The Bengals had been talking about the start of last Sunday's game in Cleveland all week.
How the electric crowd would bark all day and bay on third downs and explode with emotion when the Browns sent out the great Nick Chubb last during the starting intros.
It was a lock they would, of course, because after all, their beloved "Batman," was playing his first game in more than a year.
"I guess we had The Joker," says Bengals special teams coordinator Darrin Simmons. "Charlie (Jones) was The Joker."
But Simmons doesn't even want to switch on the replay of last Sunday's blockbuster that opened the game when Jones made the sideline disappear at the end of his 100-yard kick return and sucked all the air out of the Browns' cozy Gotham City to set the scene for Cincinnati's 21-14 victory.
For one thing, Simmons, at heart, is a superstitious Kansas farmer who knows the elements can turn on you like the wind. For another, the NFL's longest-tenured kicking game coach and assistant head coach has moved on to scheming for the Eagles in Sunday’s game (1 p.m.-Cincinnati's Local 12) at Paycor Stadium. Plus, they've got a sequel with the Browns' top 20 kick cover team he regards highly on a Thursday night in December.
And for yet another thing, who in the name of Lemar Parrish knows how the league is going to continue to grapple with the new kickoff rule?
"There's been a lot of trial and error," says Simmons of the adjustments that began in the spring when the owners voted for the new setup.
Just look at how the NFL's most sprawling rule change in 50 years has impacted the man who made Sunday's biggest block, Bengals tight end Drew Sample.
Now in his sixth season here, Sample had been one of the best wedge blockers Simmons ever had with his man rarely making a play. But now that role is virtually defunct.
"The knowledge he gained, his leverage, his size, his ability to get a hold of people is completely neutralized with these new rules," Simmons says. "Now he can't take advantage of the things he used to be able to take advantage of. We just have to find a new way for him."
Every week has been pretty much the same shuffling looking for answers, and this week was no different as he found a spot for Sample in another setup. Simmons has spent much of this season ripping up game plans as well as concocting them.
"His flexibility and versatility allowed us to use a different scheme," Simmons. "We made adjustments to the same play all week."
Sample and his nine fellow blockers, along with the 11 Browns, couldn't move until Jones caught the ball at the goal line. Then Sample, lined up 10 yards in front of Jones, came screaming up the middle to get the block on cornerback Tony Brown II, his teammate on the 2020 Bengals and one of the league's top 20 special teams' tacklers.
Jones cut off the block and that was pretty much it as he followed a wall to the right sideline, running away from kicker Dustin Hopkins.
"You can't replicate the speed in practice. You're not running 100 yards," Jones says. "You can get a decent idea how it can go by watching film. But the thing we talk about all the time is that kick return is running through smoke. You're just trying to get through there."
When the smoke cleared, the Bengals had their first kick return touchdown under the new rules. But some things never change as Simmons rewinds back to the 2019 game in Baltimore that Brandon Wilson also opened with a return touchdown.
"Eerily familiar to this one," Simmons says. "We had all ten guys do exactly what they're supposed to do. Ten for ten. It hit where we thought it would hit. You can draw it up on paper, but those guys have to execute."
It was a nice blend of veterans and rookies against a top-ten cover unit that has responded to the rule change by deploying some of their defensive starters. It's a tactic some teams are using because cover players don't have to run as far and there's believed to be a lower risk of injury.
"That's a good group," says safety Tycen Anderson, the Bengals leading teams' tackler who also blocks on kick cover. "The biggest difference is the speed we have carrying up to it and the distance between ourselves and the returner. There's always been big dudes on kickoff return. Always been tight ends and linebackers working that leverage."
Sample worked his 68th NFL game. Special teams captain Akeem Davis-Gaither got a piece of two defenders, one of them the speedy Pro Bowl linebacker Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah, first blocked by Bengals vet backup linebacker Joe Bachie. Tanner Hudson, the sixth-year backup tight end, double-teamed with Davis-Gaither to take out Browns linebacker Ogbo Okoronkwo, who would go on to play more than half the snaps from scrimmage Sunday.
Those two backers, JOK and Okoronkwo, got tangled with Bachie, Davis-Gaither and Hudson, and Jones shot through that space as he cut off Sample.
Also working that right side were a pair of rookies, safety Daijahn Anthony on the end, and next to him a few yards behind in a drop, linebacker Maema Njongmeta. They were lined up across from three Browns, one of them starting safety Grant Delpit head up on Anthony. The two rookies dropped into something like pass protection and by the time they passed off the three, Jones was past them looking for Sample's block.
"Timing," Simmons says. "The biggest thing now is the timing of blocks."
On the other side, rookie tight end Erick All Jr., dropped a few yards, was coming up to pull off a double-team block with sophomore safety Jordan Battle. Next to them, Tycen Anderson was locked up with backup safety D'Anthony Bell.
"He almost chased him down," says Anderson, who watched Bell get away and nearly get Jones at the 15. "I got just enough of a piece and Charlie was running fast-er, so thank you for that. I've got to do a better job. You hit the hole like he hit the hole and you get a piece of somebody, he's bound to split it. We know he's got the speed. Remember the punt from last year?"
That would be the 81-yard punt return touchdown against the Ravens in Jones' second NFL game. Simmons is hoping Jones starts doing on punts what he did on the kick.
"He caught it and hit it without thinking," Simmons says. "He's doing a nice job on kick return. I think he's overthinking it just a little bit on punt."
But what Jones did on the final 11 yards, shaking off Tony Brown's shove while somehow keeping his balance and heel inbounds before he unspooled his body to stretch on top of the pylon, had Simmons calling it "high, high effort."
Simmons has kind of seen something like that, but it was 15 years ago. The Bengals' Bernard Scott absorbed William Gay's shot at the 5, stepped out of his tackle, and scored the only touchdown on a 96-yard kick return in the War of 18-12 victory in Pittsburgh on the way to the Bengals' 2009 AFC North sweep.
Jones is surprised when told he and Bengals great Lemar Parrish, who did it more than 50 years ago, are the only Bengals with both a kick and punt return for a touchdown.
"Pacman didn't do it?" Jones asks of Adam "No Relation," Jones.
Almost. Adam Jones, too, has a punt return touchdown against the Browns. But he got dragged down at the Panthers 3 on a 97-yard kick return against Carolina.
"Not The Joker," Charlie Jones says with a playful smile. "I'm Batman."
But it probably won't be the same Bat signal.
"The whole league is still learning to be honest," Tycen Anderson says. "If you think you've got it all figured out through seven weeks of a new rule everybody just learned, you can think that. But I wouldn't."
