Cincinnati Bengals Fell Just Short of NFL Record, Continuing Jake Browning’s Emergence

Cincinnati Bengals head coach Zac Taylor and offensive coordinator Brian Callahan have a tradition the night before games where they partake in their own version of fantasy football.

After hours of film study, game-planning, and practices, the coaches have a good idea what kind of game the Bengals are in for, so they find a recent game that played out similarly, open the play-by-play log, and Callahan will read off the down and distance of each play.

So if a team rushes for three yards on first down to open the game, Callahan will tell Taylor it’s 2nd-and-7 from their own 28, and Taylor will make what he thinks would be the best play call in that situation. They’ll talk through it, then move on to, say, 3rd-and-2 at their 33, and work their way through the entire game that way.

Bengals Nearly Turn Unpredictability Into an NFL Record

But Friday night on the eve of the home game against the Minnesota Vikings, Taylor admitted he had no idea if the Bengals were in for a shootout, a defensive struggle, or something in the middle.

“This was a game where I told the offensive skill (players), ‘I don’t know what the stats are gonna look like at the end of this game. I have no idea what our rushing attempts and totals are gonna be. I don’t know if some (receiver) is gonna go off for 10 for 150. I don’t know,’” Taylor said the day after the 27-24 overtime win.

“It was a little bit unpredictable that way because it is an unorthodox scheme, and when you haven’t played it, you really don’t know until the game shapes out what it’s going to look like,” he added.

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What it looked like was nearly an NFL record, as quarterback Jake Browning took another big step in his development by spreading the ball around and connecting with nine different receivers for at least two receptions.

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The NFL record is 10 players with at least two catches, set by the New Orleans Saints in a 41-10 loss to the Carolina Panthers in 2014.

Before Saturday, there had been 38 instances where teams had nine players catch at least two passes, but none of them were the Bengals. The previous franchise record of eight had happened four times — 1975 against the Chargers, 1993 vs. the Raiders, 1994 at the Seahawks, and last year at the Patriots.

“When you look at the varied targets, Jake just took the rhythm of the dense and what the calls were doing and taking completions,” Taylor said. “He took a lot of good completions, then the middle of the field really started to open up toward the end, and he was doing a good job hitting some of those in-breakers.”

Here is a look at the reception-yardage share:

• Tanner Hudson, 5-49
• Ja’Marr Chase, 4-64
• Tee Higgins, 4-61
• Chase Brown, 3-28
• Joe Mixon, 3-14
• Tyler Boyd, 2-53
• Mitch Wilcox, 2-20
• Irv Smith Jr., 2-18
• Charlie Jones, 2-10
• Andrei Iosivas 1-5
• Trayveon Williams 1-2

Iosivas was targeted twice, but Browning threw a little behind him, otherwise the Bengals would have tied the Saints’ NFL record.

Eleven players with at least one reception also fell just shy of the NFL record of 12, which is shared by seven teams, including the 1984 Bengals in a 20-17 win at Cleveland.

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The 12 players who caught passes that day were Charles Alexander, James Brooks, Cris Collinsworth, M.L. Harris, Rodney Holman, Stanford Jennings, Don Kern, Larry Kinnebrew, Steve Kreider, Mike Martin, David Verser and … Anthony Munoz on a one-yard touchdown, the first of four scoring strikes he caught in his Hall of Fame career.

Turk Schonert started that game and was 16 of 21 for 138 yards before getting injured in the third quarter and being replaced by Boomer Esiason, who was 12 of 20 for 108 yards, including the touchdown pass to Munoz.

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