Locked On Bengals - Daily Podcast On The Cincinnati Bengals - EVOLVED: Cincinnati Bengals Offense Set to DELIVER Its BEST Performance of the Joe Burrow Era

Starting point is 00:00:00 The Cincinnati Bengals have every tool in the toolkit for their best offensive season in the Joe Burrow era. And we're going to break down what? You are locked on Bengals, your daily Cincinnati Bengals podcast. Part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day. What up, Bengals fans, and welcome to another episode of the Locked on Bengals podcast. He's Joe Goodberry. I'm Jake Liscoe. We're your host of Lockdown Bengals.

Starting point is 00:00:34 and today we're going to discuss what's next for the Bengals offense, how it has changed over the Joe Burrow era in Cincinnati to adapt to what defenses are doing to stop them and why that means they're primed for their best season in the Joe Borough era offensively. And that's a bit of a lofty bar. And we'll talk about what that standard means, what it would actually look like for this to be the best offense we've seen in the Joe Burrow. era. And this is on the heels of conversations last week, Joe, where we talked about how the Bengals

Starting point is 00:01:10 may or may not benefit from going under center and the delicate balance they will have to find there, especially as it pertains to the play action game. That was our most recent episode last week. And this ties right in because they've done so many different things in this offense at this point to adapt to what defenses are doing. And they found ways to continue to be efficient and successful with those changes over time, the way defenses are changing, the way they've responded to it. Yeah, I like that this episode comes right off the heels of our myth-busting series last week, because I think a lot of it ties together. Whether you're really paying attention to what the Zach Taylor offense was doing pre-Joe Burrow,

Starting point is 00:01:49 which was only one year, but maybe, you know, you didn't jump on really until 2020 or 2021 when Burrow guy here and things got exciting. Maybe you didn't dive in as analytically deep as we'll take you, or didn't watch the film and do the reviews that, you know, you see all over online now until 2022, 2023. So you really didn't catch the details and the evolution of this offense. So I see that a lot in the comments from people, well, the Bengals should do this more. Or how come they don't do this? Or how come they don't do that? And a lot of times the answer to that is they have at some point in their Zach Taylor era here, fried it or did it for a long time and either worked or didn't work or it evolved in some way. And one of the biggest pivot points early was that defenses started

Starting point is 00:02:36 to put a cap on the offense. Another one was early 2022. They had these stark splits in what they did when they were under center, what they did when they were in shotgun. When they tried to run it, they would go under center. When they tried to throw it, they would be in the shotgun. And that was very easy for teams to deal with and was very predictable in many ways. And so we saw defenses start to take those things away, and we saw the Bengals start to respond to it. And this is also on the heels, Joe, of a very interesting set of comments from Joe Burrow in his last press conference of the offseason where Paul Danaer asked him about the potential to be explosive without being explosive from the under center play action game.

Starting point is 00:03:19 And Joe Burrow essentially then went into, well, this is what we've done over our time in the offenses that I've been running. And in 2021, we were real explosive without necessarily generating a ton of explosives for under center play action. And that was a 9-89 era of Bengals football where multiple times a game, they're sending their outside receivers on goes. And they have Tyler Boyd in the slot, either running a post or a dig, a little 15-yard in. And that's the 9-8-9. So 9s on the outside being the verticals, the 8 on the inside. Usually that's a post in most numeric terminology for routes. but sometimes it could be just some other end-breaking route from Tyler Boyd.

Starting point is 00:03:58 And when they would get those singles on the outside, the ball goes to the outside, Dee Higgins, Jamar Chase, make plays. And that's why the Bengals were so explosive. And since then, they have not found the consistent explosives that they found when teams kept giving them single high and kept letting the receivers, the Cincinnati Bengals receivers,

Starting point is 00:04:15 beat them down the sidelines. Yeah, so let's, if we're going to get to the end, and I think our conclusion here is that we think this offense could be really, really, really good. Maybe the best, probably the best in the Zach Taylor, Joe Burrow era, marriage, you could even say. Let's go back to the beginning. When they hired Zach Taylor, maybe let's first talk briefly about why. We'll tease this a little bit. The why we think this year will be so good. Like why expectations are so high. Part of it is personnel, right? We know exactly who Jamar chasing T. Higgins are at this point. They're better now than

Starting point is 00:04:48 they've ever been. They've continued to develop Joe Burrow. Same deal. Offensive line. continuity there, a higher level of skill there than we've seen in the Joe Burrow era. They've got continuity at tight end at running back and a deeper room, hypothetically, at tight end than we've seen. So we'll dig into those points in more detail, in addition to the schematic points in more detail. But these are reasons that we are so bullish on this year. But yeah, you're right, Joe. We do need to talk about how we got to this point.

