Win or Lose, Andy Dalton and Bengals Offense Must Rediscover Identity vs. Saints

The Cincinnati Bengals' Week 10 Thursday night drubbing at the hands of the Cleveland Browns was easily the worst the team's offense has looked with Andy Dalton at quarterback. 

The badness of it all was almost beyond comprehension. Dalton completed only 10 of his 33 pass attempts, netting him 86 yards. He threw no touchdowns, but he did manage three interceptions. He was also sacked twice and hit or hurried another 12 times, according to Pro Football Focus (subscription required). He ended the game with a quarterback rating of 2.0. 

Playing from behind, the run game gained no traction, either. The Bengals rushed just 22 times in the game, netting them 86 yards against a Browns defense that prior to Week 10 had been allowing an average of 139.6 rushing yards per game.

	Atts.	Comp.	Comp.%	Yds.	TD	INT	Sack
Week 10	33	10	30.3%	86	0	3	2
2014	281	171	60.9%	1,960	8	9	11

This week, the Bengals have yet another challenge—a road game against the New Orleans Saints. Though the Saints might be 4-5 at present, they are the NFC South's leaders and are 3-1 at home on the season. This may not be the dominant Saints team of years past, but that doesn't mean the Bengals will have an easy time of things.

The trouble comes if the Bengals are drawn into a shootout, something very common against the Saints in the Superdome. This isn't a year for Dalton heroics.

This also isn't a year for Dalton to carry the offense in a high-volume passing attack, either. Dalton's completion percentage is currently at a career low of 60.9 percent. He has only 1,960 passing yards through nine games and has thrown just eight touchdowns to nine interceptions. 

So how can the Bengals re-establish their offensive identity against such a formidable opponent as the Saints? By controlling their reaction to finding themselves playing from behind.

The Bengals, for all the talk of offensive coordinator Hue Jackson emphasizing the run this year, have been conservative and predictable when they have run the ball. All of their heavy-rushing performances have come in games in which the Bengals had the lead or ended with a tie. All of their losses have been pass-heavy to compensate for their lack of points.

This conventional wisdom can work for some teams, but not for the Bengals, particularly this season. Running the ball early and often and even when trailing needs to become a greater focus. Dalton, for all his weapons and experience, is not the key to winning games this year.

It shouldn't matter, either, that Giovani Bernard will be out for a third consecutive game, as ESPN's Coley Harvey suspects. 

We've seen rookie Jeremy Hill handle the workload—he rushed 24 times for 154 yards and two touchdowns in Week 9 against the Jacksonville Jaguars, without Bernard to spell him. He should get a hefty dose of carries, despite the Saints allowing just 106.8 rushing yards per game on average and 89.5 at home and despite what the scoreboard says.

Dalton just is not accurate this year. He's not throwing touchdowns with the frequency expected from an offense that features A.J. Green and Mohamed Sanu as the primary passing targets. The Bengals must find other ways to get the ball moving and the points adding up. 

Harvey noted in another ESPN column just how ineffective Dalton was against the Browns. He completed only three passes on 11 targets to Green. He had 11 overthrown passes. He was 0-of-8 on passes of 15 yards or more and completed only 31 percent of his passes while pressured by a three- or four-man pass rush.

Opponent	Outcome	Rush Atts.	Rush Yds.	Lead or Trail?
@ BAL	W, 23-16	26	79	Back & Forth
vs. ATL	W, 24-10	45	170	Lead
vs. TEN	W, 33-7	31	116	Lead
@ NE	L, 43-17	18	79	Trail
vs. CAR	T, 37-37	31	193	Back & Forth
@ IND	L, 27-0	12	32	Trail
vs. BAL	W, 27-24	34	111	Lead
vs. JAX	W, 33-23	34	191	Lead
vs. CLE	L, 24-3	22	86	Trail

Perhaps some of these issues will be mitigated by the windless dome in New Orleans. But Dalton's struggles against a basic, natural pass rush could resurface against a Saints defense that loves a four-man rush.

Dalton is completing just 43.6 percent of his pressured passes this year, though he's only seeing pressure on 22.9 percent of his dropbacks. Running the ball more will take pressure off of Dalton and open up the play-action, which will further keep the pass rush off his back. 

The problem there is that only 20.3 percent of Dalton's pass attempts this year have been of the play-action variety and that he's completed just 55.2 percent of them, compared to 62.3 percent of his non-play-action passes. And the Bengals rank 11th in rushing attempts per game, so it's not that a low rushing volume is contributing to Dalton's lack of play-action passing or play-action success.

John Grieshop/Getty Images

As such, the Bengals offense is a hard puzzle to solve. On the one hand, running more can wear down opposing defenses and give the offense more opportunities—right now the Bengals rank 30th in average time of possession. On the other, running more won't mean better play-action passing from Dalton, because that's not one of his strengths as a quarterback.

The biggest key for the Bengals offense, win or lose, is to avoid predictability. The Bengals cannot abandon the run because they are behind. They cannot have Dalton pressing on drive after drive—that's when he becomes erratic and throws interceptions. Running the ball needs to be a cornerstone to their approach Sunday and for the rest of the year. 

Though this may not give them a win Sunday, at least it reduces the role Dalton plays in a loss. The quarterback cannot carry this team right now. Until he can, Dalton must be a caretaker, not a gunslinger.

Jackson was supposed to herald in a new era of Bengals offense, one that was run-heavy and focused on ball-control. That needs to be on display Sunday against the Saints, if only to take the focus off of Dalton.