the position and has coached it so it’s kind of a collaborative effort that way. Joe Mixon is a great guy to be around and coach as well. He makes life a lot easier when you’ve got a guy like him running the rock. He’s a fun guy to be around, he’s all juice.”

There are multiple offensive weapons that fall into the “all juice” category. Ja’Marr Chase ranked fourth in the NFL in receiving yards with 1,455 last season and finished third in receiving touchdowns (13). Tee Higgins was productive as well, adding 1,091 receiving yards and six touchdowns. Tyler Boyd wasn't far behind with 828 yards and five touchdowns.

The guys on the offensive line know that the receiving corps success starts up front. If the line is able to hold its blocks for a second longer, we should see even more stunning passes from Burrow this season.

“If his (Burrow’s) first read isn’t immediately open its not like, ‘welp let’s pack it in’ and it's 2nd-and-10 now,” Jonah Williams said. “He’s going to make something happen and our receivers are so good that if we give them four seconds or five seconds to run they’re going to be open. He makes plays where there might not be an immediate one.”

Burrow was sacked once every 10.8 dropbacks. The 25-year old lead the league in regular season sacks with 51 but also ranked within the top ten (8) with 34 passing touchdowns. So take a second and imagine what a player like Burrow could do with more time in a clean pocket.

“When you put the tape on you’ll see him making a lot of throws that he’s making with guys in his face, the pocket’s not clean and he’s still completing his passes,” Collins said. “It’s exciting, I can’t wait. A guy like that is going to get the ball out, just give him time.”

Giving Burrow a bit more time is at the top of the priority list in the offensive line room. During practice Pollack consistently coached the bigs on being less reactionary to defenses and premeditating a defensive lineman’s moves.

When the final whistle of Tuesday’s practice blew, Pollack went back to his area of the practice field in the sweltering heat to put in more technique work with Karras and undrafted rookie Ben Brown. After roughly 20 minutes the small group of men made their way to the locker room and Pollack elaborated on his teachings.

“You’ve got to know that you have to fight until the end of whistle because he’s (Burrow) going to keep fighting to extend plays,” Pollack said as he walked off the practice field. “You can’t ever relax even when you think you’ve got your guy, next thing you know you might be rolling out to your side and you got caught relaxing because you thought your guy stopped and ease up on the play. We can’t ease up. We’ve got to keep battling and if you get stuck in a bad position, don’t just give up because he can make a guy miss and the next thing you know you might be able to pick up another guy.”

Pollack is relentless in his coaching style. He’s passionate about what he’s teaching and while he knows he’s coaching the lineman hard, he believes that’s what they want.

“I’ve played the position so I know what it feels like. The situations they’re in I’ve been in and I try to take that viewpoint and approach,” Pollack said.“I know I can wear them out at times too but I think pro’s like to be coached, and that’s any coach. They want to be coached, this is their profession and they want to get better and I’ve been very fortunate to have guys like that in my rooms that want to get better.”

Players like Collins aren’t afraid to be coached hard by Pollack because they trust that he will put them in a position to be successful.

“For me at this point in my career that’s what I was kind of missing the last few years in Dallas. When I came into the league I had coach Frank (Pollack) for my first few years so I was raised that way," Collins said. "When he left we had like four offensive line coaches, so this is kind of going back to what I already know. Everything that he’s doing is going to carry over to the field. When we get into our stance, and we are looking at the defense and we’ve got to block people, we trust in our training because we know for a fact that it works. The way he teaches technique, the ceiling is through the roof.”

In mid-May Burrow made a rare move by going on the Full Send Podcast and during the discussion sacks were brought up, but Burrow didn’t seem to agree with the national narrative that he had sustained too many last season.

“Here’s the thing about sacks. So there’s good sacks and bad sacks,” Burrow said. “You look at the stats, yeah I got sacked a lot. But you look at when they happened: Third-down sacks? Who cares about third-down sacks? I’m going to try to extend the play as long as I can to get the first down on third down, unless I’m in field-goal range, then I’ll throw the ball away and get some points.”

Burrow has always claimed that he likes taking hits, but the guys up front were adamant that the volume of sacks given up last year is unacceptable.

“There’s the analytic side of it which our coaches understand and Joe understands where one sack is a lot worse if it's in field goal range or if it's on early downs or whatever, but for us a hit is a hit,” Williams said. “Whether it happens on first, second, or third down, in the red zone or backed up, we don’t want him to get hit ever.

"For us it’s never okay to give up a sack. It’s our job to make sure that doesn’t happen. Behind us Joe is making plays and maybe he’s pushing a little bit harder on third down but more times than not it’s going to be a good play. “

The Bengals have made moves to get better in this area by adding talent, but simply adding talent to the roster won’t be enough. Pollack is going much deeper than that by focusing harder on the basics, and making sure that each and every player in his room has a full grasp on the verbiage used in Cincinnati.

“Last year we learned a lot, I learned a lot. I needed to do a better job of helping those guys improve in some areas," Pollack said. "We worked a lot on how we are phrasing some things, we tightened up our I-progression a little bit better with Mixon in more aggressive set angles to take away some things that we saw last year, and guys are working more on technique and fundamentals. Hopefully understanding some of the ways that we teach that might have been new last year with me might be sinking in a little more as well, which is an area that we’ve got to get better at.”

The expectation for Burrow’s security detail in 2022 isn't complicated. The Bengals want the offensive line to fully understand what is expected of them and know where they need to be on every play, which will lead to the unit playing faster and decreasing the number of times Burrow is on his back.

"The season is more mental than anything," Williams said. "Your body isn’t going to feel good from the first week of August to the second week of February. It’s just a matter of being mentally tough and doing our jobs no matter what."

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