Bengals' Offensive Line Breakdown: Analyzing Their Performance in Win Over Jaguars

Cincinnati beat Jacksonville to improve to 6-6 on the season.

Author:
Parker Blake
Publish date:
Dec 7, 2023 8:47 AM EST

In this story:

The Jake Browning led Bengals shocked the nation when they beat the Jaguars in overtime on Monday Night Football.

Coming into Week 13, I expected a slight regression from the front five. They were coming off a season best performance at home against a division rival and were now tasked with another tough defense in hostile territory. However, instead of taking a step back, the group surged forward and improved on their Week 12 performance in front of a national audience.

After finalizing my grades, the unit averaged an 84.44 overall grade and also hit season high marks for not just run blocking, but in pass protection as well.

Week 13: Struggles

Though the group put together its best performance of the season, Jonah Williams had one of his worst games of the year. His overall grade of 68.75 was his 10th best game out of 12 games this season. Even worse, his 61.25 grade in pass protection is the second lowest he has recorded all year. Now, when facing one of the league's better pass rush pairings in Josh Allen and Travon Walker, a down week can be expected. As the most consistent offensive lineman of the group, I am not concerned about Williams dropping off over the next few weeks and expect to get a solid performance out of him against the Colts.

Week 12: Standouts

When the offensive line is able to put together a peak type of performance like this, it can be hard to pick an individual player or two that stood out. Therefore, I want to talk about what I think has changed with this group over the last couple weeks. This unit has started to look a lot more physical. What I mean by that is, they seem to be finishing blocks much more regularly, as well as generating more movement.

One of my biggest gripes with the Bengals' offensive lines over the last few years has been the lack of physicality. It never felt like they wanted to punish defensive linemen and the motivation to finish plays was not present often, if ever.

With the shift in scheme as far as the run game, they have been asked to be much more physical with a more downhill, vertical, run game opposed to a sideline to sideline, wide zone, scheme. It has not seemed like the line was taking to this shift in mentality through the first half of the season, but as they have started settling in and getting in rhythm, their physicality is starting to show.

I also want to highlight the streak of high quality pass protection this unit has produced in recent weeks. They have put up their best games in protection over the last three contests with grades of 79.52, 85.76 and 87.50.

Whether this is a product of a shift in scheme to account for a different quarterback or just the group settling in, we will never know. What I do know is that the Bengals are still in the playoff race with an offensive line that is in the early stages of a hot streak.

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