01-12-2024, 12:57 PM
(01-12-2024, 12:53 PM)SunsetBengal Wrote: A lot of that will come on it's own, but it's going to take a bit of a philosophical adjustment in order to allow that to happen. As Synric pointed out, a lot of what the Bengals want to accomplish by taking advantage of the cover 2, is predicated on being able to move the ball on the ground when those Safeties are playing back. Until Zac gets the mindset that 'the Bengals are going to run the ball when they want/need to' defenses will still be dictating to our offense what they will be able to do.
Some of the improvement in rushing can be achieved by better execution of orchestrated blocking on plays called, but the offense is still somewhat limited in what types of plays they can call by the skill sets and physical traits of the men playing OL. For example, right now the Bengals can't really do a lot of wide zone attacking, due to a lack of lateral athleticism in the OL, thus leaving them only able to get better at executing inside power and short traps.
However it happens, it must happen that the Bengals move the ball better on the ground. Otherwise we're going to continue to see Burrow getting knocked around from having to hold the ball so long while the weapons are trying to shake double coverage and the DL is gunning full speed at him.
To the bolded, I can almost assure you that Zac does have that mindset. It's a very standard way of getting a defense out of two high looks. The problem is Cincinnati can't do it. I've mentioned it in various posts but KC plays cover two as their base coverage. They are very often in middle field open. And during that game, Cincinnati tried to commit to running the ball on them. They just couldn't. 76 yards on 25 carries (3.04 YPC) isn't going to scare anyone. They'll take that all day.