Starting point is 00:05:16 And that's part of what this episode is going to be is really digging into the evolution over time because I think some people think that Zach Taylor, There's a very static offense and things haven't changed at all. And that's not entirely true. And I think the same goes for Joe Burrow. I think when people see Joe Burrow in this offense and if you were paying attention to the LSU offense, you think it's just this and nothing else, right? It's just shotgun spread it out.

Starting point is 00:05:39 Burrow likes five-man routes. He likes all receivers out there. He likes empty formations. And that's all he likes. And that's not true. If you continue to evolve your opinion every year with tape and data and information as the season goes, So that's why I wanted to bring it back, because I think we're going to get there of why. I think everything's going to point to this 20, 26 season being the best.

Starting point is 00:06:01 But if you go back to 2019 when they hired Zach Taylor, he was coming from Sean McVeigh's scheme, right? And Brian Kalahan, the offensive coordinator as well, an under center, wide zone scheme with a lot of play action and a lot of misdirection through jet sweeps and motions and things like that. And that was what we expected completely. And I think we saw a lot of it in 2019, even though Andy Dalton didn't seem like a great fit there. Joe Mixon had a pretty good season. They were a heavy zone running team, the heaviest they've been under Zach Taylor. And a lot of play action, a lot of jet motion didn't always work, right? It wasn't a great fit.

Starting point is 00:06:36 The offense wasn't great at that year. We understand that. They were 29th in offensive rank. Their success rate was 40%, which is all really extremely low. At that time, we weren't sure if this offense was working at all. The saving grace was going into 2020 and seeing this Joe Burrow, LSU offense, and wondering if they're going to absorb this. Are they going to fit Joe Burrow into this, Zach Taylor, Sean McVey style offense?

Starting point is 00:07:01 Or remember, that was the COVID truncated offseason. Are they going to absorb the LSU playbook in the passing game? That was very heavily Saints and Sean Peyton-esque, right, when they're in their routes and their designs or concepts, how they wanted to attack. And marrying the two together seemed like a pretty tall task with an off season that was cut down.

Starting point is 00:07:22 Remember, there was no preseason. The camp was truncated. It didn't seem like they could get this done in the time they had to. And then week one rolls round, and it did look very much like the LSU offense. Yeah, I think one thing Zach Taylor does deserve a lot of credit for is really shaping the offense to Joe Burroughs preferences,

Starting point is 00:07:40 what works well for him. And it's been very successful because Joe Burroughs really good. And when you have a quarterback that is as good, that is as good as Joe Burrow, it makes a lot of sense to shape the offense around him. But it has changed over time, not just from 2019 or 2018 in the Andy Dalton year to, no, 2019 was the Andy Dalton year to 2020. And the first year of Joe Burrow that obviously was cut short because of an unfortunate incident to do with the left guard.

Starting point is 00:08:07 But the changes continued from there. And I think how they have changed as they've been successful. is interesting too because a lot of the changes are happening, as Joe Burrow pointed out in his press conference, in response to what defenses were doing differently. And the Bengals continued to find ways to adapt to what defenses were doing against them. And not only finding ways to change the way they were doing offense, but remained very successful. And success started to look different. It was less explosive as we spent a lot of time talking about this offseason. We'll continue to talk about this offseason as we continue to wonder,

Starting point is 00:08:45 how the Bengals well rediscover the explosive play and what levers they will pull and what knobs they will twist to find those explosive plays a little bit more frequently. But the success that they have found consistently in the Zach Taylor era has been in multiple different iterations of this offense.

