Bengals at Browns snap count takeaways: John Ross eased in while Carl Lawson starts

The Bengals lost a close game to the Browns on Sunday and there are a couple clear reasons as to why. For starters, Cincinnati’s red zone struggles returned in full force; netting one touchdown in five tries. Despite this, the Bengals would’ve gotten the ball back down only a touchdown had the refs not went back and assigned a pass interference call against William Jackson III, taking away a second Jessie Bates III interception in the process. That wasn’t even the only crucial call on that drive.

It was a tough loss to swallow for the Bengals’ locker room, but is there anything the snap counts can tell us about this game though?

Here are the snap count takeaways from the Bengals loss to the Browns:

• Somehow Cincinnati ended up dominating the amount of plays run on Sunday. The Bengals ran 75 plays to the Browns 56. This game is another one of those cases where it shows that, while it is nice to run more plays than the opposing team, it is more about what your offense can do with those plays. Andy Dalton’s pick-six also swayed things greatly when combined with the Browns’ two other turnovers. Cincinnati had two 16-play drives in the second half that only accounted for three points.
• One of the bigger stories coming into the game was John Ross III’s return to the field since being on injured reserve since Week 4. He clearly wasn’t being played as a fully healthy player, though. Ross only played 38 snaps on the day. When you compare that to players like Tyler Boyd (56), Alex Erickson (60), Auden Tate (29) and even undrafted rookie Stanley Morgan (23), you can tell that the coaches either want to not risk injuring Ross to end the season, or want to ease him back in. It should also be noted that Tate left the game with an injury in case you were wondering why Erickson saw the most snaps of any wide receiver.
• Carl Lawson (51) saw his highest percentage of snaps likely of his entire career. The only other game that we probably saw him as much was his breakout game against the Packers. Lawson’s boosted playtime was likely due to Sam Hubbard being out, but Lawson showed that he is a payer who can be out there more than just passing situations. That will be important for him looking into the how he fits with the future of this team, because he will obviously play a much larger role if he is capable of making plays on early downs.
• Rookie linebacker Germaine Pratt (40) also played most of the game on defense. Previously, he had been splitting most of his snaps with safety Brandon Wilson, but since Wilson was placed on injured reserve this week, it opened up more time for Pratt. While he isn’t making huge waves with his playing time, he hasn’t been noticeably bad, which his honestly a huge improvement given the state of the linebacking group previously. Also it has to be noted that Nick Vigil (56) has really been playing out of his mind the past few games. He had an interception early in this one when he took the ball away from David Njoku, and he almost had another one when the ball shot right through his hands jumping a slant route.
• As far as the offensive line goes, the biggest thing to report is rookie guard Michael Jordan started his second game in a row at left guard. Next to him, Billy Price subbed in for Trey Hopkins at center for a single play and Fred Johnson, the tackle the Bengals claimed off of waivers from the Steelers, has secured a role as the sixth offensive lineman. He played six snaps this week.
• Darius Phillips didn’t play a single defensive snap this week. Instead, Greg Mabin played four plays as the fourth cornerback. Last week it was Phillips who saw those four snaps, but this week he was just returning kickoffs and playing special teams.