Bengals offensive line
 

In weeks 1 through 8 Burrow was sacked 29 times. Since week 9 Burrow has only been sacked 17 times in 10 games. The only game during that time frame where he was sacked more than 2 times was the WC game against the Ravens, in which they sacked him 4 times.

Burrow gets the ball out the 2nd fasted in the league. Did he adjust to get the ball out faster to help the line or is the line just playing better. Burrow isn't a guy that is going to extend the play like a Mahomes, so he's not helping keep the sack numbers down like that.

So what is it? Better line play or Burrow is just so fast it's hard to get to him?

If it is because of his quick release, then would us jamming the shit out of the WR help the pass rushers and give them just a big more time? What is the key to getting to Burrow?

Burrow actually is very shifty in the pocket, but mainly the ball is coming out too quickly to sack him. Teams are playing 2 deep alot

Can certainly jam at the line, but had better have safety help over the top because if the pass rush doesn’t get home Chase and Higgins will get open. Also, Mixon and Perine are going to get some yardage forcing the safeties to want to come, which then possibly leaves them exposed to the deep ball. I still think they should feast with Cappa and Collins both being out, DL has to do their job though. Need to hit Burrow hard and set the tone.

Here's what their O-Line plays like when they face the Chiefs:

LT - Anthony Munoz
LG - John Hannah
C - Jim Otto
RG - Will Shields
RT - Forrest Gregg

It’s both. His quick release puts even more pressure on DBs to jam and cover their WRs effectively. Hard to do when they’ve essentially got 3 number 1s on that team plus a solid pass catching TE. Aside from that, the Bengals O line is just playing really well, despite that they’re down 3 starters.

The game on Sunday imo really boils down to who wins in the trenches. If our line can generate enough pressure to cause Burrow to hold the ball even a split second longer then we’ll be in good shape. If not, he’ll pick our young secondary apart and put immense pressure on our offense to keep up. We really, really, really need CJ to blow up the middle consistently in this one.

I want tight man bump n run coverage

Double Chase all night, make the other guys beat us and send blitzers thru the A gaps all night... yeah we might give up a few, but thats better than giving Burrow all night IMO

The Bengals had four new offensive linemen to start the year, so I'm sure it took time for them to mesh and learn the protections.

Better not see Spags dropping dudes like Karlaftis into covering Chase.

Jamming their receivers is an over simplification of what you're trying to achieve. You definitely want Burrow to have to hold onto the ball longer and go through his reads but that needs to be achieved by mixing coverages and not tipping away the coverage presnap. Maybe the occasional jam to their receivers but vs Chase and Higgins I think you're playing with fire if you try to rely on press.

The Ravens wildcard game to me is the most interesting. Obviously divisional games are always tough since each team knows each other inside out but how do you replicate what Baltimore did. Spags and the defense had a very good 1st half against Cincy in the AFC final last year, need to find a way to put a full game together.

Pretty sure Zac Taylor addressed this months ago. He and Burrow made the adjustment to have Joe throw a lot sooner, because his OL was having trouble blocking properly early in the season (don't remember what their issues were). he went from holding the ball for upwards of 3.5 seconds or whatever, to right at 2 seconds. You can't get to him if he throws in 2 seconds. As in, no one can.

Hell, it's exactly what Brady was doing his last couple season with NE. He just got rid of the thing in 2 seconds so no one could get to him. He only got in trouble when he was forced to hold onto it longer, like when NE was down late in a game and he had to go through his progressions. Even this season vs. KC, he was operating okay early in the game, but in the 2nd half, when they were down and he had to work past his first read, that's when we got to him consistently.

Somehow, we have to take away his first read, and get pressure on him from someone half a second after that. In Cullen we trust. Or, I do, at this point. Cullen has to come up with some funky cold Medina shit and mess Joe up. Repeatedly.

You're playing with fire regardless. Obviously you can't jam them and play man every down. They're going to have to mix in man, zones, and some creative blitzing and pick their spots and hope for the best.

