One of the biggest problems that hurt the Cincinnati Bengals during Sunday’s loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers was the putrid running game.
There, the Bengals rushed just 11 times for 25 yards. Eight of those chances went to Joe Mixon, who gained 16 of the yards. New starting quarterback Jake Browning had the rest.
The Browning-led offense faced stacked boxes each and every time, but the problem feels much deeper, in the realm of schematics.
Offensive tackle Jonah Williams touched on these topics after the loss.
“We’ve got to get more on the ground,” Williams said, according to Paul Dehner Jr. of The Athletic. “That is another deal where it felt like we were running uphill a lot. Better scheme, better execution, just better across the board. You can’t rush for 25 yards and play against the Steelers — or really many people.”
At this point, the miserable ground game problem goes all the way back to last offseason when the team didn’t take the need to upgrade the running back room seriously or implement a better scheme and/or plan.
And the one way it did — with rookie Chase Brown in the fifth round — resulted in Zac Taylor having to explain after the loss why Brown didn’t get a single carry.
