Reel Talk: Jeremy Hill

Jeff Miller

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In 1988, a bruising full back named Ickey Woods took Cincinnati and the NFL by storm. The inventor of the most famous touchdown dance in league history churned out 1066 yards on only 203 carries while hitting pay dirt an astounding 15 times. Unfortunately, due in large part to a torn ACL the following season, Woods tallied only 459 yards and 12 touchdowns the entire rest of his career.

While current Bengals bruiser Jeremy Hill hasn’t suffered as devastating an injury as Woods, residents of The Queen City must be feeling some sense of déjà vu watching the promising sophomore scuffle when he should be doing the Shuffle.

As dynasty owners, we don’t always have the time, or for many, the knowledge, to be able to sit down and watch film of every player we are curious about. What we are left with in the case of a player like Hill, is to guess who is the real he. Is it the hyper-productive 2014 stud, or the super disappointing 2015 let down? As somebody who was wondering just what has gone wrong, I turned to my good friend, go-to film guy and author of the excellent Devy Report, Nick Whalen.

Several weeks ago, Nick and I spent an evening watching film simultaneously from half a country apart, discussing what we saw, and sharing screen shots along the way. At some point in the back-and-forth, we realized this sort of thing could play well to our knowledge-hungry DLF readers. And thus the first installment in this soon-to-be semi-regular series was born.

The Hill That Was

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About halfway through the 2014 season, incumbent starter/dynasty darling, Giovani Bernard injured his hip, putting him on the shelf for three games. During that stretch, Hill exploded to the tune of 389 yards and two touchdowns on 66 touches. Bernard didn’t out-touch the rookie in a single game the rest of the way.

When you have a mid-second round running back rip off 943 yards and six touchdowns in nine games to close out a season, you get excited. And if you are me, you make him a top-five running back in your dynasty rankings. Oops.

The start of our film review picked up in the middle of his epic run, parsing through tape from several games. In the interest of not challenging Moby Dick to a length contest, we will stick to a few high points. Let’s start with his first game as the starter, Week nine versus the Jags.

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This second quarter run is what we like to see. A small crease opens between the left guard and the center and Hill hits it with a full head of steam, putting his head down and finishing hard. The result was a paltry three yards, but the execution was spot on.

If he ran like this all the time, I wouldn’t be writing this article. But he doesn’t; something I can show you if we fast forward a bit to the fourth quarter.

Important note: I have added arrows of varying colors to many of the screen shots below. The yellow arrows are designed to show where the play was designed for Hill to run. The red arrows designate the path he chose.

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This was an off-tackle run where the left guard and center crashed right and the right tackle (#74) pulled left to be the lead blocker. Even though the guard nearly whiffs on the linebacker (#50), we are still OK if he follows his lead blocker. Instead, he cuts the run back inside and directly into the linebackers’ waiting arms.

This single play is an accurate microcosm of the issues plaguing Hill. I’ll let Nick expand.

“Hill is a big back who excels when running downhill, which is why it perplexes me to see him try to use his other tools so often. He has very good (better than I thought, even) feet for a RB of his size. He easily sidesteps defenders, and can make quick cuts while maintaining his balance.

The most glaring issue is he dances too much approaching the line of scrimmage. These unnecessary movements affect the rhythm of the blocks and waste valuable time as the defense is flowing to the play. I wish I could say this only happened a few times, but he seems to do it often.

Another concern is his vision. Sometimes he follows the play design, but others he is completely oblivious to wide open holes. Once the initial hole is plugged up, he tends to go into a ‘freak-out’ mode. This causes him to speed up his process where he favors bouncing plays outside.

Big RBs bouncing runs don’t generally yield great results, and it’s been no different with Hill. Those quick movements to the outside hinder his ability to cut it up just outside of the designed hole due to momentum. He is still able to cut inside the hole at times, but he misses out on the huge gains because the defense has already flowed to the ball.”

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This play is a great example of two things Nick mentioned. First, Hill made no fewer than three stutter steps before advancing even a single yard. In doing so, his momentum was slowed enough that he wasn’t in a prime position to follow his lead block (#84, a pulling Jermaine Gresham) for what looked to be a solid, if unspectacular gain. Instead, he chose to cut to what looked like an enticing hole off the left side of his center. The issue is the play was designed for the center to block his man directly into said hole (which you can see the beginning stages of). Once he finally got there, the defender was waiting.

Unconvinced? Allow me to introduce exhibit WHAT THE HECK IS HE DOING?

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The screen shot doesn’t quite convey the openness of the hole to Hill’s right. It also doesn’t show that he had a full head of steam in that exact direction before inexplicably trying to Barry Sanders the run back inside.

Let’s see the play from another angle with a screen shot taken at the exact same time.

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Why did this happen? It would seem that his first reaction any time a defender *might* be where he wants to go is to cut the opposite direction. Here we see #57 working off the block to the outside, causing him to go into, as Nick put it, freak-out mode. Luckily, he is big, fast and managed to break a couple tackles to pick up 13 yards. The end result doesn’t change the fact that he made the wrong decision.

As we wrap up our review of last season, let’s check back with Nick and get his take on one of Hill’s best games of 2014: a 22 carry, 147 yard, one touchdown effort against the Broncos.

“(Compared to 2015) Hill was more decisive at times this game in getting north and south. He also used a little bit more of his power to finish off runs. However, he still did a lot of the small things wrong and missed some huge holes.”

The Hill That Is

Not only has he been less lucky this year, he’s been less good. The indecisiveness is much worse, showing serious regression even from week one to now. Perhaps most concerning is the increasing unwillingness to follow play design. Bouncing runs outside has reached Titans-era Chris Johnson-ian levels, except Hill doesn’t run a 4.24 40.

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Here we are looking at an off tackle play where he ignored the large hole and lead blocker in order to bounce the run. Due to the penetration by #91, something the left tackle allowed intentionally to open up a running lane, our subject had to take the long way around, going three yards the wrong direction from the point of the handoff. By the time he regained those yards and four more to make it back to the line of scrimmage, he had only gained two yards. I wish I could express how many times this exact mistake gets repeated.

For our last play, I have a set of three screen shots.

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On this play, we see another example of what happens when he decides to bounce a run. He over-commits on his initial cut which he then realizes and cuts again, this time back to his original direction. The problem is, by this point he is on top of his blockers and doesn’t have the room needed to hit the hole he should have in the first place. The end result on this occasion was that Hill found himself in a pig pile where he eventually fumbled the ball.

The Hill That Will Be

Clearly the physical ability is there. He has great feet for a bruiser, and as we saw last season, even when he isn’t playing great football he can get results. All this is rather heartening, but none of it will matter a lick if the Bengals can’t cure Hill of all the bad (awful, really) habits holding him back. Luckily, Marvin Lewis seems intent on giving the young back a chance to get right, even if it is to the detriment of the team as they have a clearly better option in Bernard.

Before I let Nick have the last word, we’d like to ask you to please let us know in the comment section below what you did and didn’t like about this article. It will really help us make this ongoing series the best it can be.

Take it home, Mr. Whalen.

“While I think Hill is a talented RB, I feel he is regressing as a runner. He seems to not be progressing and processing information quickly enough. His athletic ability and size in a good offense help mask some of his issues, but I am not surprised Gio Bernard is getting so many touches.”

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jeff miller