The bottom line is the DL has to win, not only in pass rushing, but in the run game.

What Perine did to us in our last game isn't being discussed enough. They ran it 21 times with Perine to the tune of 5 YPC. That simply cannot happen again if you want the pass rush to have any chance in getting there. Last game, the pass rush spent a lot of time checking for the run before actually rushing the passer because they were getting gashed on the ground.

And then Joe Burrow added in another ELEVEN scrambles.

Yeah, we added a run game. But so did they.

The other thing is we have to get a lead and extend it a little late in the game. Force joe to have to go through his progressions trying to get the ball deeper downfield. Then our DL can get to him before he gets rid of it. If they can operate their base offense and run the ball/throw short passes, we're going to have problems. Gotta make them as one dimensional as possible.

Chief’s d-line is good at knocking down passes. Sans sacks, hoping to see a lot of batted passes. Maybe an interception off of a deflection. Would prefer to see both batted passes and sacks. Howdy Doody sobbing in the fetal position would be ideal. :)

But here's the thing - zone blitzing is how you disrupt a rhythm passer who's relying on short passes.

Yes, everyone's going to get pissed anytime Karlaftis gets isolated in space - but fellas, it's how defense works. Sometimes the bear eats you.

If you run zone blitzes, you're going to have DEs in coverage sometimes. And those zone blitzes that get Burrow thinking he's going to have space for short throws to his hot route only to clutch as he sees a DE flashing into that space are what you're going to have to do to get him thinking and hopefully slow down his processing.

You don't have to like it - but if you think you're not going to see ends in coverage at all, I have really bad news for you.

Need the secondary to cover well enough for 3 seconds so he can't do those quick throws in less than 2 seconds. That's a very difficult task for a lot of inexperienced players in the KC secondary, while going against some very good receivers.

{Cough}zone blitzes{coughcough}

The very thing people hate seeing is the thing that will be most likely to disrupt underneath timing routes and quick throws to the hot.

Sorry.

Good post.

They're running the ball really well. And Mixon is back, when he wasn't in our first game. Damien Woody was on Russillo's podcast talking about, yeah, we can't really block you, but we can run on you. I think that is a little over simplified, you still have to execute to run, but it'll be interesting to watch. I've heard a few places that you can run on Buffalo, but it didn't matter until Allen stopped being as productive after the injury.

I'm not in love with our ability to stop the run, but we've been doing better lately. Hopefully Spags can call a good game and not get caught doing too much shit that will get us killed. And it would be nice if Jones would destroy bitches, or if he's double teamed, to win one on one.

I agree that the DL HAS TO win. If we have to sell out to get stops, they're good enough to beat you where you're selling out from.

I think Burrow has definitely added a short game. I can't remember who the hell was talking about it, Romo maybe? He basically said the Brady type short passing game, guys don't just develop that in their 3rd year.

I mean it helps when Jamar Chase is impossible to guard anywhere. But yeah, Burrow is having himself a year.

To me the most important part of the game Sunday is exactly what you just mentioned. Need to get into 3rd and 7+ so that we can actually see if this makeshift offensive line can stand up to our pass rush.

Cincy isn't that much different from us, when they can pick and choose if they want to run or pass its near impossible to defend. Just way too much talent on the offense to defend everything in their arsenal. Both KC and Cincy near the top of 3rd down conversion percentage for good reason. Early weather reports also show a fair amount of wind in the forecast could make each team's passing attack not as crisp either.

Your answer is "tell the rookie DBs to cover 3 very good WRs for 3 seconds"?

That ain't a plan - its a suicide pact.

I know, I know. That's why I think we have to have at least a TD lead late; have to force them out of their balanced attack and make Burrow try to go deep; I think it's the only way to get him to look past those underneath routes, or just run it.

