Bengals' new offensive line coach comes with a background Cincinnati knows well, but there's a big question hanging over him
The Cincinnati Bengals have made their first new coaching hires of the 2025 offseason. Scott Peters has been named the team's offensive line coach, and Michael McCarthy has been named the assistant offensive line coach. Peters spent the 2024 season as the New England Patriots o-line coach. He was also the Cleveland Browns assistant o-line […]
The Cincinnati Bengals have made their first new coaching hires of the 2025 offseason.
Scott Peters has been named the team's offensive line coach, and Michael McCarthy has been named the assistant offensive line coach.
Peters spent the 2024 season as the New England Patriots o-line coach. He was also the Cleveland Browns assistant o-line coach from 2020-23. McCarthy was the Pats' assistant o-line coach in 2024, so Peters opted to bring him to Cincinnati.
The connection here lies with Peters' former stint in the AFC North. The 46-year old has helped coached several games (and wins) against the Bengals during the Joe Burrow era as Cleveland's o-line was a consistently dominant unit in the Battle of Ohio throughout those years. Peters left for a promotion in New England last season, and the guy he worked directly under left town as well.
Bill Callahan, one of the greatest o-line coaches of modern football, was that guy.
Callahan and Bengals head coach Zac Taylor go back 20 years. Callahan was Taylor's college coach when the former quarterback played at Nebraska from 2005-06. Taylor ended up hiring Callahan's son, Brian, to be his offensive coordinator in 2019 when he landed the Bengals' head coaching gig. Brian Callahan is now entering his second year as head coach of the Tennessee Titans, and he hired his dad to be the team's o-line coach is offensive line coach when he took the job last year.
In essence, the Bengals targeted Peters as their guy due to his background with the AFC North and his coaching upbringing under a legend who helped beat them often. The interesting part is the fact that the coach they just fired was also a former Callahan assistant.
Frank Pollack, Cincinnati's o-line coach for five of the last seven years, spent 2013-14 as Callahan's assistant o-line coach for the Dallas Cowboys. He took over the main job in Dallas from 2015-17 before landing with the Bengals and also sandwiched those stints as the o-line coach for the Oakland Raiders and New York Jets.
Pollack's specialty was coaching a wide zone running game from under center, the same scheme Callahan is known for mastering. It's one of the main reasons why the Bengals brought him back when they needed to replace Jim Turner following the 2020 season. His scheme meshed well with Taylor's similar offensive philosophy from his time with the Los Angeles Rams under Sean McVay.
As the past few seasons have shown, that style of run game is not an ideal match with the passing game Burrow likes to conduct. Pollack's inability to formulate a run game outside of his expertise is one of the reasons why he was let go at the start of the offseason.
This is where the hire looks a bit questionable. Is Peters going to bring a similar style of run game Pollack and Callahan were known for? According to ESPN's Ben Baby, Peters was not given the title of Run Game Coordinator, which Pollack held for the past four seasons.
Regardless of which coach holds the title, the o-line coach is generally responsible for implementing the run game for his unit. Whether or not he'll be capable of doing that in a shotgun-heavy offense is worth questioning since his background is more of the opposite. This matters more than how the Patriots' line performed under his lone year of guidance as New England was completely drained of o-line talent this past season and pretty much all of their issues stemmed from that.
Peters followed Callahan for many years, starting as a consultant with the then-Washington Redskins, and then another four seasons as Callahan's main assistant in Cleveland. Much of what he knows as a coach comes from Callahan, and the same can be said about Taylor.
Familiarity drives many of these decisions, but at the end of the day, it's all about fit. Can Peters bring a run game and technique teachings that fit what the Bengals need? That's the main question he needs to answer right away.
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