After cementing himself as the Cincinnati Bengals' go-to feature back last season, Chase Brown has had a rough go of it for much of the 2025 campaign. However, the former fifth-round pick out of Illinois seems to be turning a corner at the perfect time.
Brown found little room to run through the early part of Cincinnati's schedule. A fluctuating offensive line, anemic passing game, and lack of imagination or commitment to the rushing attack left the Bengals one-dimensional as could be on offense.
Following a 109-yard outing in Week 7's sensational win over the Steelers, Brown is delivering and hinting at what he can do to help the Bengals realize their immense collective potential.
Bengals' extraordinary team effort should unleash Chase Brown for rest of 2025 season
Paul Dehner Jr. of The Athletic wrote up a phenomenal story on how head coach Zac Taylor and the coaching staff made a point to make Brown more of a factor than he was in the first month-plus of the new season.
Featured in the piece are comments by Taylor about how critical it is for Cincinnati to get an early lead in order to establish the run. However, the intentional effort to increase Brown's involvement coincided with Joe Flacco's arrival via trade, as the tailback explained whilst praising the o-line's improvement:
"First of all, things were confronted...Hey, we need to get this run game going. It’s been a big emphasis for multiple weeks now. [...] The O-line did that in a huge way...We were creating space, made running lanes. When you do that, I can’t ask for anything else. Everything on the second level, that’s what I get paid for. You open up lanes like that, it is going to be dangerous."
Cutting back to Flacco for a second. His knack for diagnosing defenses pre-snap was on full display against Pittsburgh.
Joe Cool kept the Steelers on their heels by hitting Ja'Marr Chase on free-access throws on the perimeter, which contributed to his franchise-record 16 receptions on a whopping 23 targets.
Taylor spoke afterwards about how Flacco spamming Chase on those quicker-than-quick-game throws was an extension of the rushing attack. My contention all season has been to incorporate more horizontal action/motion to stress the defense, but instant tosses to Chase fulfill that general objective, too.
It's striking how much better Cincinnati got at running the football once Flacco joined the fold.
As is cited in Dehner's article, the Bengals went from dead-last in rushing success rate and explosive run percentage in Weeks 1 through 5 to fifth and fourth in those respective categories since.
Across the last six quarters, Cincinnati has put up 51 points. Flacco has had extra time to prepare for Week 8's tilt with the winless New York Jets, and the o-line has, in Dehner's words, "a renewed emphasis on aggressive, downhill blocking" that's given them some much-needed momentum.
Dear rest of NFL, don't let the Bengals have an above-average run game for Flacco and Joe Burrow once he prospectively returns in December. Don't let Chase Brown cook. You might not like the outcome for your team.