Bengals Week 1 Snap Counts: Bates Never Leaves the Field

Andy Dalton led the Bengals to a 34-23 comeback win over the Colts. The Bengals scored 24 unanswered points, including a 83 yard fumble recovery by Clayton Fejedelem to secure the win.

The Bengals finished the game with 55 offensive snaps and 82 defensive snaps. This is similar to how their snap counts were looking last season. The offense will need to even out how many snaps they had compared to the defense to lead in time of possession and take control of the game. Even though the Bengals did come out with a tough comeback win on the road, this is one of many things the Bengals will need to improve going into Thursday versus Baltimore.

Offensive Snaps

• QB Andy Dalton: 55 // 100%
• OT Cordy Glenn: 55 // 100%
• OT Bobby Hart: 55 // 100%
• OG Clint Boling: 55 // 100%
• OG Alex Redmond: 55 //100%
• C Billy Price: 55 // 100%
• WR AJ Green: 52 // 95%
• WR Tyler Boyd: 48 // 87%
• RB Joe Mixon: 42 // 76%
• TE CJ Uzomah: 36 // 65%
• WR John Ross: 36 // 65%
• TE Tyler Eifert: 22 // 40%
• TE Tyler Kroft: 17 // 31%
• RB Gio Bernard: 14 // 25%
• RB Tre Carson: 3 // 5%
• WR Josh Malone: 2 // 4%
• DE Sam Hubbard: 1 // 2%
• WR Alex Erickson: 1 // 2%
• OT Jake Fisher: 1 // 2%

There were a couple of surprises here with the Bengals offense. Mixon led all backs with 42 snaps and 22 touches for 149 total yards, Bernard had 14 snaps with only 2 touches for 9 yards. Mixon was expected to receive normal starter snaps, but I expected Bernard to play more of a role versus the Colts. CJ Uzomah was the front man for the tight ends in snaps which was also a surprise to me. It was noted that Eifert would be on a snap count and play a limited role, but I expected Kroft to be the lead guy instead. Eifert lead the tight ends with 3 catches for 44 yards.

Josh Malone and Alex Erickson saw limited time. I do expect their playing time to increase as the season goes on, but the Bengals liked what they saw out of the starters and went with them most of the game.

Defensive Snaps

• LB Nick Vigil: 82 // 100%
• S Jessie Bates: 82 // 100%
• CB William Jackson: 82 // 100%
• CB Dre Kirkpatrick: 80 // 98%
• S Clayton Fejedelem: 69 // 84%
• DE Carlos Dunlap: 65 // 79%
• DT Geno Atkins: 56 // 68%
• CB Darquze Dennard: 52 // 63%
• DE Michael Johnson: 46 // 56%
• LB Preston Brown: 46 // 56%
• DE Carl Lawson: 42 // 51%
• DT Ryan Glasgow: 40 // 49%
• DE Jordan Willis: 39 // 48%
• LB Hardy Nickerson: 36 // 44%
• NT Andrew Billings: 33 // 40%
• LB Jordan Evans: 31 // 38%
• S Shawn Williams: 13 // 16%
• DE Sam Hubbard: 7 // 9%
• CB Tony McRae: 1 // 1%

Clayton Fejedelem had the play of the game and did not get the start for this game, but replaced Shawn Williams after he was ejected in the first quarter. Fejedelem earned 91.7 PFF grade, which was the highest on the defense. Nick Vigil, Jessie Bates, and William Jackson played all 82 snaps this week and all 3 of them played well. Vigil had a couple flashes with 2 tackles for loss and led the team with 11 tackles, all solo tackles.

The Bengals did what was expected with the defensive line, interchanging the depth players and were all sitting around 50% of snaps with Atkins and Dunlap leading with 65 and 56 snaps respectively.

Preston Brown got banged up on play in the second quarter and Hardy Nickerson came in for him, which was surprising being that Jordan Evans was listed as a starter on the depth chart. Nickerson did end up with a few more snaps and tallied 4 tackles, compared to Evans with 3.

The Bengals will look to continue the winning ways this Thursday versus the Ravens. Let’s see who will take a step forward in their playing time this week.