Ray-Ray Misses Containment Over and Over Again
We all remember the moment of the collective cringe during the first TD of the game. LB Ray-Ray Armstrong blew his containment on the right side of the play despite being initially lined up 2-3 yards outside of the widest Bengals player.
Part of the problem is that Armstrong has a tendency to move laterally down the line of scrimmage without gaining ANY depth into the backfield at all. His role as containment is specifically to cut off the possibility of a running back running around him. On this play we see him move nearly five yards inside from his original position without gaining even 1 yard of depth. Even worse, he does it with a massive hop that kept him from quickly adjusting his feet once the direction of the running back changed. Working his way inside is absolutely part of his job, but doing it without moving into the backfield at all is a major mistake.
To further exacerbate the issue, Armstrong should have already made an adjustment from a play earlier when he got beat outside from not gaining enough depth on containment.
Earlier in the drive, Cincinnati does a zone run right at Ray-Ray Armstrong. He’s lined up a similar distance from the closest Bengal on the line, 2-3 yards.
Zone runs are painfully obvious to see, by design. The entire offensive line moves to one side or another specifically to get a jump on blocking assignments and move the play to the run side. Here we see that Bengals TE Tyler Eifert manages to not only slide over those three yards before Armstrong barely moves at all, but he manages to get his hips behind him, standing Armstrong up and pushing him backwards.
There’s simply no excuse for this. Armstrong needs to be able to stay outside, working for depth, as soon as he sees the entire offensive line moving toward him. In this situation even with no depth a shuffle step to the outside before contact would have put him in much better position to force the play inside. I’m sure Armstrong and the coaches have already gone over this exact same film and he’ll be looking to make the correction against Baltimore.
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