Why are we pumped to stack Cincinnati Bengals in 2021?

Matt Harmon is joined by Anthony Amico to dive into the Bengals fantasy outlook next season. Hear the full conversation on the Yahoo Fantasy Football Forecast. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or wherever you listen.

Video Transcript

MATT HARMON: I've heard you call them, or heard people refer to you calling them, Cowboys North. By the way, excellent work. Love that. Have stolen it already. I shouted you out in the piece, but have stolen it already. Will continue to steal it.

But I loved the way you put that because there's such a similar kind of DNA between the Cowboys and the Bengals right now with an ascending quarterback, a young wide receiver trio, and a potential workhorse running back. But tell me why we should be high on stacking the Bengals offense. And we'll kind of take this piece by piece here.

ANTHONY AMICO: Yeah, 100%. And Leone has looked at this at "Establish the Run." The Bengals' pass rate over expectation has been outstanding. So, I mean, they threw the ball a lot last year as is. But even if you take into account some of those game script-based factors, some of those game-level factors that would maybe say, oh, well they should be throwing this much, actually, no, they still threw more than they were expected to.

So that tells us that Zac Taylor, this coaching staff, they want to throw. They want to throw often. They play at a really high pace, so they're running a lot of plays. So they're kind of on that same-- they're at that same level as Dallas where last year we were talking about Dak, if he keeps playing at this pace, he's gonna break all these records. He's gonna throw all these attempts. He's gonna pass for all these yards.

You know, I'm not necessarily saying that Joe Burrow could be like a Hall of Fame caliber passer this year in year two, but he's gonna throw the ball a ton. They know that it's these three guys that are their main guys, Higgins and Boyd coming back and bringing in Chase. And I kind of feel like the Chase thing is almost underrated, which is crazy to me.

Because if you told me that we were gonna bring in a Biletnikoff winner, and he was gonna pair up with the guy that won the Heisman in the year he won the Biletnikoff, I thought we'd be doing cartwheels on fantasy Twitter. And it gets like no love. I feel like because the way the stuff with Pitts has worked out and the fact that we had such a good quarterback draft, no one's talking about just how good a prospect Ja'Marr Chase is. And I shouldn't say nobody because it's a big space. I'm sure plenty of people have talked about it.

But relative to, I think, how much we should talk about it, it hasn't been brought up enough. Bob McGinn does this evaluator poll every year at "The Athletic" where he talks to guys around the league, and Ja'Marr Chase was the first consensus wide receiver one since Calvin Johnson in 2007. Obviously, he has all these amazing age-adjusted metrics, so the stat nerds like me, we love him.

So there's, again, this perfect harmony between the film and the stats, which I love. And, I mean, I don't think it's crazy to say he's the best prospect, to me at least, since Amari Cooper. If you want to say Julio, AJ Green, I think that's acceptable also. I just think that he's so good. And you bring that guy in with a lot less adjustments than a lot of other rookie receivers are gonna have to make just because of the quarterback familiarity.

I mean, this offense is gonna jam, man. I mean, you're replacing AJ Green with this guy? I cannot overstate how good I think they could be throwing the ball.

MATT HARMON: Yeah, you mentioned some of their passing metrics. When games were within 3 points last year, the Bengals had a 62% passing play percentage. That was the sixth highest mark in the league. That's a continuation of what they did the year before that. Same sort of game script. 62% again. That ranked third highest in the NFL in 2019.

The teams that they were around in 2020, Steelers, Falcons, Bills, Bucs, Chiefs. Obviously, offenses that we, for the most part, like to mine fantasy gold out of. The Bengals are kind of sitting there from a game script perspective. 13th in plays run last year. Ninth in plays run in 2019. So the skeleton, I feel like, is there for the type of offense that we want in fantasy.