Establish the Run

[Essex Johnson]

(09-16-2023, 02:12 AM)NATI BENGALS Wrote: Rainy terrible conditions for an aerial attack last week. Plus a QB playing at less than 100%. And Burrow had 31 pass attempts.
Perfect conditions to run the ball last week. Healthy full strength OL and RB. And our RBs had 17 carries.

 Come on man.?

I'm sure he is progressing health wise but we should still help Burrow out. Establish the run. Let our OL set the tone. Keep Lamar off the field and control the time of possession.

Not just this week though. We need to do it all season.

It is not like we abandoned the run in the 1st half, we just were not effective or because of sacks , pressures, penalties we were forced into throwing the ball.  Outside of one series we ran the ball 1 to 2 times in every other series but over 1/2 our runs (6) went for 3 yards or less. It is hard to get carries and 1st downs when 50% of your runs especially on 1st and 2nd downs are going for less than 3 yards a carry.   Maybe we could have run a bit more but again it is less about carries and more about the effectiveness of those carries. We really had 3 carries out of 10 or 11 in first half that were effective so that is around a 30% effective rate, that is going to hinder your offense and running.
Also in 1st quarter, early 2nd quarter the rain was not that bad... Plus Burrow is not shown signs in his career when he was shown ineffective on a avg. basis in bad weather, look what he did to Buffalo, very had to just limit Burrow to 1 throw a series more often than not early in a game.
So lets run the ball but be effective in our runs and lets play a cleaner game to not be behind the chains and have bad 3rd down efficiency.. that is a winning formula for tomorrow