Divisional playoff preview: How the Bengals can beat the Titans

For many football fans, we have reached the best weekend of the season.

The divisional round.

Over Saturday and Sunday, fans will be treated to four games, with the final eight teams left standing playing over the weekend for a shot at a conference championship.

Adding to the excitement is that the two teams who enjoyed bye weeks during wild-card weekend are now in action, as the Tennessee Titans and the Green Bay Packers join the fray.

The divisional round slate kicks off Saturday afternoon as the Titans, fresh off their bye week, host the Cincinnati Bengals. Thanks to their win over the Las Vegas Raiders, the Bengals are in the divisional round for the first time since the 1990 season, when they lost to the then-Los Angeles Raiders.

The team they beat in the wild-card round? The Houston Oilers, who would move a few seasons later to Nashville to become the Titans.

How can the Bengals repeat that effort? Here are the two things the Bengals need to do to beat the Titans.

Protect the interior

(AP Photo/Jeff Dean)

If you read the companion piece to this article, outlining what the Titans have to do to beat the Bengals, you probably are not surprised by this topic, and you know where we are headed.

But if not, a quick review.

Thanks to charting data from Pro Football Focus, we know that during the regular season Burrow posted an adjusted completion percentage of 71.2% this year when pressured, fifth-best in the league. (Interestingly enough, Ryan Tannehill, his opponent on Saturday, was third-best in the league with a mark of 71.8%).

Last week against the Raiders, Burrow was pressured on 13 dropbacks. On those plays he completed 5 of 11 passes for 68 yards and a touchdown, without an interception. That was good for an adjusted completion percentage of 77.8%.

So the mere fact that you generate pressure on Burrow is not enough. The pressure has to be productive for it to have an impact.

The Titans might have the recipe to generate the kind of pressure that can be productive against Burrow. Interior pressure, early in the down, that forces the young quarterback off his spot in the pocket and forces him to make throws later in the down, perhaps downfield and into tighter windows.

Take this example from wild-card weekend:

Jones hits right guard Cesar Ruiz with a swim move into the B-gap, and Trevor Siemian is forced to immediately move off the spot. He cannot evade the big defensive tackle, and is dragged to the turf with the sack.

Or this play against the Los Angeles Rams:

Here it is Jeffery Simmons who bull rushes the left guard into Matthew Stafford’s lap, setting up the sack.

The Bengals like to spread defenses out and see Burrow get the ball out quickly. If the Titans can neutralize that with quick, interior pressure with four, they can start chipping away at the Cincinnati passing game.

Take away the layups

When assembling the previews for last week, trying to come up with what the Kansas City Chiefs had to do to defeat the Pittsburgh Steelers was relatively straight-forward.

One of their tasks? Make Ben Roethlisberger beat them deep downfield. Watching Roethlisberger this season, it became apparent early in the year that his arm was not what it once was. To help prove that point, I pulled up PFF’s charting data for throws deep downfield. There it was. On such attempts of 20 yards or more, Roethlisberger posted an adjusted completion percentage of 34.9%, fifth-worst in the league.

The player just above him?

Ryan Tannehill, at 36.0%.

Digging into it a bit further, on such throws this year Tannehill has completed 15 of 50 passes for 489 yards, three touchdowns and a pair of interceptions. Now, these are not a huge portion of Tannehill’s throws this year. They make up just 9.4% of his attempts on the season, ranking him 25th in the league.

Where does Tannehill want to live, particularly off of play-action? In the intermediate area of the field. Tannehill attempted 531 passes this year in that 10-19 yard range, and that accounted for 22.6% of his throws, fifth-most in the league.

The Titans love to attack in that area of the field, often on play-action with Tannehill hitting either A.J. Brown or Julio Jones stressing the second-level and or third-level of the defense. For example, here is Tannehill hitting Brown on a crossing route against the Houston Texans, working off play-action:

On both of these plays, you can see how the situation, personnel and run-action work to stress the defense, particularly on the second level. Take the play against the Texans. The Titans use a trap pass look up front, as right guard Nate Davis pulls from right to left. This helps sell the run action, drawing down the linebackers and creating space behind them for the crossing route.

The problem this design poses is that stress on the linebackers. The Titans do a very good job at tying their blocking schemes in the running game to what they implement in the play-action passing game. Put yourself in the shoes of Logan Wilson and Germaine Pratt this weekend. You are seeing plays like this, potentially with Derrick Henry getting the football:

The 49ers run play-action and use trap blocking up front, as the left guard pulls to the right side. That pulls the linebackers down, and Jimmy Garoppolo looks for George Kittle working behind the second-level defenders. But linebacker Joe Bachie (who is now on injured reserve) retreats using a robot technique to try and get under Kittle’s route.

(Perhaps even more interesting is the fact that the 49ers anticipate that and have Kittle throttle down. Bachie, expecting the crosser to continue across the field, keeps moving and that creates a window to hit the curl. But that is a discussion for another time…)

But this is the task facing the Bengals this weekend when the Titans have the ball. Logan Wilson is already talking about how the Titans are the best rushing team they have faced this season:

And expecting that the Titans are going to run the football, stopping the run — without defensive tackle Larry Ogunjobi who was hurt against the Raiders — might fall in part on the linebackers. Which might see them being a bit more aggressive coming downhill against run action…

You see where this is going.

So the Bengals have to take away the layups in the intermediate area of the field for Tannehill and make him push the ball downfield, even off of play-action. Keep your eyes on the linebackers when Tennessee has the ball Saturday.

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