Once people have moved on from scrutinizing the officiating in Sunday's AFC Championship game, there will presumably be some criticism or at least questions over what the Bengals did as a team. One thing that stands out is that Samaje Perine played twice as many snaps as Joe Mixon.
The customary argument given is that Perine is better in pass protection, which is fine, but it also leads to more questions. The game was close throughout, and although yes, Kansas City's defense was better defending the run than the pass, it wasn't a Tennessee-level wall against the run, either. So why did Cincinnati have 41 pass attempts versus just a third as many (13) runs, not counting Joe Burrow scrambles? Burrow was sacked 5 times, so if his pass protection was actually better, it still wasn't good enough that the team shouldn't have probably worked the run a little more to take the teeth out of Chris Jones and company destroying them up front.
Whether they didn't run enough or passed too often, they lost, so the question has to be asked why they went with an offense that played their 2nd-best running back so much more than their starter. Best guess for that is they've lost faith in Mixon.
Mixon didn't have a great year, rushing for just 814 yards and 3.9 yards per attempt. He scored 9 total touchdowns: 5 in that monster game against Carolina, 4 in 13 games against the rest of the league. Had a nice game in the snow in the playoff win against Buffalo (105 yards, TD), then got only 8 carries for 19 yards at Kansas City. He was taken off the field to let Perine score a short touchdown, one of those easy little plays where his teammates push him over the goal line.
I decided to compare the two backs' performances in games they had a notable workload -- at least 10 runs/receptions. Combined, there were 22 such games, 17 for Mixon (including the three playoff games) and five for Perine.
Despite having fewer than a third as many 10-touch games as the starter, Perine had half (3) of the six best ones (PPR). Mixon all six of the worst ones, and 9 of 10. And he was doing it with a lot more opportunities than Perine.
| PERINE VERSUS MIXON, 2022 (10 TOUCHES) | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Player | Opp | Rush | Yds | Rec | Yds | TD | Tch | PPR |
| Mixon | Car. | 22 | 153 | 4 | 58 | 5 | 26 | 55.1 |
| Perine | at Pit. | 11 | 30 | 4 | 52 | 3 | 15 | 30.2 |
| Perine | K.C. | 21 | 106 | 6 | 49 | 0 | 27 | 21.5 |
| Mixon | Pit. | 27 | 82 | 7 | 63 | 0 | 34 | 21.5 |
| Mixon | at Buf. | 20 | 105 | 2 | 18 | 1 | 22 | 20.3 |
| Perine | at Ten. | 17 | 58 | 4 | 35 | 1 | 21 | 19.3 |
| Mixon | Atl. | 17 | 58 | 3 | 33 | 1 | 20 | 18.1 |
| Mixon | at N.E. | 16 | 65 | 7 | 43 | 0 | 23 | 17.8 |
| Mixon | Bal. | 11 | 27 | 5 | 41 | 1 | 16 | 17.8 |
| Mixon | Mia. | 24 | 61 | 4 | 13 | 1 | 28 | 17.4 |
| Mixon | at N.O. | 8 | 45 | 4 | 23 | 1 | 12 | 16.8 |
| Perine | at NYJ | 9 | 47 | 2 | 14 | 1 | 11 | 14.1 |
| Mixon | at Cle. | 8 | 27 | 7 | 32 | 0 | 15 | 12.9 |
| Mixon | Cle. | 14 | 96 | 2 | 10 | 0 | 16 | 12.6 |
| Mixon | at Balt. | 14 | 78 | 3 | 10 | 0 | 17 | 11.8 |
| Perine | at Buf. | 7 | 33 | 5 | 31 | 0 | 12 | 11.4 |
| Mixon | at Dal. | 19 | 57 | 3 | 26 | 0 | 22 | 11.3 |
| Mixon | at T.B. | 11 | 21 | 5 | 33 | 0 | 16 | 10.4 |
| Mixon | at Pit. | 7 | 20 | 3 | 42 | 0 | 10 | 9.2 |
| Mixon | Bal. | 11 | 39 | 3 | 17 | 0 | 14 | 8.6 |
| Mixon | at NYJ | 12 | 24 | 3 | 14 | 0 | 15 | 6.8 |
| Mixon | at K.C. | 8 | 19 | 3 | 15 | 0 | 11 | 6.4 |
I went into this thinking to dispute the notion that Perine is any sort of comparable player, but it's hard to find evidence for that. At least this season, Mixon wasn't much better, if at all. It's hard to look at the results and say the game would have gone any differently if Mixon had been a workhorse at Kansas City. During the season, there were as many really good performances with Perine getting plenty of work as with Mixon, on a lower number of opportunities.
Going forward? Perine is a free agent; he turns 28 at the start of the season. Mixon turns 27 this summer, and while he's under contract, he has a base salary next year of $9.4 million -- very unlikely they keep that as is. If they bring back Perine, I think Mixon will be gone. It's possible neither will return, and they'll give Chris Evans (a healthy scratch down the stretch) a chance to win the job.
Offensive line will definitely be an area of focus for Cincinnati, but they might well revamp the running back room, as well.
--Andy Richardson