Bengals' run game carries the day

CLEVELAND — With temperatures in the 20s and snow falling on the field at FirstEnergy Stadium, Sunday looked, felt and smelled like a day created for running the football.

Of course, for Jeremy Hill and the Bengals, every game against Cleveland has been created for running the football.

Cincinnati established the ground game early and - for the second time this year - crossed 200 yards on the ground against the Browns in a 23-10 win.

They totaled 212 yards on 38 carries Sunday after rushing 30 times for 271 yards in the first meeting back in October.

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“We came out locked in ready to go,” Hill said. “Both times we came out locked in on the first drive and ran the ball well. That’s something we got to continue to do. We happen to be able to do that against the Browns. That’s just the way that it’s been.”

The Bengals haven’t topped 200 yards on the ground over the past two seasons except for these matchups with Cleveland. Against non-Browns opponents, the most rushing yards the Bengals accumulated this year was 152 against Washington.

Hill ended up with 111 yards on 25 carries and a touchdown. His 4.4 yards per rush is only the third time he’s gone over four yards per carry this year, in the loss against Denver and both Cleveland games.

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He knows Sunday’s output could have been much more.

“They gave me some holes to hit,” Hill said. “There were a couple I could have broke for long ones but kind of got tripped up a little bit. Whatever that is I have to find a way to capitalize on those and help my team out a little more.”

One of the biggest helps came from an unexpected source. Tyler Boyd took a reverse for 39 yards on the first drive, a play which multiple Bengals felt after the game helped spark the fast start. He’d only carried once for three yards coming into the game.

The drive ended with a 15-yard touchdown pass from Andy Dalton to Tyler Eifert.

“It was real good to break one on a run,” Boyd said. “I wish I had enough in me to score and finish it, but at the end of the day it set up the offense scoring.”

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Not only did it help the offense score on that drive, but it established a bug in the back of the heads of the Browns' defense the rest of the day.

“Oh yeah, any time you get a big play like that it makes the linebackers stay a little more honest,” Hill said. “They can’t attack as much as they want to because they have to respect plays like that. That was definitely a big play for us.”

Inevitably, the running game was all the Bengals needed - buoyed by two-touchdown, zero-interception day by Dalton. That was a clear game plan coming  in and the overriding theme going out.

“In this weather and that’s somewhere they have struggled this year with a new team of young guys trying to learn where they fit and all that stuff,” left tackle Andrew Whitworth said. “You had to be able to do that to beat them. We knew with the conditions and situations they were probably going to make us have to run the football. To be able to execute it and do it well is great.”