Borrowing the Blueprint: Bengals’ adaptability could benefit Patriots, Maye originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston
As the Patriots complete their first year under Jerod Mayo and Eliot Wolf, we’ll take a look at their newest opponent each week this season and see if there’s an aspect of their football strategy worth emulating as the new regime in New England works to mold their team into a contender.
This week we’re looking at the Bengals, whose prolific passing attack featuring Joe Burrow, Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins is probably the envy of every team in the NFL except one. (The Chiefs have done quite well.)
When it comes to what the Patriots should emulate, the obvious answer would be to surround Drake Maye with the types of high-caliber pass-catchers that Burrow has been able to work with over the past few seasons. Higgins was drafted in the second round the same year as Burrow (2020). Chase, who played with Burrow at LSU, was selected first in the first round the following year.
Not surprisingly, their passing game picked up speed.
The Patriots have already checked one of those boxes by drafting a rookie wideout in the second round to pair with their rookie quarterback.
Ja’Lynn Polk is a different type of receiver than Higgins. He’s not the typical “X” who lives on the sidelines and makes his money on jump balls. But Polk can make contested catches on his own, and he has the route-running skills and toughness that Wolf and Mayo believe made him a No. 37 overall pick. He will be part of a rotation that is expected to feature four wide receivers on Sunday in Cincinnati, along with DeMario Douglas, KJ Osborn and Tyquan Thornton.
So… take another wideout early in the 2025 draft and mission accomplished, right?
That would be the easy answer. And it’s a path the Patriots may still prefer, depending on where they land in the draft and the talent they have at their disposal.
But the aspect of the Bengals’ offense that may offer more adaptability to the decision-makers in Foxboro is Cincinnati’s offensive adaptability under head coach Zac Taylor.
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Taylor came to Cincinnati after spending two years as an assistant to Sean McVay, who was an offshoot of Mike Shanahan and ran an offense that included many under-center passing concepts. Taylor also cut his NFL teeth in Miami, where he spent four years working under head coach Joe Philbin, who worked for West Coast stalwart Mike McCarthy in Green Bay, where under-center play was given a lot of prominence. (Patriots offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt and offensive assistant Ben McAdoo are both former McCarthy assistants.)
When Burrow was selected No. 1 in the draft, Taylor did not put him in the middle of the field often, letting him play in the shotgun zone instead of frequently putting him in the middle and implementing a more traditional West Coast attack plan.
In Burrow’s first two seasons, the Bengals ranked third (2020) and second (2021) in spread dropbacks from the shotgun, according to Sports Info Solutions. Coming from a spread system at LSU that led to a historic year for Burrow and a Heisman Trophy in 2019, this kind of pivot made sense for Taylor. Soon, with the signing of Chase, the offense blossomed. Burrow led the league in both completion percentage (69.9 percent) and yards per attempt (8.6) in 2021 while throwing the ball an average distance of 8.2 yards down the field.
In 2022, Taylor changed his strategy again. Despite his multitude of explosive weapons, opposing defenders used two high-mounted safety bullets to protect themselves from Burrow’s deep shots. The answer? Throw short.
The Bengals continued to rank near the top of the league in shotgun spread attempts (only Washington was second), but Burrow’s average depth of target dropped by more than half a yard (7.6) and his yards per attempt dropped by more than a yard (7.3). Yet he remained one of the most efficient passers in football, ranking second in yards (5,195) and completion percentage (68.0).
In 2023, the Bengals again showed a willingness to re-orient themselves. Although they still played more from the shotgun position before Burrow’s season-ending wrist injury, they now seemed to be leaning toward incorporating more under-center positions to add diversity to their attack.
Burrow only dropped back to pass from the middle three times in Week 8 against the 49ers, but the Bengals ran from the middle 11 times, showing they can be effective against one of the best defenses in football by diversifying their attack and crouching Burrow behind Ted Karras. They went from the middle on four of their first 10 plays that day — which even the team’s website later called an outlier — and one ended with a 15-yard pass play to Chase. They parlayed their shaken-up offense into a dominating 31-17 road victory.
Burrow’s injury didn’t allow the Bengals to show what they could do as an under-center offense for long, but they continued to work on under-center attempts with Jake Browning at quarterback. They ranked in the middle of the pack (18th) in under-center attempts between Weeks 11 and 18, and they ranked 10th in yards per pass attempt under center (10.1 yards) during that span.
The Bengals pushed Burrow to the limit early in his career by getting him weapons and putting him in the shotgun position. They asked him to throw the ball long. Then short. Then they toyed with the idea of moving him to the middle.
Although Burrow may display some stubbornness in his preference for an offensive game, Taylor has shown that he is willing to both embrace his best player and push a diverse attack and tweak his scheme from year to year.
Taylor’s weapons have helped his offense thrive. And his quarterback has operated with machine-like efficiency. But the head coach’s open-minded approach has helped Cincinnati remain among the elite when it comes to offensive football for several years, and it’s worth studying for the Patriots.
