Running Wild Isn't Mandatory
But the Bengals could use a little more of it
Today is FreeForAll Wednesday, because I might not write on what is usually FFA Thursday. Enjoy, comment, ponder a paid subscription.
What fans and followers of the NFL do best is worry. Unless they’re complaining. Even the best teams are ripe for cynics and skeptics and armchair experts — yours truly highly included — ready to pounce on any perceived deficiency.
Which brings us to today’s sermon, brothers and sisters.
We fret now for the Bengals running game. Six games into things, we see an apparently healthy Joe Burrow still perfecting the sideways passing game. We don’t see the attacking, aggressive offense taking what it wants. We see it playing in a box. We see it taking what the defense allows. Yuck.
Eyes shift toward the running game which, we experts claim, is clogging the machine. If the Bengals weren’t last in the league in yards per carry, they wouldn’t be 29th in converting third downs. They’d be better in the red zone. Burrow could play behind center, not in the shotgun, and play-action would become more than a rumor.
All this has the Who-Deys saying What Dat?
SI.com
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How bad is it? Bad enough that revisionist historians are clamoring for the return of Samaje Perine, currently marooned in Denver.
Samaje Perine?
The guy who can’t get traction with the Broncos, a bad football team angling for the No. 1 overall draft pick? Perine had zero carries last week. He has 24 carries all year, for 88 yards. Perine’s best year, his rookie season in Washington, he gained 603 yards and averaged 3.4 yards a rush. In two years here, he totaled 640 running yards.
That guy is going to save the running game.
High-effort player, very good teammate, evidently. Joe Mixon-like numbers. In his 7th-season, he’s well past the bewitching hour for most RBs.
We grasp at straws. Here’s the truth:
The Bengals decided in the offseason that the running game wasn’t worth their time and money. They yawned at the prospect of Mixon returning. We’ll keep you, we guess. Ponder the number of current NFL players in their primes who are being paid less money this season than last.
While the organization was low-balling its veteran running back, it wasn’t proactively seeking a better replacement. The thinking was, Joe (Burrow) will save us. We don’t need a good running game. We just need an “efficient’’ one.
It could be arrogance talking. It could be the assumption that with an ascendant Burrow, a new, Pro Bowl left tackle and the receiving studs, the running game was for mere mortals and Woody Hayes disciples, not the Cincinnati Bengals.
As it turns out it’s possible at least in the short run that the ground game is making a league-wide renaissance. Scoring continues a downward trend. Yahoo!:
Teams are averaging 21.7 points per game, down from 21.9 last year and tied with 2017 for the fewest since the 2009 season. Teams are also averaging just 329.7 yards on offense, the fewest since 2008. Anecdotally, this tracks, given we just completed a week in which four teams scored in single digits and another 14 failed to crack 20 points.
That doesn’t necessarily mean running the ball is gaining favor. It’s more likely that teams are getting better defending the pass.
The NFL pendulum swings and re-swings. Passing games soar, defenses adapt. That could be happening now. Of the top 10 running teams currently, seven are playoff contenders. The top 3 running clubs — Miami, Philly, SF — are early favorites for a Bowl trip.
Part of that could be that the Dolphins, Eagles and Niners are leading their games most of the time. It’s a little early in the season to be making big assumptions. But for the moment, running the ball looks to be regaining some luster.
The Men have a running-the-ball problem. It’s of their own making. Answers are greater than a trade for Samaje Perine.
Now, then. . .
Original Philadelphia Phillie.
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HIGH TESTOSTERONE IN PHILLY. I’d be scared if I were a D-backs pitcher. I’d be thinking I can’t throw fastballs, because they’ll get hammered. I can’t throw fastballs for strikes, because they’ll get hammered more. I can’t throw balls, either, because the Philadelphia Phillies have suddenly become very picky about the pitches they hack. But I have to throw strikes, so when my fastballs get hammered, at least there’s a chance only one run will happen.
Bryce Harper, Nick Castellanos and Kyle Schwarber are righteously bad dudes. Trea Turner, too, but Turner doesn’t have that barroom-bouncer look or attitude to him. Turner might say, “I don’t take any nonsense’’ when the other three are rolling up their sleeves, cracking their necks and saying, “We ain’t takin’ your s—-, buddy.’’
Either way, this is a team not to be (messed) with. There’s a chance Bryce, Nick and Kyle don’t roll up to Citizens Bank Park on Harleys, after spending all afternoon getting devil tattoos and draining South Philly of its Jack Daniel’s supply. But it’s not a good one.
(Not suggesting anything but an image, OK? No idea if these dudes imbibe anything stronger than YooHoo.)
The Phillies of this October are the Oakland Raiders of 1968. Their clubhouse door swings open like an Old West saloon entrance. They will be breaking chairs on heads.
Maybe fortunes will shift now that the NLCS has shifted to the desert. The ballpark in Phoenix is not the homer emporium Citizens Bank is. But the same cast of hombres will be there, and that’s bads news for the D-backs and the local citizenry, who will be asked to stay indoors and hide their women and children.
Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be Phillies.
OCTOBER IS THE BEST MONTH around here, and if I didn’t dread what’s to come, I might really enjoy it. Incredible today, mid-60s, blue-perfect skies, leaves turning. I’m forever amazed (and grateful) that so many local snowbirds believe October to be too cold. They pack up and head south, leaving the golf courses free and clear for hackers like me to destroy.
So, Mobsters. . . any recommendations for leaf-watching day roadies? A favorite of mine is the 2-plus hour trek to Madison, IN and environs. Clifty Falls, Hanover College, Madison itself. Perfection.
Who can top that?
TUNE O’ THE DAY. . . The topic today is covers. Have I done this already? Maybe, but it’s a good topic, so. . .
Come Together, Aerosmith. Verrrry hard to beat the Beatles at their own game. This one comes close. Steven Tyler’s snarly vocal is pitch perfect.
2. Light My Fire, Jose Feliciano. Distinct, flawless interpretation of the Doors classic.
1. All Along the Watchtower. Hendrix blows away Dylan. It’s not even close.
Yours, please.
Best Beatles cover ever, IMO, “With a Little Help from My Friends” by Joe Cocker. 2nd best: “Hey Jude” by Wilson Picket. John Lennon was quoted as saying when he heard Wilson Picket’s cover he played it 17 times in a row. One anecdotal story on Picket’s cover: when Eric Clapton heard it, he had to find out who the guitarist was. It was none other than Duane Allman and that precipitated the later collaboration called Derek and the Dominoes, of Layla and Other Love Songs album.
I love Madison on a fall weekday. Columbus, Indiana too. Too many Harley riding part-time pirates on the weekends can spoil the vibe. Now, I don’t mind motorcycles or motorcycle riders at all. What I dislike is the convergence of like minded people who feel it necessary to rev their engines for attention. There’s nothing quite like sitting outside looking at something beautiful and then vroom-vroom to the nth power clouds your senses while the exhaust fumes choke you out.