Bengals snap counts vs. Ravens show Ja’Marr Chase has taken over

It is a victory Monday that we’ve not seen the Cincinnati Bengals have in quite some time after going on the road and smashing the Baltimore Ravens.

Beating an AFC contender in their home stadium to the tune of 41-17, is a statement we haven’t seen the Bengals make under Zac Taylor, who absolutely outcoached a Super Bowl-winning coach in John Harbaugh on Sunday.

In this post, we will try to gleam as much information from the game’s snap counts as we can. We also have to account for the fact that starters were removed from the game early since Cincinnati put the nail in the coffin fairly early in the fourth quarter, so some numbers and percentages are skewed ever so slightly.

Takeaways from the Bengals snap counts against the Ravens:

• Baltimore ran 73 offensive plays while Cincinnati had 63. The Bengals had five touchdowns come from farther than 20 yards out, and two from more than 50 yards. That certainly dips into the amount of offensive plays a team is capable of running. That seems to be the difference as both team only converted roughly 30 percent of their third downs and neither offense committed a turnover.
• Tyler Boyd (45) may not be showing up in the box score a ton compared to Tee Higgins (42) or Ja’Marr Chase (53). However, the veteran is still getting plenty of snaps. We have even seen tight end C.J. Uzomah (52) not only dip into some of his snaps, but also some of his targets. Boyd has maintained that he is content with his role and being a good teammate, which really is fortunate as this offense has plenty of mouths to feed. It would be a bit hard for Joe Burrow to force-feed everyone to get their touches. Still, it is becoming clearer by the week that Chase is WR1.
• The Ravens offense usually has defenses playing a bit different than most NFL defenses would like to. They really don’t spread things out too often, and they are happy to run two tight end sets and even had a fullback out there for over half of the game. It funnily enough didn’t change much of what the Bengals rotation usually looks like. The biggest difference was Akeem Davis-Gaither (39), Germaine Pratt (47) and Ricardo Allen (15) were relied on more to to help counterbalance the difference in personnel, but it wasn’t that drastic of a shift as it has been in years past.
• Last week rookie running back Chris Evans had quite the outing with the absence of Samaje Perine. This week the rookie didn’t touch the field while Perine returned to his regularly scheduled duties by being on the field for 30 plays. It is interesting that Evans didn’t hit the field once, but Perine wasn’t really an issue. He also had the long run where he showed off his speed. Cincinnati clearly has something in Evans waiting in the wings, but it is hard to really have an issue when Perine is playing well.
• Cincinnati clearly had a plan to rotate their defensive line to stay fresh while chasing down Lamar Jackson. Sam Hubbard (53), Trey Hendrickson (44) and Larry Ogunjobi (44) were the only linemen to play 60 percent of the snaps or more. Guys like D.J. Reader, Josh Tupou, B.J. Hill, Cam Sample and Wyatt Ray all played over 20 plays. The plan obviously worked after holding the Ravens’ high-powered offense under 20points.
• Random notable snaps include Tre Flowers making his Bengals debut with 14 plays. He was just claimed off waivers prior to Week 6. Also, preseason star undrafted free agent Darius Hodge was inactive again this week. Clearly Sample and Ray bring a bit more capability of stopping the run to the table, but it would be interesting to see him eventually get a handful of passing down snaps while Hubbard is kicked inside.

What was your biggest takeaway from the snaps?