The play calls in the Cincinnati Bengals’ offense sound something like, “Dice Right Numbers 3 Jet Spielberg on One,” or “Trey Right Closer Karate Can 12 Duo Alert Bootie.”
There’s no playbook for how to get a quarterback who’s brand new to a system ready to play in five days. Joe Flacco said on Friday, “Come on, this is pretty unique.” On Sunday at Lambeau Field, the Bengals will be counting on him to drop back against a great defense, execute plays that are brand new to Flacco and try to get the team’s entire season back on track.
If Flacco is going to be able to save the season, he’s going to need to be able to call out the plays in the huddle. That’s much, much harder than it sounds.
“That’s the biggest issue, just kind of making sure (we’re) getting in and out of the huddle the way I want to,” Flacco said. “I think once I break the huddle, I feel pretty comfortable. It’s just a matter of getting in and out of the huddle and just continuing over the next couple days to make sure I get even better at that.”
On Sunday, Flacco is going to play in his 201st NFL game. During some of Flacco’s “off” time this week as he was back at his hotel, he asked his wife to call out plays to Flacco like she was the coach speaking into the headset. They’ve never done that before during Flacco’s preparation for any his first 200 games. Flacco’s wife would recite a play like Cincinnati Bengals head coach Zac Taylor will on Sunday, and then Flacco would simulate digesting the call and repeating it to his teammates in the middle.
It was a part of the extensive process of learning the language of a new offense.
“She didn’t do bad,” Flacco said. “There’s a rhythm not only to saying the play in the huddle, but there is a rhythm to giving someone the play, like as Zac would give me the play. There’s a rhythm to how you say things.”Getting that rhythm might be the most difficult challenge on the plates of Flacco, the coaches and the Bengals’ offense this week. Flacco has been working on it all week.Teaching Flacco this new offense has been an all-hands on deck process. Taylor did a lot of the work early on, talking with Flacco on his ride down from Cleveland to Cincinnati and going over personnel, formations, motions and the run game. Then, in person, Taylor introduced to Flacco some important terminology.
There was a bit more crossover than expected between the lingo of the Bengals’ offense and the lingo of other schemes that Flacco has been a part of. But essentially, Flacco is learning an almost entirely new language in five days.
“You look at a play call written out and you’re like, ‘OK, I can kind of wrap my head around that,’” Flacco said. “And then you see the picture, and you’re like, ‘OK, I got it.’ And then you go out in the walkthrough and (Taylor) spits it out to you and you have to repeat it, and you’re like, ‘Oh, man. I thought I had it.’”
The play call from the coach to the quarterback tells every single player what they’re going to do, and everyone is counting on Flacco for this information. Flacco has to be able to understand this Bengals’ language, and he also has to be fluent in it.
Looking for ideas working on this process with such a short turnaround, Flacco went to his wife for help as they relayed play calls together back at his hotel in Cincinnati.
“You read it, say it, look at it, have somebody say it to me, repeat it,” Flacco said. “It’s not like everything’s brand new. There are certain things that are recognizable about it. And then I feel like I have a good picture of it all in my head. So once I say it and tell everybody what to do, I do feel like I have a good picture of it. But, communicating that is very important.”
The hardest part of the play calls is the rhythm of how the words string together. That rhythm is different in every offense. In the sentence of a play call — “Rizzo Left Tight F Fly Pass 37 Punch Waggle Help Baby Dizzy X Fan” — what words refer to the motion, the protection and the personnel? In Green Bay on Sunday, the goal is that none of the other players who already have this terminology down get confused by any of these logistics.
Flacco’s play calls need to be perfect in a loud road environment. So this week, Flacco and the Bengals have practiced all of this a lot, including during an extra walk through after Wednesday’s practice.
“I’m not afraid to remind him 10 times if I have to because he has a lot on his plate,” Taylor said. “They need to hear this, so I need you to say it.”
These have also been long days and nights for Flacco and the Bengals’ coaches. The Bengals planned to work on their third down game plan at practice on Friday, like they always do. So on Thursday night, Taylor and Flacco essentially went through seven years of Bengals’ red zone clips.“There was a lot of time to drink a lot of coffee,” Taylor said.
Flacco had the play calls on paper to look at. Taylor wanted to take this extra step to better paint the picture for Flacco.
“We wanted to make sure we gave him everything he could have to go out there and execute a game plan,” Taylor said. “We spent last night watching a lot of red zone clips from the last seven years pulling everything we can so he can see a physical rep of us running a play. The words might not paint the picture of the play. You want him to see the physical evidence of running some of this stuff.”Flacco executed well in practice on Friday, and Taylor said that it all looked like it made sense quickly to Flacco.
They’ll also have a few more tools at their disposal at Lambeau Field on Sunday.
“We always have a wrist band plan, for the road especially,” Taylor said. “The low red zone, oftentimes you can’t hear anything. We’ll wristband it all. I’ll try to give him a heads up on the play I’m about to call so at least he knows what’s coming at him before he reads the wristband. So he can picture the concept and then read it so he’s not reading it and visualizing it for the first time. We’ll do that. I have a couple hand signals. So far, he hasn’t really needed any of that.”
The rest of this weekend will be about finalizing the call sheet for the game. One of Taylor’s core principals is to not run a play if that quarterback doesn’t believe in that play.
“Now we’ll get to the last 48 hours, the honest feedback portion of things,” Taylor said after practice on Friday. “Which plays do you not want, is there something we’re missing that you think you’d be good at. That’s where this next 48 hours goes.”
The coaching staff can tailor the game plan around Flacco’s strengths, which have been his arm strength, his ability to push the ball to the perimeter and play action.
It seems like a stressful process. But at the end of the day, Flacco is going to have Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins to throw to.
“You can’t overthink it,” Flacco said. “I know everything you like to talk about all that and the chemistry and everything. Those guys are two of the best in the world at what they do. If you can’t throw to them and get on the same page as them, then you are in trouble.”
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