Dan Hoard on Joe Burrow, Bengals Rushing Attack and Under Center

I wanted to clarify with him, just so my suspicion was right, that he was not saying we should never run. Let's just throw it every play. What he, or what I assumed he was saying was, the run was not working in that particular game. Therefore, we're trying to win. We'll do what it takes to win. And in this game, when you're banging your head against the wall and averaging one yard per run, you've got to throw it. But when he comes out after the game and says, we should just throw it more, The national perception was Joe Burrow hates the running game. It's his decision. They're going to throw it every time. So I felt it was important to clarify. He did clarify yesterday that he was talking about that specific game. He acknowledges they need to run it better. So for every national person out there saying it's Burrow's fault, all he wants to do is throw the ball, hopefully that shut them up for at least a day. Yeah, probably not a day. I'm sure they're going to twist that in some way or another. and that's why we exist, to help with that for sure. When it comes to Joe, how open is he? I know what he said, but from how you're reading it, how open is he to the under center stuff, to running it? If the plan is, hey, Jamar and T are out this week, which we don't know yet, let's run it 50 times in Miami, do you think Joe Burrow is on board? Absolutely. I mean, the bottom line is that dude wants to win as much as anybody who's ever lived. And if the formula for winning is to turn right and stick it in the belly of Chase Brown or turn left and stick it in the belly of Samadji Pirine, he will do that. They ran it 27 times in week one. It's not like they're not running at all. But in the game last Sunday, it simply wasn't working. And the real issue is how do we fix the running game, not should we pass, should we run? No, the running game has to get fixed, has to get fixed fast. under center was supposed to be a piece of fixing the run game it hasn't looked great through four weeks so far at what point do you dial back the under center and start running from the shotgun where they've had more success i say keep trying the under center stuff because if you think about under center run game why is it effective there are a lot of things involved for one thing you're it's easier to go in either direction when you have an under center attack as opposed to a running back lining up on one side or the other of your quarterback. Your running back is typically running downhill with some momentum when he gets the ball as opposed to starting still and then running. So I think it's still important to work on it and get better at it. Is this team going to suddenly be number one in the NFL at running under center? No. But there's no reason it should be as abysmal as it was last week. And I think it's very important not to abandon it now. Do you think there gets to a point in the season and if the Bengals still continue to struggle under center, where it's a let's just kick it to the offseason and continue to work on it kind of deal? Not there yet. I mean, could it happen at some point? I suppose it's possible, but I think we are a long way from that. We're four games in. They devoted a ton of time to it in training camp, and by and large in training camp, I thought the running portion of the under center game looked good. They weren't getting a lot of explosive passes off the under center game, which people were hoping for, but the running game did look good in camp. It looked good in the preseason games, I thought. So I think there's something still there that they have to keep working on to try to get better. Now, the one thing that very few of us are really talking about is that Jacksonville's defense is elite at stopping the run, and the Dolphins' defense has been good at stopping the run, too. It's not as good as Jacksonville. So that was a factor last week, not the only factor, but don't abandon it yet. It's important to have that as part of their arsenal.