Bengals snap count takeaways vs. Rams: Tyler Eifert is finally unleashed

The Bengals are hitting their bye week after falling to 0-8 for the first time in the Andy Dalton era. There are a few things that changed this week with snap counts, but we will mostly be looking ahead to how some of these trends could be impacted by players returning from injury and players either being traded or not traded.

Snap count takeaways from the Bengals loss to the Rams:

• As always, we start with the overall battle of snaps where Cincinnati won pretty convincingly. The Bengals ran 83 plays compared to the Rams 62. Why was there such a disparity on the scoreboard then? It comes down to the same argument over teams focusing on time of possession. Yes, it is important, but it is more important to be productive with your chances with the ball on offense. Los Angeles had several big plays that setup their scores while Cincinnati could drive the ball but never finish off drives. The Bengals many fourth down conversions also helped them in this aspect. Long story short, you can run as many plays as you want, but if you can’t score it doesn’t matter.
• One of the biggest revelations for the Bengals’ offense in Week 8 was finally playing Tyler Eifert (60) a significant amount of plays. That accounted for well over 50 percent of the plays, and surprise surprise, Cincinnati was rewarded with six catches for 74 yards. You almost have to wonder if the Bengals were trying to show him off or finally realized their three way split of tight end snaps wasn’t working. C.J. Uzomah (47) still played a pretty big role, but it was second-round pick Drew Sample (7) who saw the biggest cut. If Eifert gets moved at the deadline we should expect to see plenty of Sample going forward.
• The running back splits remain pretty stagnate. Joe Mixon (42) and Giovani Bernard (33) saw roughly an even split, but both had pretty good days. Mixon had 77 total yards with a receiving touchdown, and Bernard had 33 rushing yards with 25 coming on a single carry. It seemed like the team went away from the run game after it help setup the team’s only touchdown. Considering the game never got that far out of hand, it wasn’t the best choice in hindsight.
• Carlos Dunlap (39) returned to the defensive end rotation following his brief stint of being inactive. He seemed to be eased back into things as other defensive ends like Andrew Brown (28) and Anthony Zettel (29) also saw some significant time in the rotation. Of course, Sam Hubbard (50) still played a significant amount of snaps. It will be interesting to see how this is impacted when/if Carl Lawson can return after the bye week.
• Germaine Pratt (16) saw his playing time take a hit. He seems to only get on the field either when Preston Brown (30) gets tired or on obvious passing downs. You can also see Brandon Wilson (18) also saw time as a third safety in place of the team playing a second linebacker. Meanwhile, Nick Vigil (62) played every snap. One easy change the Bengals should make is leaning into Pratt following the bye week. The season is lost, but at the very least he should be able to play out some of his rookie bumps. He isn’t going to fix the defense, but things can’t get much worse anyway.
• The snaps at wide receiver could see the biggest change following the bye week. Alex Erickson (50) followed up a career day with another strong performance, but it comes down to when A.J. Green returns, how many snaps will he see? Auden Tate (81) and Tyler Boyd (75) have been seeing a significant amount of snaps recently as well. Will Green step into Tate’s spot? Will Erickson be reduced to a bench role? Do we see a timeshare between Erickson and Tate? That will be the thing to watch after Green’s first game back.