Bengals mailbag: Stat dives, rushing success and entering the season of truth

CINCINNATI — To me, Halloween always proved to be one of the most fitting holidays on the NFL calendar.

Christmas arrives at a time when teams spend December asking for gifts like division rival losses and healthy edge rushers. Thanksgiving comes at a time when you learn which teams look like bloated slobs on the couch and which ones are truly ready to eat in the playoffs.

Halloween, though, best hits the theme of the season. By the time the kids return home from their night spent masquerading as Superman, Joe Burrow, Cinderella or Taylor Swift and the uneaten candy overflows a bowl at the highest shelf of the kitchen, the season of pretending is over.
No more masks, costumes or creepy lights meant to make your suburban cottage look like an evil lair.

By the time Halloween passes, NFL teams are generally exposed for who they really are. Leap years from young players either happened or they didn’t. Offenses that required tinkering in September either fixed it or proved flawed.

That stood out as I parsed through all your mailbag questions this week.

You wanted the truth. You wanted to know if the Bengals are AFC contenders or lucky to draw Daniel Jones and Deshaun Watson in the last two weeks. Are they the team that should have handed Kansas City its lone loss and topped Baltimore, or the team that choked away both? Are they the team that set the league on fire offensively, scoring at least 33 points for four straight weeks or the group that slogged its way through wins at New York and Cleveland?

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They’ve been tough to figure. They’ve either played the best of the best or dregs of the league.

That’s why the Philadelphia Eagles arrive just in time. Take out all your quantifying tools: Measuring sticks, barometers, thermometers, gauges, micrometers and protractors. They represent a similar team, almost like the NFC Bengals. They have talent galore, high expectations, an elite receiver combo, a respected quarterback, a recent Super Bowl appearance, and a base level of playoff football, even if they are working through their own issues at the moment.

If the Bengals are to be viewed as capable of making a run to dig out of the abyss they launched themselves into over the first five weeks of the season, they must win this type of game.

It’s a truth-teller game. An ideal opportunity to learn who they really are in a season where that reality has proven elusive and lined with excuses.
I think this team is capable of making a run. That’s why I have them finding a way to beat the Eagles, 26-23, on a 53-yard Evan McPherson field goal at the gun. Redemption arc for all involved the last time the Bengals played a home game against Baltimore.

As for your questions, I did my best to dig to the bottom of the truth. Everybody wanted to know the facts and figures behind their gut feelings.
So, a mailbag full of stat dives was the end result.

Enjoy the truth.

Can you provide the game-to-game variations in 11 and 12 personnel packages, as well as the number of snaps for the offensive players? I’m wondering how much variation in play time the WRs and TEs are seeing. — Jim L.

Thanks for the question, Jim. I’ve written about the 12 personnel usage this year which has been one of the largest schematic deviations during Zac Taylor’s time in Cincinnati. The king of 11 personnel has handed over the crown to now be among the NFL leaders in 12.

Filtering to only include first and second down when the score is within 10 points for a more neutral situation, you see the Bengals at 36.4 percent 12 personnel for the season. It took a significant spike after the opener against New England.

From week to week it has varied some, with the game against Washington rising to 50 percent and the loss to Baltimore dipping down to 28.6 percent. Everything else lived in between.

As for individual variations in usage, here’s a look at snap percentage trends throughout the season. If you are looking for major variations there isn’t much.

Mike Gesicki’s usage dropped and Erick All’s went up. Trenton Irwin was taken out of the rotation and Andrei Iosivas experienced a slight dip the last two weeks.

Outside of those movements, the usage remains fairly consistent, give or take the game flow.

How far under the salary cap are the Bengals this year? Do teams that refuse to go all the way up to the cap win Super Bowls? — Frank A.

Cap space probably isn’t the best way to measure “going for it,” which sounds like the theme of your question. But, I can answer this specifically.

The latest cap space estimates from Over The Cap list Cincinnati with $8.98 million in cap room remaining. That ranks as 19th most in the NFL. The 49ers lead the way with $54.8 million, with the Chiefs and Panthers down to almost nothing.

There’s little predictability between money left on the cap and season success. There’s also little correlation between the Bengals and consistently unused space.

Unused cap space:

• 2020: 11th (10.8M)
• 2021: 16th ($3.9M)
• 2022: 24th ($2.0M)
• 2023: 7th ($10.8M)
• 2024: 18th ($9.0M)

*All numbers via Spotrac

As for teams that go on to make the Super Bowl, there really isn’t much correlation there if that’s what you are speculating. In fact, last year, the team with the most cap space remaining at the end of the season was the NFC champion San Francisco 49ers ($38.0M).

