Taylor is confident the offensive line will come together. Burrow, who was sacked once, said it was the best defense of his 30 career games. Before being stopped on a fourth-and-one (Mixon throw to the right), they converted five straight third-and-ones with Mixon carrying three of them. Later in the game, he was stuffed at the goal line on third-and-one and fourth-and-one.
“Better,” Taylor said of the state of the run. “I like where our guys are, they get in sync, they’re on the same page, it’s just sometimes we’re a block away. Sometimes there might be a guy we can’t get to at receiver because of his location, sometimes can it be a right tackle, left tackle, it’s just kind of a different thing every time we run right, run left, run the different schemes.
“The easy thing to do is just say, ‘Let’s just throw the ball every single game because of what they’re trying to do with the run game, they’re trying to put an extra guy in, let’s just throw it 70 times.’ We don’t want to live that way. We know we can live that way because of the talent we have at receiver and quarterback, but at the same time you want to give the running game a chance to be explosive and It will. Enjoyed talking about the first two weeks of the season, I’m not going to overthink it, and trust those guys that we’re coming and that we have a good chance to be very good there in the run game.”
ADG WADDLES: How about Bengals third-year linebacker Akeem Davis-Gaither’s amazing coverage of one of the fastest guys in the league? On second-and-10 from the Bengals 30 and the Dolphins getting into a pretty good rhythm, ADG made a play that only allowed them a field goal.
It’s a play that shows why they took him in the fourth round out of Appalachian State in 2020. He ran with Jaylen Waddle on a slant, and he ended up dislodging it as they battled to the ground.
Twenty, even ten years ago, linebackers had to hit. Now they have to run because they make you cover.
“There was no way we were going to put a linebacker one-on-one at 17 (Waddle) and 10 (Tyreek Hill) in this game,” linebackers coach James Bettcher said. “But when you get matched up in zone coverage under defenders, you have to be able to move in the NFL and tackle because of what (the offense) does in space. They put small guys in low zones against guys who have to be able to make plays . .. it was a zone coverage where he’s the inside element of the zone coverage.”
It came four days after he was the Bengals’ leading tackler in New York with 13.