Starting point is 00:09:06 And that adds so much experience and gives them so many tools in the bag with so much continuity that they should be able to pull those clubs or pull those tools from the bag to answer the different challenges they're going to face over the course of this season. So we'll continue the conversation with how they have evolved over time and what's next for the team and why this year will be so good. These are all topics we will continue to discuss on this episode of lockdown Bengals next. We're brought to you today by

Starting point is 00:09:37 Indeed. Workplace chaos can show up fast and sometimes you need to make those adaptations like Zach Taylor, Joe Burrow, and the Cincinnati Bengals. And Indeed, sponsor jobs can help. Indeed, sponsor jobs helps you reach the candidates who actually fit what you're looking for based on skills, experience, and location because finding the right person can make all the difference, whether it's building a business or building a winning team. Sometimes you need to just go out there and get that All-Star ad in a Dexter Lawrence in the offseason or a leader for your team like Brian Cook.

Starting point is 00:10:08 And Indeed, sponsored jobs will help you find the right candidates for your organization. and less time searching and more time interviewing the candidates who check all your boxes with less stress, less time, and more results. And listeners to Lockdown Bengals will get a $75-sponsored job credit to help you get the premium status your job deserves at Indeed.com slash podcast. Again, just go to Indeed.com slash podcast and support Lockdown Bengals by saying you heard about Indeed on this show. Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. If you need to hire, this is a job for Indeed sponsor.

Starting point is 00:10:43 drops. Jake, our everydayers that make us their first listen, we're around probably, a lot of them were around in that 2019, 2020 to see that evolution as we chronicled it every day here on the lockdown Bengals podcast. But then the 2020, the injury to borough that happened, we come out of 20, we come into 2021 and I think they wanted to protect him a little bit. I think they wanted to not expose him just as much. They made Jamar Chase their first pick in that draft, obviously, famously. And the offense was, I don't want to result-based judge this because they were very explosive. They made it to the Super Bowl, but at times very disjointed. They were still very heavily an under-center wide-zone team. The most under-center runs of the Zach Taylor

Starting point is 00:11:29 era happened in 2021. But yet they were still, the passing offense was very much the LSU vertical offense, right? You chronicled the 9-8-9 and what that means for what receivers are doing blot. But that saw the most success in terms of the results. Wasn't their best offense. That was 11th in EPA that year in rank. They were 47.5, that's 22, excuse me, 45.9% success rate. So they've ticked up every year.

Starting point is 00:11:59 2019 was 40%. 2020 was 45.2. 2021 was 45.9, which is average to slightly above average based on the rest of the league. So they were getting better on offense, but they weren't great yet. They were still a heavy zone running, still taking shots down field. It worked, and a lot of people would like to go back to that. And I don't think that those opportunities are there the way they were at the time.

Starting point is 00:12:23 And we're talking about EPA per play, by the way, if you're new to hearing Joe and I talk about all these stats and numbers you're going to hear, EPA per play is a number that tries to distill expected points added per play. So if you are on the one yard line and it is first and goal, your expected points are probably five or five point five points before that play starts. And if you score a touchdown on that play, how many expected points have you added? Well, you've added 0.5 points because you scored a touchdown. Conversely, if you're on your own one yard line and it's fourth and 50, your expected points on that play are probably zero,

Starting point is 00:13:01 maybe even negative because you're in such a bad situation, right? If you somehow score a touchdown on that play, your expected points added for that play is going to be closer to six. You've gone from zero to scoring a touchdown in a very unexpected spot. So when you're talking about expected points added, it's a way to measure how much better is your offense than a standard offense in this situation? Because it's based on your average overtime expected outcome of those plays. So when you're above average in EPA per play, expected points added per play, that means you're better than that. than your standard offense in the NFL. When we talk about success rate,

Starting point is 00:13:39 has a number of different definitions, but generally speaking, a successful play for the offense is defined by picking up X amount of yards based on what down it is. So if it's first down, it might be picking up five yards. If a second down is probably picking up, you know,

Starting point is 00:13:53 60% of the remaining distance to a first down. And if it's on third down, obviously, it's converting or not converting. So when we're talking about success rate, that's what we're talking about there. Just wanted to provide that context. because these are numbers that you're going to hear a lot on this show. If this is your first time hearing those numbers,

Starting point is 00:14:11 that's what that means. If you've heard them before, well, there's another explainer for you on what these common metrics mean. And I want to add one thing to that. If you're more of the old school or you haven't dove into the advanced analytics like this, it's all based on the history of the NFL. So when he says you're expected to get 5.5 points from the one yard line,

Starting point is 00:14:31 you're like, how you're supposed to get six by a touchdown? Well, that's because about 98% of teams score from that one-yard line. So it's basically an average of how much success teams have had into history. So on average, they've scored about 5.5 points. We know it should be six if you score a touchdown, but there's that little fraction who did not score from the one. And that's where you get the expected points of what is expected for that situation. I just pulled numbers out of my hat too.