The Eagles and Chiefs were both in the middle of the pack in 2022, and the Rams held a similar amount of cap space as the Bengals did in 2021. As for cash spending, you can also judge where the Bengals have lived year in and year out.

2024: 16th
2023: 12th
2022: 30th
2021: 22nd
2020: 8th
2019: 13th

The blip in 2022 came in backloading cash in preparation for the Burrow drop a year later. If you are looking for a trend of teams exhausting cap room or spending the most cash advancing in the playoffs, it just doesn’t exist.

Actually, not spending boatloads of cash on the roster has been the only trend that tracks the last five years.

Year	Super Bowl champion	Cash spending rank
2019	Chiefs	27th
2020	Buccaneers	20th
2021	Rams	25th
2022	Chiefs	22nd
2023	Chiefs	20th

It seems like for the Bengals they either go three-and-out or score points. Are there any stats on this to confirm or is it just my perception? — Michael G.

Michael, this looks to mostly be your perception. The Bengals don’t live in extremes in either one of those categories. They rank 19th in the league in three-and-out percentage and 10th in scores per drive. So, yes, there’s a slight gap, but nothing drastic.

The line we hear from the staff a lot, “just need to get the first first down” refers to the feeling that a rhythm establishes once they get the drive going. Maybe that’s what is percolating in your gut.

As for truth behind that axiom, the Bengals move up to sixth in scores per drive when they get the first first down. They rank 19th in punt percentage when gaining at least one first down and 23rd in punt percentage on all drives. So, again, both are reflective of slight shifts once they establish the rhythm, but nothing worth building a credible thesis around.

Why does this team still have such a low success rate rushing the ball? I fear the rushing offense from under center and shotgun passing game still don’t mesh… when we go under center it seems the defense knows it’s a run. — Brian G.

Let’s take a look at the dynamics of the run game right now. Overall, the run game has deteriorated in recent weeks. After a fast start, they now rank 27th in success percentage on running back rushes. On the flip side, they are finding more explosive rushes from the backs. They rank 11th in percentage of runs going for 10-plus yards.

As for trends going under center, you do see a slight tendency. Filtering just to the first and second down of a close game to avoid too much situational and short-yardage altering the results, you see a few trends.

*Neutral downs (first down/second down, score within 14 points)

They are running it at one of the higher rates in the league when under center, making them slightly more predictable. Take that into account by how effective (with no tendencies) they have been playing out of the shotgun/pistol. They rank near the top of the league in the crucial categories compared to the bottom portion when under center.

That could partially be because your hypothesis holds true. Perhaps they are too predictable under center. They could throw it more under center using play action.

Also, why bother?

For all the talk of needing to go under center more after the success enjoyed with Jake Browning at the conclusion of last season, that just hasn’t been the case this year. They are one of the most potent offenses in football feeding the ball to Burrow out of the gun, and that’s probably where they need to spend most of their time going forward.

Is Taylor/Burrow allergic to throwing ball to a slot receiver? — Jeff C.

Well, two elements are at play here. First, if they play with 12 personnel more often, the likelihood of a slot receiver even being on the field decreases. So, you can see production dip in that regard.

Second, just because a ball goes to Tee Higgins or Ja’Marr Chase doesn’t mean Burrow passed on a slot target. The offense has involved Chase and Higgins taking more slot snaps this year than ever before in the absence of Tyler Boyd.

The Bengals actually rank 11th in the NFL in targets to players lining up in the slot, according to NextGen Stats. Burrow ranks fourth in the NFL in yards per attempt on those targets. They tempered by week, averaging 11.6 attempts over the first five games of the season and only five each of the last two weeks.
I think you’re right. They could rekindle the romance with the slot receiver this week.

Why do the Bengals continue to run sweeps when they have almost never gained a yard running them? — Eric M.

Eric, you are not totally off, though, much like the Bengals’ running game, your timing might be. Just last game in Cleveland, Chase ripped off an 11-yard jet sweep and the biggest run of the day was a 22-yarder on the first play out of halftime to Chase Brown sprinting around the outside.

You’re probably talking about specifically pitching the ball outside, which hasn’t been pretty and while I can’t track the exact pitch sweep results, you are on to something in terms of running outside versus inside. Pro Football Focus tracks the specific gaps each run hits and you can see Cincinnati’s run game finds the most efficiency running downhill, up the middle.

• Outside: 63-242 yards (3.8)
• Inside: 72-313 yards (4.3)

Maybe don’t give up on outside runs and sweeps just yet. After all these years, I never thought I’d actually see a successful handoff to Chase, and it happened last week. So dare to dream.

(Photo: Matt Kelley / Getty Images)