Did you see how Zac manipulated the BUF front by putting Chase in motion and then running behind it? Can't let them get chunks on the ground like that. But our defense isn't really built to repeatedly stop the run, so we have to get them to throw that part of the playbook away in the 2nd half. ANd the underneath stuff. I think it's the only way.

We might get Sneed and McDuffie to hang in there for about 3 seconds, but Watson and the other rook? That would be a bad bet, imo. Has to be another way other than asking rooks to cover for 3+ seconds.

Yeah, unfortunately, they're pretty good throwing deep too. Remember last year Burrow threw like 4 trillion **** it chuck it to Chase passes that were *almost* perfect coverage, and then ran for a billion yards after the catch?

Maybe kharmic justice will swing back and we can pick 3 of those instead.

With the number of batted balls that our D Line has this season, part of me wants to think this is in direct response to Burrow's quick release.

This is the correct answer. If you block enough passes, you've done what you need to do in lieu of getting pressure due to quick release. And for the times it gets through, hope your DB's have blanketed the coverage enough to contest catches. Otherwise, hope that Chris Jones and playoff-Frank are able to get "legal" hit after hit on Burrow as he releases the ball.

We say that a lot but may I ask what it is we lack?

Nnadi and Saunders are big ****ing guys. As is Dunlap. Karlaftis is strong at the point of attack and then of course there's Frank Clark: Elite Edge Setter.

At LBer we have Bolton who's just a damn tackling machine as well as Gay who's speed allows him to flash into a gap, get a guy to commit and then get out of it before the G should be able to get to him.

And the DBs, apart from Thornhill, are all really willing, sound tacklers.

This team SHOULDN'T struggle against the run, at least not from a personnel standpoint. If we want to stop it, we can.

Run defense is about discipline and attitude. This team is MUCH better situated to be stout against the run than, say, the 2019 unit that stoned Derrick Henry.

Just gotta want to...

EDIT: Hell, I forgot about Brandon Williams and that dude is a planet.

Please, Cincy - commit to the running game. Pretty pretty please with sugar on top, take the ball away from your WR corps and ideally 30+ times on Sunday if you could.

This is a game that the refs can really influence....Will they let our young secondary play ball?

Isn't this Spags specialty?

I'm thinking a shit-ton of our success will be how well he does dialing up the scheme. Both sides have dogs. In Spags we trust.

In 3 games we've sacked him once, right? I'm not from Missouri, but show me.

quick throws and 50/50 balls is what I expect unless we cant stop there running game

Spags does love him some zone blitzing, yes.

And everyone loves it when it works, blasts him when it doesn't.

But ultimately you just have to take with the good with the bad and recognize where/why he's got Mike Danna or George Karlaftis out there chasing a RB.

What happened to Brandon Williams? Has he done anything since the Chiefs signed him?

Chris Jones will get his first post season sack

maybe they will go more vanilla defense...mano on mano..dont overthink it Mr Spags

He's played 15-20 snaps/gm the last 5-6 weeks.

Pretty standard big ol' interior space filler work, really. He's been a nice enough addition.

Honestly, I don't know, just know that we can stop the run situationally, because we have, many times. But for a whole game? Not excited to see that. And I really like both Nnadi and Saunders, but I'm beginning to believe that they're no more than decent rotational talent. I'm hoping Williams will be kind of our 2023 Pennel, tbh. Not worried about either Frank or Carlos vs. the run when they're out there, but the guys behind them aren't the best run-stoppers in the world. And to be honest I don't think Frank is what he was in some ways in 2019 in terms of run defense.

Anyway, more than the runs, the defense has to somehow consistently muck up the underneath routes, which is mostly on Bolton and Gay in coverage. I think they've flashed some good coverage snaps, but they've also definitely had some bad ones. Recently.

Maybe J. Reid when he's close to the box. Maybe there's a way to have Cook in/around the box on early downs? He's looked pretty good vs. the run, I think.

Yeah, CIN is so variable in their attack and looks, I just don't know exactly how we're supposed to attack them, other than get a lead and make them one dimensional as possible. The hows of it are a puzzle.