Starting point is 00:14:56 Like those were made up. That's right. For example, Sam Hubbard, taking the ball from Baltimore. and going the other way. That's a minus 12 EPA player or so for the Baltimore Ravens. And a plus 12 EPA play for Sam Hubbard. So the EPA conversation is interesting, Joe, because when you look at when this Bengals offense took off

Starting point is 00:15:21 and really hit their stride in 2021, even if you filter to like week 13 through the Super Bowl, the Bengals were still 10th in EPA per play that year. They're still not at the very top of success rate. In fact, they're even lower in success rate after they got more consistent. So this is the other side of what things looks like in that Super Bowl year, more explosive team, not as consistent of a team. And then teams stopped letting Jamar Chase and T. Higgins beat them down the sideline.

Starting point is 00:15:56 And that's where you saw the Bengals take their next step in terms of how they attack defenses when they had the ball. Yeah, that's 2022. That's conversation. That's exactly where it goes. They start the first two weeks. Very similar. Now, Burroughs coming off the appendix,

Starting point is 00:16:10 we shouldn't mention that to start 2022. He looked like he was 185 pounds, right? He looked very frail those first couple weeks. Still, the offense drives down. They almost score it, or they do score at the end. They don't get the extra point against the Steelers week one. Chaos, right? And then the Dallas Cowboys game, that's who was.

Starting point is 00:16:27 I almost said Broncos. Dallas Cowboys game, they couldn't score. It wasn't good enough. the offense had to change. They were still very much running under center, passing out of shotgun. And they scrapped the entire under center zone running at that point. And it's more than just under center.

Starting point is 00:16:42 It was really the zone running. They went from 65% of their runs from running backs in 2021 being zone runs to 22 dropping a 39%. That's their lowest rate of zone running in the Zach Taylor era. Like that was complete scrap. We got to figure this out. defenses are not giving us anything over the top. They know when we're running the ball.

Starting point is 00:17:05 We have to do this on the fly. There's many stories I've said. They've ripped up half their playbook at week three going into New York against the Jets. And we've got to flesh this thing out the rest of the year. Brian Kalyan talked about it as well, how big of a all hands on deck situation that was to fix it. It was obvious what happened. They end 2022.

Starting point is 00:17:24 Sixth in the league on offense and EPA per play. They've their success rate, 47.5%. again in the top of the league, near the top of the league, they had a very, very good offense despite scrapping that. And I want to say we also had a comment that the Bengals current offense isn't really designed to play in January. This is, 2020 was the closest version we have of what the current offense looks like. And it was successful in January,

Starting point is 00:17:49 just really failing because of the final play there against the Chiefs. Well, and they got that. The offensive line was decimated by the time. That game rolled around. Tyler Boy got hurt in that game that looked. like he was going to be a key, key factor early on. The other thing that's interesting here is this is where the slow start narrative really starts to take hold because when you throw out those first couple of weeks

Starting point is 00:18:10 after they make that adaptation, I picked an arbitrary endpoint here. You could choose week three. You could choose week three. You could choose week seven. You could choose week 10. But from week six until the end of the regular season in 2022, the Bengel were second in EPA per play in the NFL behind only the Kansas City Chiefs that year. That was when Patrick Mahomes and that chiefs offense was still,

Starting point is 00:18:30 doing magnificent things every year, not what you see here, right? From the Chiefs lately, yeah. The Bengals were also essentially tied with the Chiefs in success rate at second as well. So the Bengals, after those adaptations, we're the second best offense in the NFL by those two numbers that year. Now, were they the best in terms of points per drive or points per game? Those are different numbers, and we're not looking at as much because those are very results oriented.

