Aiming beyond 3.8:
Bengals RB knows he needs to up his yards per carry
The Bengals’ Jeremy Hill seeks to rebound after subpar yards per carry averages in 2015 and 2016.
Joe Mixon gets the cheers, the frenetic whoops and claps of a training camp crowd when he finishes off a drill by running to the end zone, high fiving fans on his way back to the team.
Giovani Bernard gets the deep breaths, the elongated “oh’s” for his stop-starts and bursts through the hole.
“You’re 230 pounds! Run him over!”
That’s what Jeremy Hill gets. From a teammate.
It has been a different kind of training camp for the fourth-year running back, one of the National Football League’s most prolific touchdown makers and onetime darling of the Cincinnati Bengals backfield.
Now, the 24-year-old is at a crossroads.
A HARD REALITY
In a Mobile, Ala., coffee shop offensive coordinator Ken Zampese spoke softly, but poignantly.
Weeks had passed since the end of the team’s worst season in seven years. Everyone on the offense was getting a hard look. In his third year, Hill averaged 3.8 yards per carry on his 222 attempts. The year before, 3.6 over 223 carries.
It was two years of methodical production and quite the departure from the 5.1 yards per rush on 222 carries in Hill’s breakout rookie season of 2014.
“I see a lot more for him. A lot more. But he’s got to do it,” Zampese said in late January. “Disciplined run courses. Trust in the line. Breaking tackles. Those things. I see a very bright future for him. But we can’t go into the season thinking he’s the only guy we’re giving it to either. We have to have some contingency plans.
“3.8 is not good enough, two years in a row. So there are some bottom-line things. There are realities. And we’re there now.”
Once Rex Burkhead bolted to the New England Patriots, the club made it known it would draft a running back in April. Hill knew, too.
“When I got drafted, there wasn’t something in my contract that said, ‘Hey Jeremy, you’re going to be the only running back we put on our roster,’ ” Hill said. “That comes with the territory.”
The back ended up being Mixon, a player cut from the nearly the same physical mold (6-1, 228) as Hill (6-1, 235) but with a more accomplished collegiate track record of catching the ball and Bernard-like quickness.
Naturally, all of the news media found Hill at his locker after the draft. And Hill was there to answer questions about the rookie who many outside the organization were ready to crown as the new starter.
Hill was one of the first Bengals to reach out to Mixon after draft night and laughs at the idea that it was a difficult time for him.
“Taking Joe was a big addition for our offense as a team,” Hill said in an extended sitdown inside Paul Brown Stadium. “As players, people assume that we’re selfish people, but I’ve always been a team guy, and with team success, personal success follows. ... Him helping our team doesn’t faze me at all, and questions about it doesn’t faze me at all. We’ve done everything we can to help Joe and bring him along and make sure he’s a big piece of our offense. ... I have all the confidence in the world about myself and my ability.
“It’s just going out there and proving it and doing it again.” Coaches believe he can. Zampese doesn’t doubt the explosive runner of 2014 is still within Hill.
“No question to me,” the second-year offensive coordinator said. “But that will come between his ears. I have confidence that he’s going to do that. Because he doesn’t want to gain 3.8. But we need to get a consistency that we haven’t had in a moment.”
Fast-forward six months, after offseason team activities and the start of training camp. That belief remains.
“I’m the eternal optimist — I think there is better in there,” running backs coach Kyle Caskey said. “I’ve seen things in practice and I’ve seen things in our offseason work that have led me to believe that the Jeremy Hill that’s going to show up this year is going to be the Jeremy Hill that everybody wants to be on this team, and he wants him to be.”
As for that lack of consistency for Hill in 2016, coach Marvin Lewis provided a bit of a mea culpa.
Lewis despises talking about injuries and their impact, but Hill severely injured a shoulder in Week 4 against the Miami Dolphins on Sept. 29. Though he didn’t miss a game, he clearly wasn’t right. In the next nine contests against teams other than the Cleveland Browns, Hill ran for 339 yards on 130 attempts, a 2.6 average per rush.
“He sucked it up for us and played when he was injured and maybe we hurt him a little bit, set him back a little bit that way,” Lewis said. “Because he had an injury that when he took shots on it, it hurt, and you had to hurt for him, because we knew the pain he was in.”
Given several opportunities to use the shoulder (or later a knee) to toss his problems at his injuries, Hill refused. He played, so he had to perform. No thoughts about the offensive line or play calls, either.
“I’ll never be that guy,” he said. “I just didn’t get it done.”
In the end, that is the crux of where he’s at in this training camp. It’s one of the reasons Mixon was drafted. Or that Tra Carson is getting an extended look with Cedric Peerman out with a hamstring injury.
In 2017, it’s about production. Mixon has impressed. Bernard is healthy. There is no room for 3.8. “He knows that there is some fire behind him, and he knows how talented that room is, and he’s really taken that to heart,” Caskey said. “There’s some people behind him right now that are chipping at his heels. And he knows that.
“But he’s also still the starter, so the biggest thing is come in here and have the confidence of a starter and have the ability to do everything we ask him to do at a high level so we can leave him in that position.”
THE TIME IS NOW
Hill sees what you see. The long runs in 2014, the speed and extra yards. He sees the fumble that helped end the 2015 season early. The ineffective runs of 2016. But he believes. “I can always get back to that,” he said of that star-in-the-making wearing No. 32 from three seasons ago. “I feel that way now. I feel I had a great OTAs, and training camp is coming along fine right now. It’s really just keeping my body healthy, and I think I can definitely achieve that. The knowledge I’ve attained over the years, experience I’ve attained, you can’t teach that.
“I’m excited, man. I’ve put the work in.”
And he sees what you see, regarding what his teammates in the backfield are showing in camp.
“Every time you step on that field, you’ve got to reprove yourself,” Hill said. “I can’t take a day off or take a rep off or take a play off. Everyone is watching.”
Hill is proud that he didn’t lose a fumble in 2016, but he knows this year, he must get past 3.8.
“If I do that, I think everything else will fall in place,” he said. “I think that’s been the question the past two seasons. I think I’ve done other things well, short yardage, scoring touchdowns, things like that, but the yards per carry definitely needs to increase.
“That’s something I’m going focus on this year and try and increase.”
He believes. Do you?
Owczarski writes for The Cincinnati Enquirer, part of the USA TODAY Network.