Heavy nickel and tell Cook to bring his hittin' cleats?

You mean bring three LBs to the party plus three S? Have we ever done that?

It's going to be hard for 3 new lineman, and an injured Center to be great with the Arrowhead crowd. The only game away from Cinci these replacement lineman has played is Buffalo, and that crowd wasn't very loud and then went dormant when the Bengals got the lead. We need to dominate their O-line to have a chance.

Not just Burrow but the rest of their offense, too.

The defense got pantsed last game. Just an all around embarrassing display. I don't know what other motivation you could possibly need on the defensive side of the ball to destroy these clowns, especially when they're already calling Arrowhead "Burrowhead".

We need to stop the run this time. Plenty of other teams stifled the Bengals rushing attack, which is why they were 4th worst in the league in both total rushing yards and yards per carry. 3.8 yards per carry is really bad. Mixon was under 4 yards a carry for the year and Perine was only 4.1. CEH has been 4.3 or better every year for perspective.

Despite what some here think, the Bengals are bad rushing team. That’s exactly what was so damn disappointing the last time we played. Our defense was gashed in an awful effort. Which also plays right into why we didn’t get much pressure. Burrow was constantly in 2nd/3rd and short. He never had to wait for routes to develop.

The Bengals OL is worse than when we last met them. The Bills game is fools gold. We gashed the Bills two years ago in a similar fashion with Fisher, Allegretti, Kilgore, Wylie, and Remmers. That OL wasn’t any good but dominated a soft Bills defense.

The Bengals haven’t been able to run on anyone except the Bills lately. The Ravens (twice), Patriots, and Buccaneers all very much limited the Bengals ability to run.

The Chiefs DL has a very favorable matchup against mostly back ups (on a team who didn’t have a great line in the first place) at home in the AFCCG with a chance for redemption. No excuses for the DL and run defense to not make a major impact on this game.

The Bengals oline destroyed the Bills. With the 2 or 3 backup guys or not, they looked fine.

There's always a chance that we're totally over-thinking this. Come with me a sec:

Does anyone believe that our DL is really only as good or worse than the BUF DL without Von Miller?

Because I don't. I think our DL is a lot better than the Bills DL sans Miller. Maybe our DL will create a lot more havoc than theirs did a few days ago. In which case, a lot of this hand-wringing will be for nothing.

That same OL got dominated by the Ravens. Ravens hit Burrow 8 times and sacked him 4 times. Bengals couldn’t establish the run.

The Bills defense just wasn’t any good by the end of the year. They were getting gashed constantly.

Can't stop them, can only hope to contain them. The Bengals will get around 7 possessions. Can we force a couple of punts and or a turnover? As I've said before, 27 seems to be their number against us or in the playoffs. Can we get that to 24? Then the offense will need to score on 5 of their possessions but make one of those scores a TD vs a Bengals FG. 31-27 or 27-24. That's our shot. We're not gonna blow em out nor are we gonna get blown out. It will be the same as usual but can we flip the score for once?

Odds are each team will get 8+ possessions. If our defense can just hold them to their average in terms of scoring per drive, they'll score at least 4-5 times. Just have to make them trade a couple of those for FGs. Which is how things work out most of the time for our defense, so it's doable.

The Chiefs' problem in the three games vs. CIN is that the offense hasn't ever done their part of scoring to their average, or even very close to it. The offense can't stall out in the 2nd half; they have to score at least a TD and a FG, if not more. But the bare-ass minimum is a TD. No more of this get a FG in the 3rd and then give the ball away or sit around and pick their noses for 20 minutes. Keep firing, as Andy likes to say. There aren't but a handful of teams that KC needs to run the score up on, but CIN is definitely one of the few.

The Bills have zero pass rushers worth a damn outside of Von.