Starting point is 00:18:57 We're looking more at the process here. But one of the things that stands out the most to me about 2022 is when you talk about the run game, the Bengals were fourth in rushing EPA per play that year from week six until week 18. So after they made all these changes and they had had some time to sink into them really successful in the run game as well. And that's something that is really a hallmark, I think, of Zach Taylor teams, is finding adjustments at the run game overtime and finding ways to solve that throughout the season, something we saw in a big way in 2025 as well. And one of the reasons that we're going to be bullish

Starting point is 00:19:33 on this team in 2026, which is the conversation that we need to finish with is how does this catch up and get to where we're going into 2026 and set our expectations for this year and what we think the next steps are for this offense. We'll continue the conversation next. All right, Joe, going into 2026, that means we've got a few years to cover to catch up

Starting point is 00:19:57 to where we think this offense is going, what the other major changes have been. So let's get through a few more years here. The significant changes in 2021, 2021, 2022, I think are very noteworthy. And it's been, I think, a little bit more moderate in terms of the pace of changes since then, because the bank has been really good of what they've been trying to do. But there have been things in each of the last few years as well that we've seen Joe Burrow and Zach Taylor tweaking the offense as they go.

Starting point is 00:20:23 Yeah, an effort to fast forward a little bit here to get to our points here. Let's skip over 2023. He had the calf injury. Things were very weird. He had to stay in shotgun. I don't even like when people referenced 2023 because it really wasn't their offense, right? It was very limited in a lot of ways that calf affected him big time and he was playing through it. So let's go to 2024, which was easily their best offense as a whole.

Starting point is 00:20:46 In terms of offensive rank, they were fourth in EPA per play. Their success rate 48.9%, which is extremely good. I think that was third that year. They were fourth in passing rank. they were 16th in running rank in terms of EPA. They also were very balanced between zone running and gap running. 52% in zone runs, 48% in gap runs. This is the start of the Dan Pitcher era.

Starting point is 00:21:12 This is when things started to, in my opinion, they really incorporated and made the running game look very similar to their passing game. Rather than still sticking to some of their old things and what Joe Mixon liked maybe, this is when we saw Chase Brown become a really good fit. offense as a receiver and as a runner and they wanted to run everything out of shotgun. They still got on her center a little bit last year at about 36% rate. This last two years, 2024, 2025. So they've been in that range, a little bit less than before, but they are still a very

Starting point is 00:21:44 pass happy team. Passing rate over expectation. The Bengals are number one over the last two years, 2024, 2025. You really just have the chiefs there. You can go back to 2021. What I call it's like the Super Bowl era. A lot of times they look at numbers from 2021 to 2020. They are the passing team in the league, them and the chiefs.

Starting point is 00:22:02 And I think the chiefs and Bengals get treated very differently for their passing offense. It's probably because they do it so well and at such a high rate, the combination of the two, really lead me to believe like this, this is a different passing offense. We're looking at them when we're studying and talking about other offenses that sometimes we're envious of, they still don't have what the Bengals have. Yeah, and part of that is the way Joe Burrow plays quarterback. part of that is the way that Jamar Chase and T. Higgins play wide receiver.

Starting point is 00:22:31 And I think that the way the chiefs get treated is because of the homes and Kelsey, but they don't have the weapons that the Bengals do. So I think even the way the chiefs are going to get looks on offense are going to be different than what the Bengals get. And we're at the point now where passing rate over expected is starting to be a stat that people are like, ah, you got to maybe rein that in a little bit. That's not the way to go anymore. And it used to be like, yeah, this is what we want to see from offenses in 2021, 2020.

Starting point is 00:22:56 and then Mike McDonald and Vic Fangio started adapting to what the offenses were doing in the NFL. And we've seen this shift toward 12 personnel and under center looks and play action. And I mean, the play action, Shanahan offenses have been in vogue for as long as Kyle Shanahan's been around. Sean McVey in L.A. is obviously part of that as well and has his own branch of it and everything. But I thought what Joe Burrough said about this during his press conference was really interesting because he talked about what, the Bengals have done over time. And he wrapped this up pretty quick, but he said that they were heavy under center at the start of his career. And then they shifted their offense to make their run game more RPO's and quick game. And that's what replaced a lot of the run game. And that was effective.

