Looking back at the Cincinnati Bengals’ Week 12 win over the Cleveland Browns to figure out why they managed their eventual 30-16 victory.
It wasn’t too long ago when Cincinnati’s season appeared over at 3-6. Getting their second win over the Browns in 2017 puts the team just a game away from .500 on the season well within the AFC playoff race as we enter December.
Here’s how Cincinnati managed their convincing victory over their division mates.
3. Stacking Scoring Drives
The game began working more in Cleveland’s favor than Cincinnati’s. Not only were the Browns able to hit three different runs for 10+ yards, but they were gifted 15 yards by a Vontaze Burfict Unnecessary Roughness penalty around midfield. Behind those plays, Cleveland managed to get into the redzone before eventually kicking through a field goal.
Granted, a 3-0 deficit out of the gate isn’t much to overcome, but you must remember that the Bengals have been startlingly bad at keeping their offense on the field. According to Football Outsiders’ Offensive Drive Stats, Cincinnati came into Week 12 ranked dead last in yards per drive (23.97), plays per drive (4.99), and Drive Success Rate (6.24). Even against a winless team like Cleveland, they would need to show signs of improvement to prevent an upset from brewing.
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It didn’t take long to make sure this game was different than most of them for Cincinnati this year.
Cincinnati immediately went on a nine-play, 75-yard drive with their first possession, taking a lead they would hold until the end of the game. This first drive wasn’t the end of things, by the way. In fact, Cincinnati would go on to score on every drive they embarked upon during the first half of this game, and with a touchdown on the opening drive of the second half they managed to score on their first five offensive drives of the game.
These drives hint at the possibility of this team finally turning around those issues with sustaining drives. Three of those five consecutive early scores came on 9+ play drives, and four of them picked up at least 42 yards.
Further hope for more sustainability going forward: this performance also wasn’t really helped by big plays, either. Among these drives Cincinnati only had two 20 yard plays. Those sort of plays would surely help an offense of course, but it is a lot tougher to sustain an offense built around those type of plays than it would be to have a unit which banks on smaller, more consistent gains.
All the scoring provided by these drives gave Cincinnati a dominant lead with 10:21 left in the third quarter. There is still room to improve obviously (three of those scores were field goals — two of which came in the red zone), but finding some sustained rhythm across multiple drives is cause for excitement for these Bengals.