The Cincinnati Bengals aren’t shying away from some obvious weak points on the team right now.
Buy Bengals TicketsOne of those pertains to star running back Joe Mixon, who has been a massive weak point in some facets of his game during the team’s 4-4 start.
As offensive coordinator Brian Callahan says, everyone in the building knows Mixon continues to have serious problems as a pass-blocker.
“We talk about it all the time,” Callahan said, according to Paul Dehner Jr. of The Athletic. “That part of his game has not been up to where we would expect it to be at this point. He’s had moments where he’s been a lot better, and he’s had moments where he needs to be better for us to feel good about him pass protecting all the time in that manner. I’m not saying anything he doesn’t know. It’s not something we haven’t talked about. He sees it. Everybody sees it.”
We already went in-depth on the very concerning struggles of Mixon and left tackle Jonah Williams. But the long and short of it is that Mixon is by far one of the league’s worst running backs at pass-blocking and he’s not doing much better at forcing missed tackles or performance after first contact.
Fans don’t need advanced numbers to help them see the drive-ruining gaffes by Mixon in this department, either and they know all too well it is something that has limited his playing time in past seasons.
At this point, especially with coaches talking about it publicly, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to bring up chatter about Samaje Perine taking some of Mixon’s snaps. One would imagine there’s a breaking point to this, so we’ll see how patient coaches remain if the issue doesn’t start to see a fix.