Starting point is 00:23:43 And then in 2024, he said, we got so good at picking people apart underneath and marching the ball down the field that we started getting some more of those 2021 defenses. And so now we have to get back to making people pay for playing that way against us. And that'll in turn create that cycle again where we're explosive and then teams play a certain kind of defense. Then we'll be better equipped this time to be explosive in the run game and try to take advantage of that. And so that's a quick synopsis from Joe Burrow that we've been talking about in depth

Starting point is 00:24:12 for the last 25 minutes, which kind of leads to the, okay, so why is this year going to be different? And I think it's because of what we saw from the run game last year with the evolution they found Scott Peters, James Casey, getting a lot of credit for that, the more collaborative approach they took to the run game to find ways to really marry it up with the past game. It goes to the conversation that Dana had with Dan Pitcher, where Dan Pitcher's talking about and acknowledging the benefits and the correlation, strong correlation between the most explosive offenses and the willingness to be successful and get under center in running those play action

Starting point is 00:24:47 plays as a core identity of your offense. And I think this also ties into the tight end room very specifically that we've seen an increase in 12 personnel usage for the Bengals, which means you have two tight ends, one running back on the field, one running back, two tight ends is those one, two numbers that make up the 12, right? That's telling you how many running backs,

Starting point is 00:25:03 how many tight ends, and you can then extrapolate. There's two receivers if there's three of those other things on the field. The Bengals are seeing that tick up in 12 personnel usage like the rest of the NFL. But if you're going to do that, you need to be good in the tight end room, which is why the Eric All element of this and the way the offense changed when Eric All was a heavy part of it is, such a key factor to what we should expect from this team this year and that tight end room enabling them to do certain things or if they can't do those things because they don't

Starting point is 00:25:33 have the tight end personnel to do it, it'll look a different way. Yeah, that's a big point here. Part of the history of the Zach Taylor offense was the three wide receiver set, right? They're coming from the Rams that were heavy, three wide receivers, right? Cooper Cup in the slot, catching 150 balls. The Bengals adopted that. And when Joe Burrell first got here in Jamar Chase and T. Higgins and Tyler, Boyd. I mean, that's what got them to the Super Bowl. They were so strong in three-wide receiver sets. That has evolved.

Starting point is 00:26:00 They went from being the heaviest three-wide receiver set team in the league, which the averages at that time were a little bit different than they are in 2025, to being the 10th highest rate of 12 personnel, which is two tight-ons on the field, as Jake explained. 10th most last year. But here's where they can get better. If that's an emphasis of their game and they can get even better. And, guys, if you take the last year's 2025 rushing,

Starting point is 00:26:23 EPA you put on the 2% garbage time filter. The Bengals were number one in EPA rushing last year. But in 12 personnel, they were number 31 in 12 personnel EPA per play. And the running success rate took a dive also in 12 personnel. There's a lot of meat on that bone to get better, right? If that's a focus of them this off season, if they believe they're better because of Eric Hall, because of Jack entries, the guys they've added to this room, because they believe they can get under center and do these things more.

Starting point is 00:26:53 and expand that playbook and get it from 31st, let's say to 16th. That is a lot of more points on the board because you're now much better. You're going from one of the worst teams in the league doing it at the 10th highest rate. You close that gap. Your offense takes a leap forward because of it. And the continued adaptation should give you a lot of confidence in this team to figure out what will work for them. They've seen so much at this point that they should get to those answers much faster.

Starting point is 00:27:20 That's something Joe Burrough talked about. Like when we see the defense's, are going to play us this way, we're now better equipped to punish them in the run game or go to a passing concept that we're obviously extremely familiar with. We've been running since Joe, Joe, Jamar, and T have been together in Cincinnati, which is five years now. They've got all that in the bag, Andre Yosevash in year four. And despite some of the fan concerns about him, again, very familiar with the offense. And this goes along with familiarity with Mike Gaseki, familiarity with Drew sample, Eric Al's potential return is one of the big stories that's developed over the course

Starting point is 00:27:57 of the offseason program and the trajectory that he's on, the continued versatility of Chase Brown and how he fits in as a past protector, past catcher, and an effective runner in this offense that now is going into a season with continuity on the offensive line that you feel really good about. You feel really good about the trajectory that Amarius Mimson, Dylan Fairchild, You love the stability that Dalton Reiser and Ted Karras give you in the middle, along with Orlando Brown at left tackle. And so when you bring all those things together, you consider what they found over time, the ways they've been able to find answers on offense, everything that they know about from their

