On the surface, Chase Brown breaking through the left side for a 28-yard run last Thursday against the Pittsburgh Steelers is a mundane line in the box score.

A nice gain, for sure, but any first-down run in the second quarter of a 33-31 thrilling Bengals win wouldn’t even make the extended highlights on SportsCenter.

Yet, for the Cincinnati Bengals offensive line and running backs, who have spent weeks searching for solutions and any space on the ground, it might be one of the most memorable of the year.

“It was amazing,” right tackle Amarius Mims said.

Chase Brown finds space.

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Brown hadn’t produced a run of more than 11 yards all year. The Bengals had been mired at 32nd in the league in rushing for most of the season and endured one of the worst starts on the ground for a season in franchise history.

He’d carried 65 times without an explosive run to show for it and the frustration of 2.5 yards per rush was weighing on his shoulder pads like a 300-pound defensive tackle.

So, by the time Brown ripped off a 37-yarder later in the same quarter, both Mims and Brown could be seen letting out cathartic screams simultaneously 15 yards apart from each other at the end of the run.

This was a long time coming.

“It was a breath of fresh air,” Mims said. “We have worked so hard just to see the work in practice we have been putting in come to life. That’s exactly what we wanted to do, and what better time to do it?”

Just in time to help save the season. Much of Cincinnati’s offensive resurgence over the last six quarters reverts directly back to the arrival and efficiency of Joe Flacco. What’s been remarkable and might go a long way toward providing offensive sustainability was the return of effectiveness on the ground over the last two weeks.

There was a time when Brown would sit in front of his locker after another listless game with nowhere to go when he touched the ball and wonder if a turning point like this would ever come.

“First of all, things were confronted,” Brown said. “Hey, we need to get this run game going. It’s been a big emphasis for multiple weeks now.”

The “confrontation” meant extra meetings, extra coaches in those meetings, switching personnel, tinkering with schemes and having tough conversations. Specifically, coming out of a blowout loss in Minnesota, where Brown rushed 10 times for three yards, a deeper look at the aggressiveness used by the offensive line out of the blocks meshing with the backs was put into focus.

Like most aspects of the Bengals offense in 2025, nothing seemed to work until Flacco walked in the door.

His ability to complete passes and keep the Bengals offense ahead of the chains in positions to have multiple run-pass options for play calls on every down has opened opportunities. The bigger part, however, in the eyes of head coach Zac Taylor, was finally being able to play with a lead.

“Just being able to, as a team, hang in that game and have a lead allowed us to keep sticking with that stuff and give us confidence in that game,” Taylor said. “And that’s just the difference in that game as opposed to the previous four, where we didn’t have enough of that.”

While the explosive runs might have elicited the big reactions from the crowd and players, Taylor views the more mundane gains as the key to success on the ground.

“They’re not always sexy 10-yard runs, but sometimes they’re 4- and 5-yard runs that keep you out of a third-and-10,” Taylor said. “That to me was as important as Chase’s explosive (run) down the middle to the right sideline and the left one that he toe tapped the sidelines. Those to me were as effective.”

This staff has always cited rushing efficiency (success rate) as the most important number when judging run-game success. To be over 50 percent the last two weeks in a league where the average is 39.8 percent is a major win in this year-long battle.

That went directly back to the renewed emphasis on aggressive, downhill blocking, which was lacking in earlier weeks.

“The O-line did that in a huge way,” Brown said. “We were creating space, made running lanes. When you do that, I can’t ask for anything else. Everything on the second level, that’s what I get paid for. You open up lanes like that, it is going to be dangerous.”

When Brown reached the second level, there was Ja’Marr Chase getting two extra blocks in to help spring the next level. That play was shown in the Monday meeting by Taylor as an example to every player in the building of what effort toward the little things, even by a star, can be the key to team success.

It’s also allowed the running game to create more opportunities for those stars. In fact, it created a touchdown for Chase against the Steelers.

The first-half, 8-yard touchdown pass from Flacco to Chase was actually called as a run play, but it came with a tag at the end of the call for Flacco to pull the ball back if he liked the look for Chase. With one-on-one and no safety over the top, he certainly did.

That was one of “six or seven” run calls that were changed into passes, many of which went for explosives against the Steelers.

“When you’re running the ball and you’re having success, it gives the play caller confidence to continue calling those runs,” offensive coordinator Dan Pitcher said. “Well, then you get to tag onto the run some run alerts that the quarterback can just pick it up, and if he has an advantageous look, he can take a slant route to Ja’Marr or he can take a conversion to Ja’Marr in the red zone for a touchdown.”

Then other times, you produce more draw from the linebackers, like when they hit Noah Fant for a 25-yard explosive play on a naked bootleg.

It doesn’t take 18 years of experience to understand the importance of an efficient run game. It does take that perspective to understand how much finding completions and avoiding negative plays (which happened far too often with Jake Browning) are critical in assisting a running attack trying to find itself.

“Stay ahead of the sticks,” Flacco said. “First and second down, especially first down. When you have easy completions and you’re ahead of the sticks, it gives you a chance to be multiple. Not be forced into being one-dimensional because you’re not doing what you were supposed to do on early downs. That’s probably the biggest thing.”

It’s been a big thing for the Bengals’ rejuvenated offense. None of the parties involved were declaring victory after two games with effective results and two chunk runs.

Sometimes, though, it’s just about seeing the ball go through the hoop a few times. Now that the Bengals have done that, there’s hope they have finally turned the corner.

“We’ve been doing a lot to get this run game going,” Brown said. “It feels really good to pop off. Now, it’s don’t get satisfied. Let’s get this thing going. It’s on a week-to-week basis.”