IMO, the biggest disadvantage the Chiefs DL has against the Bengals OL is they don't have a dominant Edge Rusher (DE) while the opposite is true for the Bengals DL against the Chiefs OL. I don't know if it's scheme or player however many time the Chiefs DE go wide and are completely out of the play. Last week, on the long pass that was dropped by the Jags, both DE were so far out of the play that they could have been sitting down.

I don't believe the Chiefs have the necessary players to be able to pressure Burrow much and with the receiving corps they have, it's going to be a long day unless they can get a couple of turnovers.

Not sure what the issue is with the Chiefs OL however being one of the worst in the league on 3rd and short seems to indicate they guys aren't that powerful or the scheme is just bad.

No, that's a 3-3-5

Heavy nickel is using a heavier safety as your NCB. It's essentially our 3-safety look and you'd presumably station Cook in the box as a hybrid Sam backer/NCB.

All of these comparisons of Burrow to Brady reminds me that one of the reasons we wanted Spags was because he was known as a Brady frustrater. I seem to recall that pressure in his face was one of the big keys.

He gets rid of it super quick with their offense. A ton of quick dump off and short passes mixed in with the running game. They lull pass rushers to sleep, then he throws deep now and then and when the pass rush is expecting run or quick pass. With their weapons, you have to honor them deep.

The Chiefs have actually played them tough at times. The last game would have looked a lot better had Cheffers not ****ed the chiefs over with a few bad defensive flags.

Ok. Shit, maybe that’d work better. At least on 1st and 2nd down.

By pulling all your linemen towards the center, it makes it much easier to block and chip two rushing linemen and buy 1-2 extra seconds. While that seems insignificant, it's the difference between a completion and a sack.

Lots of CFB teams are using that now I don't like it the good offenses tear it apart

I'm not really much of a fan either. It's a 'tweener' front.

Though I wonder how similar it was to that Falcon shit they ran in DTs last year here where they had him playing a hybrid LB/DE where they'd try to move him around.

I'd guess they probably used some 3-3-6 there.

call it what you want...safeties and linebackers are getting moved around

No - it's a completely different alignment. Stop arguing and read.

A 3-3-5 is an odd front and we don't use our DEs as standup backers apart from occasionally widening them into a 9 and letting them rush from a 2-point stance. Nor do we run odd fronts. We do, however, heavily utilize heavy nickel formations that utilize four down lineman, 2 backers and 3 safeties.

A 3-3-5 isn't 'shifting safeties and linebackers.' It's changing the entire nature of your DL. Jones would line up as a zero technique (effectively guaranteeing a double if not TRIPLE team) and the DE's would align as 3-techniques, a position Clark doesn't have the functional strength to do well and Danna/Karlaftis don't have the length for. Dunlap is the only guy who might do well in a 3 technique but he has so little burst these days that you may as well have him 2 gapping.

Maybe consider shutting up and learning something. It would be a fundamental shift in our defensive philosophy. If you wanted to do some of it you might find some success with Jones at the 3 technique, Williams/Nnadi/Saunders at 0 and Dunlap at the other 3 with Clark playing OLB, but now you're just talking about shifting to a 3-4.

nobodys arguing and nobodys shutting up . its a couple small tweaks to a couple guys on d...stop making it sound like rocket science

It sure seems that way.

We need the CEO of SackNation to go crazy in this game.

Nate Taylor said he heard from a good source that the Bills team was just exhausted from everything that happened this year.

They also didn’t have Micah Hyde and Von Miller and Jordan Poyer was playing through a hard injury.

It’s not the same as our situation

Luckily we have that greek guy, who analytical services have graded as in the bottom 10% of all NFL starting DEs.

I can think of no better time for Jones to have a monster 2.5 sack postseason performance.

You're just so incredibly stupid it's unbelievable.

We don't have the personnel to run a 3-3-5 right now as a regular thing throughout the game. There wouldn't be depth at DE to do it. Could you work in it once in a while? Sure. You'd want your DEs be Jones and Dunlap with Williams at NT. LBs would be Gay, Bolton, and Chenal.