Starting point is 00:28:37 experiences, and this seemingly intense focus on explosive plays. And I know they've been talking about it the last few years. It's such a focus this offseason that I'm excited. to see what they do. What do you think, Joe, that the next move is, is they're so primed here to put it all together with all of these elements from personnel to scheme over time. What's going to take them over the top this year? I think it's going to be the balance. And that's why I brought up the zone gap running last two years, 52 to 48. That's a lot of balance. That way, I think they're getting under center more than they were in like the 2022 and

Starting point is 00:29:14 2023 seasons. So there's more balance. I think using more 12 personnel, so two tight ends on the field rather than three ride receivers. That's more balanced. And I think they can do that. You alluded and really made this point that these guys have all been in the scheme. I just watched the video of Jack entries. He's going to the tight end you, you know, camp that all the tight ends gather around and try and make each other better. And it's whatever they do there.

Starting point is 00:29:37 But if they were asking him, there was a local reporter from Cincinnati. I think it was a news person that I wasn't familiar with. But anyways, he asked him, who is he learning from in that tight end room? And he said, honestly, Mike Keseki and Drew Sample at PhDs in the, this offense. They just know everything like Gaseki knows everything about the passing offense. And Drew Sample knows everything about the run blocking and different formations and where he's got a lineup and how they can be multiple. And he goes, I'm just leaning on those two guys for that. And it made me think like, yeah, you have Gaseki for the first time in an offense more than

Starting point is 00:30:06 two years. He never had that in his career. And Drew Sample's been in this offense for the entirety of the Zach Taylor area. He's the only guy really remaining from that 2019 draft, right? That's Zach Taylor's guy. Those are two guys to lean on. So, they can do a lot with the weapons and the offensive line, a lot of veterans now in the offensive line, just Dylan Fairchild in year two. I mean, if you want to go back to something they ran in 2022, they could.

Starting point is 00:30:30 They could say this week, guys, actually, this game plan, remember that what we did against the Raiders that week? They could pull it back up and guys will remember what they did and what that play call was. The playbook now should be huge because of they seemingly keep attacking the small areas where they're weak and turning them into at least moderate strengths of this team. And that gets me excited about what this looks like in 2026.

Starting point is 00:30:53 Yeah, the tight end room is such a pivotal piece for this season. It's so interesting to me how much things seem to keep coming back to versatility at tight end, what they can do with that group at tight end, and how much that unlocks the run game. And if they can also be past catchers, how those things jive together and potentially open up the passing game from under center and all those things that they've worked together where they're so one-dimensional at tight end with those guys that had that PhD level and they're still very good at what they

Starting point is 00:31:28 do and trusted for what they do in this offense and like you said when you went through all the chase run explosive runs it's also Drew sample highlight reel those are some true samples best blocking plays but if you have those versatile pieces that really opens up so much for this offense it's one of the reasons it's so exciting not even just on a week-to-week game planning basis, as you were saying that I was thinking, like they could be in the middle of a game and pull something from 2022

Starting point is 00:31:55 because Joe Burrough sees something like, yeah, they're playing us like, you know, the Chiefs played us in 2020 in the playoffs. And we had this plan for Tyler Boyd, let's use the, let's attack the slot this way. And they can do that even in a game because the book is so deep on what they can pull. Remember, Jamarro's just an outside guy

Starting point is 00:32:16 those first two years. Like now he's a heavy slug. Lockai, you can say, you know, Jamar, you know this offense inside and out. We were going to do this with Boyd in 2022. Why don't you jump in the slot now? And they're even more dangerous. A lot of exciting potential for this offense in 2026. Really excited to see what they show us in training camp,

Starting point is 00:32:33 what we see in the preseason, which won't be very much. But the training camp points of emphasis always interesting. And how this offense hits the ground in 2026 will be fascinating because our expectations are as high as they've ever been. in. And in 2024 is honestly a pretty high bar to clear for what this team was doing on offense. And that's about where the bar is for 2026. That's going to do it for this episode of the Lockdown Bengals podcast, part of the lockdown podcast network, the number one sports podcast network in the land, your team every day. And until next time, thanks for listening.

Starting point is 00:33:09 Ho da and have a go.

Locked On Bengals - Daily Podcast On The Cincinnati Bengals - EVOLVED: Cincinnati Bengals Offense Set to DELIVER Its BEST Performance of the Joe Burrow Era

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.