The Cincinnati Bengals taking some elements of Joe Burrow’s favorite plays from the LSU playbook has been a consistent talking point so far this offseason.
But it’s always interesting to hear coaches speak up on how they’ve approached assembling the current year’s playbook, especially for a rookie quarterback.
Bengals offensive coordinator Brian Callahan sat down with Geoff Hobson of Bengals.com and dished on some of the pro elements they’ve been looking at too:
“But we’ve had a lot of conversations about a lot of football over the last handful of weeks. A lot that stuff has been from his time at LSU, a lot of that has been us talking to him about things we do…(The Saints) do some good things and we’ve studied some other teams across the league. LSU wasn’t the only team we watched.”
And on the 49ers Callahan said: “We spent some time watching some of the wrinkles in the 49ers run game because that’s an offshoot of the system Zac ran. It’s a version of Sean McVay. Sean was with (49ers head coach) Kyle Shanahan.”
It’s some interesting insight into what we’ll see from the Bengals and Burrow next year on the field. Callahan stressed he’d like some under-center looks for the offense to better work in play action looks — but trending toward an uptick in shotgun looks isn’t out of the question.
Given the nature of the offseason and simply trying to break in a rookie passer quickly, it’s good to hear the Bengals have been heavily studying teams like New Orleans, San Francisco and even Kansas City. Callahan admits Tyler Boyd isn’t Tyreek Hill, for example, but that they watch and implement some of these concepts to work for their own talent.
Hoping Burrow will just be the best possible version of Burrow, it sounds like Callahan and Co. have a smart plan heading into Year 1 of a new era.