You wouldn't have Jones playing NT and you wouldn't have light DEs like Clark, Danna, and Karlaftis playing that front at all. I mean you could, and you'd get destroyed.

Anyhow, I otherwise agree with DJ. You're going to need zone blitzing and split coverages. Not every zone blitz needs to drop a DE but mixing it up will help keep Burrow off balance. You can roll linebackers and safeties to cover the vacated area just as well as you can drop a defensive lineman.

dude, no.

We are in are 5th straight AFCCG, yet you seem to always be miserable about every aspect of this team. Some of us actually were fans when deep criticism was warranted, I can't imagine being a fan in this Chiefs era and being as miserable as you.

So you’re choosing a rookie, who’s played pretty damn well at the end of the season vs the other guys we have? That’s definitely some BWillie shit!

Insert WTF jag fan gif

This Bengals offensive line full of backups is not a good pass protection unit, but they can run block and Burrow can chew up yards with quick throws. I think we’ve got to take away the quick stuff and stop the run at the risk of allowing some longer throws. That’s how you test this offensive line and their pass protection.

The Bills couldn’t stop the run and were playing soft coverage. Gonna be a way different approach from Spags.

Don't watch, then.

They don't need your "support".

It will come down if our front four can hit him without pressure.
Hopefully they are prepared for the physicality of the Bengals on both lines.
They are coming in to punch us in our face. Especially knowing Pat is immobile from his normal abilities.

Can the Bengals run block though?

They were the 4th least productive rushing team in the league and 4th worst in yards per carry, despite having a tandem of running backs that most here seem to like.

The Bills are the only team they’ve been able to run on lately.

Sacks don't matter as much against this offense. Burrow was sacked 9 times last year in the divisional round and still won.

You have to get them off the field on 3rd down (whether sacks, PBU's, great tackling) more than they do the same against our offense.

Do that and you win.

The snow obviously played a big part in that. Cincinnati's OL was abused the week before. They're not good.

You're just such a dumb sack of shit it's insane. Couldn't imagine how you are in real life.

The group that played last week against the Bills is essentially a different offensive line than they played with all year. I think run blocking is their strength, especially compared to their pass blocking. They may not be great, but it's clear to me the Bengals coaching staff played to their strengths last week.

They won that game because the Titans couldn't score. Cincinnati had 19 pts in 12 drives. If they score at that rate Sunday, the Chiefs will win handily.

Aren't a bunch of them hurt right now ? Didn't seem to matter last week. Maybe the bad field conditions slowed down the Bills pass rush

Yes, they were missing three of their starters last week. The question in the OP was about why their pass protection improved so much after the first 8 weeks of the season. A possible explanation is that they got better with more experience as a unit.

Does that say more about the Bengals or Bills though?

Because the Bengals OL was terrible in all aspects against the Ravens.

Burrow was hit 8 times, sacked 4 times.

Mixon had 11 carries for 39 yards. Perine had 2 carries for 3 yards. Burrow ran 5 times for 9 yards. As a team, they averaged 2.8 yards per carry with a long run of 11 yards (that 11 yard run accounted for 20% of their rushing yards on the day).

The Bengals OL performance against the Bills reminded me a lot of when the Chiefs gashed them with CEH and a line of Fisher, Allegretti, Kilgore, Wylie, and Remmers. That turned out to be absolute fools gold though.

I understand why everyone would want to look at the most recent game, but expanding the sample size tells a different story about the Bengals OL.

In a lot of ways, their OL's performance on a slick track (which always favors the line, IMO, as it impacts the DL's get-off) may instill some false confidence in them.

Then again, I thought I read there was a chance they may be getting Williams and Cappa back this weekend.

But yeah - I'll take my chances against that patchwork mess they sent out there against Buffalo. If they think that's the level of performance they're going to get from those guys, I feel like they could be in for a rude awakening.

{fingers crossed}