Bengals should take pages out of Rams' playbook to realize Super Bowl ceiling

There are plenty of reasons to be optimistic about the Cincinnati Bengals this year, even if the national media is a little out of step with the ramifications of the latest goings-on in the Queen City.

Armed with vastly improved defensive personnel, and the best offensive line of his NFL career, elite Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow is poised to be at his best. Bad news for the rest of the league.

That said, Cincinnati could take some pressure off Joe Shiesty by leaning more into a rushing attack that really hit its stride down the stretch of the 2025 season. Some recent analysis suggests the Los Angeles Rams are an ideal team to model a schematic shift after.

Rams' offensive evolution could mirror Bengals' 2026 trajectory

On The Athletic Football Show, Derrik Klassen dropped some knowledge bombs on the people — not dissimilar to what I've said for months — about the Bengals' need to diversify their running game.

It just so happened that the Rams, who have their own prolific passing attack spearheaded by reigning league MVP Matthew Stafford, are an optimal blueprint for Cincinnati to learn from:

"The Rams are a very high success rate, not very explosive run game […] but the difference is, their run game is tied to being under center. They can do it out of 13, they can do it out of 11, they can play action off of it, they can boot off of it. They can do all these sort of things. That’s not true with Cincinnati. It's very siloed to, we run gun duo and inside zone — and that's kind of it. Defenses know what they're getting, and I think in the regular season that means a little bit less […] I do think this matters more when you get to the playoffs. […] It's not just what is your best way to win and how good is that. It's how many different kinds of ways can you win. I'm not sure the Bengals have as many avenues."

I will spam this stat from Joe Goodberry into oblivion to eliminate one of the multiple nonsense narratives about the Bengals. It shows that Cincinnati was not just passable, not just above average, but elite at running the football for 11 of 17 games last season:

But Klassen is pretty spot-on with his analysis. The Bengals run the lowest play-action rate in the league, and Burrow is rarely under center. He likes to spread the defense out as much as possible and pick opponents apart that way.

Lethal as that offense has been at times, it's also put Burrow in harm's way too often. It's put his offensive line in tough spots. Combine that with a suspect defense, and it's no wonder the Bengals haven't made the playoffs for three years running.

Brown is entering a contract year and has every incentive to raise the ceiling of his payday. The o-line has innate chemistry and is a far more athletic group than Cincinnati typically fields, which opens up the chance to implement more counter and outside zone runs to keep adversaries more off-balance.

All of this, in tandem with Burrow going under center more and utilizing more play-action, can create more explosive plays for the Bengals' already-exceptional aerial attack.

Klassen referred to the Rams' usage of 12 and 13 personnel, and how, unlike the Bengals, they're far more varied when it comes to running and passing on under-center plays. Meanwhile, when Cincinnati goes under center with Burrow, it's almost a guaranteed run.

if the defense is indeed improved, ideally Burrow won't have to drop back 40 times a game. The Bengals should be trying to melt the clock while nursing late leads in 2026. Quick-game passing concepts can only take you so far, even with an elite passer like Joe Brrr and his weapons.

Here's hoping Zac Taylor, a branch off Rams head coach Sean McVay's tree, takes some of this to heart and keeps pushing the envelope to make the Bengals a more balanced offense — and thus a more dangerous Super Bowl contender.

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