Cincinnati Bengals Film Breakdown: How Joe Burrow, Ja'Marr Chase and Tee Higgins Recaptured Their Deep Ball Magic

The result was immediate. With teams emphasizing tight man coverage to deny anything underneath, the NFL quickly found out that Burrow, Chase, and Higgins were as explosive a trio in the league and automatic on the go ball.

With the bender in the middle to hold the safety just enough, creating huge chunks was very simple. Burrow razed defenses to the tune of a ridiculous 8.9 yards per attempt, which led the NFL. If anything they became *too* dependent on explosives, and the defensive book on them flipped 180 degrees. Starting the next season, the Bengals saw 2-high coverages at as high a rate as anyone, with emphasis shifting toward the denial of those 1-on-1s at all costs.

While overall the Bengals' fastball has subsequently evolved back into the precise underneath 3 and 5-step stuff the QB does indeed still do so well, any great offense still needs to be able to leave the ballpark. With the absence of a run game good enough to scare defenses off of their 2-high menu, they've had to get creative.

Getting Behind Two Safeties

While it will never be as easy as it is with one guy deep, beating multi-high coverages vertically is more doable than the spread offenses of the NFL have made it look over the past couple of years.

College teams have been doing this for a while now. It requires elite receivers, demands a ton from the quarterback, and puts more on the protection, but it can be done. While for the Bengals, the protection part remains an obstacle, they've begun to steal general principles from some of the higher-flying air raid-based systems of the late 2010s like Oklahoma.

Traditionally, true shot plays were designed for when you had a heavy box, which necessitates a certain structure on the back-end of a defense. The framework is simple, you force them up and go over their heads when they do. In addition to just taking 1-on-1s on the outside, offenses would traditionally target and conflict the deep safety with a deeper route behind and a shallower, but still pretty deep route underneath him. If the S drives underneath you throw deep behind him, if he stays deep you throw behind the linebackers.

You're attacking one of these two areas depending on where that one safety goes. With 2-deep safeties pre-snap, the defense has one for each, eliminating all conflict and giving them the flexibility to account for both routes and force the ball down to the checkdown. That's obviously not the aim of taking shots.

Splitting The Back Line

Against 2-high structures, the hi-lo conflict on one guy can still exist, but you also have another S to deal with.

To take shots inside the numbers against true 2-deep coverages like Cover 2, 4, or 6, you generally have to get behind one safety and inside the other.

However you configure your concept to achieve that it's the same idea, just like it was in single high. You hold one guy underneath and split the other one. Usually to do that you'll need another route in the downfield distribution like this. Instead of two guys deep, it'll take three (sometimes more). If you watch Lincoln Riley's OU offenses, they have a bunch of concepts designed like this to hold the frontside safety and conflict the backside.

Again there are many ways to configure this idea, but if you can get a 2-on-1 deep on that backside guy, you once again have the numbers to throw deep. You can either open a window behind him or beat him inside to the spot behind the frontside safety like Chase does.

Packaging Alerts

You don't need to commit to taking a shot to attack vertically. Offenses will often package "alerts" into their normal passing concepts that, while not part of the main concept or read, can be taken by the quarterback if he sees something juicy.

Every team has alerts, but the Bengals are strategic in how they pair them with other concepts to create conflict.

Because a lot of teams will use their safeties to drive on intermediate routes in quarters (Cover-4), especially against Cincinnati, an alert post can punish them for being flat-footed and open up a shot.

If the safety stays deep, it helps the main concept breathe by putting the flat defender in conflict between the flat and the sail. A nice element of quarters is the ability to drive from depth, eliminate that conflict, and play the second level defenders tighter to the underneath routes. When done right it can take the air out of everything, but there's vulnerability behind the safeties that the Bengals have become good at exploiting.

As you see, you do have to worry about the backside safety robbing all the way over the top when there is no number two vertical to his side. Chase gets behind it because he is so fast and Burrow puts proper air under it, but you can also tag a go instead of a post if you're worried about him getting over.

This is known in Dave Aranda parlance as a "fox alert." It means that if the 1/4 safety has no threat vertically to account for, he will work deep to "fox the post" coming from the other side as the guys in these clips do. If you're going to hit this route you have to account for it, and the Bengals' speed at wide receiver often does the job.

With how much they like to work the middle and put the linebackers into hi-lo conflict, the Bengals have had issues with safeties driving on the intermediate. Additionally, teams have taken a page from Steve Spagnuolo in the AFC Title Game (the one the Bengals lost) and played a version of Cover-0 that involves brackets on BOTH Chase and Higgins.

The Bengals have taken to using dig and go double moves to get punish jumpy safeties.

Unleashing Chase

Explosive players create explosive plays, sometimes they'll just flip the table and throw the Xs and Os out the window. Chase is definitely one of those guys, and simply getting the ball into his hands creates the threat of a home run. As a receiver, his increased versatility and diversifying route tree has expanded those opportunities and put him in more positions to make plays after the catch.

Anything can turn into a big play.

Exploiting Gravity

When a guy is that much of a threat, he commands attention, and if a simple screen can hurt you, a screen and go can punish your vigilance for an easy chunk.

He can also be used to occupy safeties. His over-sail is designed to lock up both safeties and manufacture a 1-on-1 off the motion and go for their other bucket-getter, Higgins, who gets open vertically. Burrow needs to put a bit more air under this ball. It's a rare miss. I don't think Burrow expected that level of vertical separation.

Next Steps

With an elite quarterback/receiver trio locked up for the foreseeable future, the Bengals will never have to worry about firepower. With their styles so well known at this point, the coaching staff can continue to innovate and design ways to get these guys open for chunks.

While the run game remains a sore spot, the Bengals and their staff have not gotten enough credit for designing one of the most complex, well-constructed dropback pass games in the modern NFL.

It'll be hard to pace the league in explosive play rates without a run game that demands attention (due to the relative absence of the many 25-30-yard easy play action chunks those teams can access), the Bengals can still put the ball over the fence and may be at the forefront of something interesting with how they attack downfield against coverages designed to stop that.

And if a team is ever STILL foolish enough to show them man coverage, they always have ol' reliable.