Safely back with the win in the confines of his Paycor Stadium office, offensive line coach and run game coordinator Frank Pollack punches up a PowerPoint that could very well sum up the mentality of the Bengals' new look run game.
It's a cartoon with two panels. On the bottom is a miner who has thrown an ax over his shoulder and has stopped digging for gold, oblivious he's so close to the treasure on the other side of the wall. Meanwhile, the top panel shows another miner still flailing away.
"That guy is quitting, and he was right there. One more whack and he was there," says Pollack, now looking at the top panel. "This guy isn't as close, but he's still going. Keep pounding. You never know when it's going to bust."
That's pretty much the way it went during Sunday Night's tractor pull at MetLife Stadium, where the Bengals didn't hit gold until the last whack of running back Chase Brown’s 30-yard touchdown burst through the middle with 1:52 left in the game secured a 17-7 victory.
Until then, Brown and running mate Zack Moss had together scrounged for 36 yards on 15 carries. Quarterback Joe Burrow had more on a touchdown scramble, a reverse in the early-season trend that saw the Bengals average 4.3 yards per carry, their best yards per rush in the first five games of a season under Taylor.
Brown's pop has the elements that have been cited by players and coaches in the rise of the run.
It was another play featuring two tight ends, a formation that Taylor has doubled in use this year compared to his five previous seasons and has made his playbook more dangerously diverse. The blocking of tight ends Erick All Jr. and Drew Sample, a bruising rookie-veteran combo, and the improved work of the offensive line in the run game to go with that new-found game-breaking speed were also on display.
As the Bengals' new home-run back, Brown showed it takes only one pitch to break open a game.
With about eight minutes left and the Giants offense trying to stir, Pollack sat by himself on the sidelines sifting through runs that fit the situation of a shrinking clock and a three-point lead while also countering a New York-sized wrinkle in the Giants front.
He was studying still photos of what had been happening in the first 52 minutes, as well as running through other data when he thought of a play.
"We needed a changeup. A safer run protecting the edges. A four-minute-ish run," Pollack says. "Trying to get a run that fits that and one we all know."
The Giants had switched it up Sunday. Coming into the game, they had played their defensive ends outside the tight end. But on this night, they were playing inside and coming across the face. Pollack came up with a heavily-repped play from the training camp playbook and one they had used for a successful rush during the season.
He clicked in with head coach Zac Taylor and offensive coordinator Dan Pitcher on the headsets to get their thoughts. They liked the play that was not in Sunday night's game plan but is quite familiar.
Pollack got in front of his linemen to tell them the play was now in play. Also on the headsets, the offensive position coaches gave their players a heads-up that there was a new play on the sheet. Tight ends coach James Casey, a former NFL player who demands assignment-sound players for just these taut prime-timers on the road, already had his guys wired for anything run or pass. Running backs coach Justin Hill knew he didn't have to review it with Brown and Moss. No matter who was in, each knew the assignment cold.
"We repped it so much in training camp. I just told them this one is what was coming up," Hill says. "They knew exactly what it was. What the read was. What the track was. Not a shock it came up. We've had plenty of time on task on that play."
It turned out it was Brown in the huddle on second-and-three from the Giants 30 when Burrow emerged with Taylor's call after the break from the two-minute warning. Hill stuck with Brown even though the second-year speed artist had fumbled the ball out of bounds the snap before.
There were a lot of wheels churning. In the third quarter, Hill had watched one of his backs lose a fumble for the first time in three years when Moss got jostled in the red zone. Now he saw Brown almost lose another one. But Hill stayed with his plan to make sure Moss got another carry after Brown got the next carry.
Brown immediately responded, and they didn't need another carry.
The play called for the rookie All to flash in motion from right to left. Sample followed him as center Ted Karras fired back a shot-gun snap to Burrow. All tied up Brian Burns, the active backer who had been a problem on the edge all night, and Sample swallowed the trigger man in one of the inside gaps, linebacker Micah McFadden.
With the line leaning left and the tight ends whipping right, it looked like Brown was going with the line, but the play calls for Brown to cut back underneath the tight ends.
"What's interesting about this play, when you insert a tight end, you create a gap," Pollack says. "When you insert another tight end, you've created two gaps. It puts (the Giants) in a bind. They're short."
Now it was Chase's wheels that were spinning. He saw safety Jason Pinnock had overrun the play reacting to the tight ends. He also saw that McFadden had been taken, the tell for Chase to stick his foot in the ground off of Sample's No. 89.
And he was gone.
"Great read by Chase. This is the NFL and holes don't stay open for very long and he hit it," says Pollack, who admires the hat-on-hat blocking of everyone else.
Karras made sure two-time Pro Bowl game-wrecker Dexter Lawrence didn't ruin this one with a terrific one-on-one stalemate away from Brown's cutback. Left tackle Orlando Brown Jr. caved tackle D.J. Davidson on an angle, and it allowed left guard Cordell Volson to get out to inside linebacker Bobby Okereke and give Brown even more space to accelerate.
And …
"Yoshi got a good block on the safety," Pollack says of wide receiver Andrei Iosivas’ front-side block of safety Tyler Nubin.
It was left for Brown to touch all the bases on his home run. A few plays before, All had pulled from right to left hunting for Burns along the line of scrimmage on a Brown running play. But Brown didn't wait for the block and kept going outside, giving Burns time to play off the block and drop Brown for a two-yard loss.
"We talked about it on the sidelines," Hill says. "Be a little more patient inside. That's what he did on that last run. He was a little more patient."
Patience seems to be the moral of the play. The only time Brown wasn't patient on the snap was when he chose to score and not take a knee for the 10-7 win as the clock died. He was absolved of blame because the issue had never been covered. Kind of fitting, really, on a night the deciding play wasn't in the game plan.
Pollack reads the quote on that PowerPoint from someone named Jon Gordon:
"It's not your goals that will lead to your success, but the commitment to the process."
Then he looks one more time at the poor miner in the bottom panel.
"He never knew," Pollack says, "how close he was."
