Heading into the 2026 season, the Cincinnati Bengals have retained most of their coaching staff and offensive playmakers, particularly on the offensive side. Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins return to lead the wide receiver room, Chase Brown is coming off his first 1,000-yard season, and Joe Burrow is set to begin the eighth season of his NFL career. However, 3x Super Bowl Champ Mark Schlereth believes that despite all of the offensive talent on the roster, one key issue could keep the Bengals from reaching the playoffs.

“There is a fatal flaw to Zack Taylor and the Cincinnati Bengals,” the NFL legend said. “I’ve recently had this conversation with Joe Burrow, and had this one-on-one conversation about this. Their propensity to think that they can play the entirety of the game in shotgun is a problem. It’s a problem in the league in general. Everybody does play in the shotgun; it’s the amount of time you spend in the gun that’s the problem. The amount of plays, the percentage of plays that are in the gun, that’s the problem in Cincinnati.”

Out of the top 10 teams in the league during the 2025 season that operated under center, 9 qualified for the playoffs, three played in the AFC and the NFC Championship rounds, two played in the Super Bowl, with the Seattle Seahawks eventually winning the Super Bowl.

Schlereth acknowledged that out of the bottom 10 teams to operate under center that mostly played in shotgun, 9 failed to make the playoffs, with the Philadelphia Eagles being the only exception. And yes, the Bengals were a major part of that list, and it’s not just about the 2025 season, when Burrow missed the majority of the season due to turf toe.

In fact, if we look at the 2024 season, Burrow’s best in the NFL, the Bengals lined up under center the third-fewest times in the league, with just 168 snaps. Among quarterbacks with at least 750 pass attempts from 2021 through 2025, Burrow has operated from the shotgun on 92% of his dropbacks under Zac Taylor, the third-highest rate in the league.

For a broader context, here are the Bengals’ offensive rankings from 2020 to 2025:

Considering the Bengals rely heavily on the passing offense, Joe Burrow is avoiding playing under center. Per Mark Schlereth, that could affect the offense even if the margin of error is less than half a second.

When a quarterback operates from the shotgun and uses play action, he exposes the ball to defenders while handing it off to the running back, who also needs an extra half-second to reach the line of scrimmage. But when that same quarterback lines up under center, he conceals the ball during the handoff while moving toward the running back.

At the same time, the back is already running toward the quarterback, allowing him to hit the line of scrimmage roughly half a second sooner. In the Bengals’ case, Burrow’s offense has relied heavily on the former. Heading into the 2026 season, it’ll be worth watching whether Burrow finally begins playing more from under center after largely avoiding it for years.