Bengals' Tee Higgins expands his game with 'oomph' and 'urgency' in contract season

Tee Higgins looks different this year.

Not necessarily because of his physically imposing stature at 6-foot-4 and 220 pounds. Although, he did spend the offseason hitting the weight room with a purpose, adding notable strength to sustain through a full season.

It’s not necessarily his playmaking. With 4,400 receiving yards in his career, he’s made nearly every type of catch imaginable — and a few unimaginable. Nothing he has done on the field this season is a surprise.

Joe Burrow defined it as “urgency” and “a chip on his shoulder.”

Tenacious, gritty, pick your descriptor.

Poised to enter free agency after the season understanding every catch helps determine value in the contract of his life, just call him motivated.

“It’s a big year for me so definitely playing with a little more extra,” Higgins said, pausing as he searched for the right word.

“Ooomph.”

Now, there’s an appropriate word. One you can feel. Fitting because that’s really what has set his game apart since returning from a hamstring injury that kept him out of the lineup the first two games of the year. Higgins has caught 25 passes for 259 yards and two touchdowns in four games. Nothing spectacular. The spectacular has been in the gritty way he’s carved out those yards.

His highlights have typically come high-pointing the ball down the field. He’s never been known for grinding yards after the catch between the hashes. It’s become abundantly clear he wants to change the notion. In the process, he’s elevated his game and a soaring Bengals offense.

“He’s playing as well as he has ever played,” head coach Zac Taylor said.

On Sunday night in New York, Higgins already established his physicality forcing a missed tackle against cornerback Deonte Banks on his first reception before boxing Banks out for a third-down conversion.

When he caught an in-breaking, 5-yard route in the second quarter, though, Higgins turned and carried Banks for 5 yards before shedding him and then fending off Micah McFadden to rack up 19 yards after the catch in a 24-yard gain.

He popped up quickly, tossed the ball aside and ripped off two intense flexes as a noticeable “Teeee!” was unleashed by visiting fans at MetLife Stadium.

His effort made Taylor call his name right along with them.

“Honestly, I saw him make the first play he made and so I just called another play for him where he was No. 1,” Taylor said. “And then we got him out and gave him a breather right after that. But just when you kind of see a guy who makes a play like that, you want to try to keep him going there. And I know it’s an exhausting play. He won a one-on-one versus bump. Broke a couple tackles. Finished the run. He’s tired, but I made him take one more and get one more catch.”

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He sent an early message to the Giants, his teammates and, likely, the rest of the league watching on “Sunday Night Football”: Don’t classify him as a finesse receiver.

“I think he just wants to show everything,” Ja’Marr Chase said. “Not just one thing. Me and him talk a lot. I know for a fact he wants to show everything. Not just one thing.”

Yards after the catch aren’t new to Higgins’ game. He took a catch-and-run 80 yards in Pittsburgh last year and, of course, had one of the great highlights of the 2023 season with his catch and stretch against Minnesota for a game-tying touchdown. He’s not even near the league leaders in the stat this year.

TEE HIGGINS JUMP BALL AND THE REACH! WHAT A TD 😱

📺: #MINvsCIN on @NFLNetwork 
📱: Stream on #NFLPlus https://t.co/vtmfEKvOLy pic.twitter.com/sLb6U64XNq

— NFL (@NFL) December 16, 2023

What’s stood out is the way he’s produced those extra yards. He’s forced four missed tackles in the last two weeks, equaling his total from last season.

The Bengals have utilized his unique athleticism and catch radius to make nearly every reception imaginable running slants, digs and hitches over the middle repeatedly. His average depth of target is a career low (10.8) as he waits to be unleashed more down the field, but he’s flipped his hips to catch two touchdowns thrown behind him away from defenders.

“Tee’s body control is elite,” Burrow said. “I’m confident I can throw to Tee in any window whether it’s late, early, if I throw it behind him, in front of him, because his body control is so elite and his arms are so long and his hands are so good. He’s going to make the throw right. That gives me confidence throwing to him over the middle in a lot of different ways, in a lot of different windows, on a lot of different plays, because he just consistently makes those tough catches.”

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Burrow enjoys giving Higgins a hard time about his “pop-up game” as a younger player.

“I was just getting up slow,” Higgins said, smiling about the accusation from his quarterback.

Burrow sees Higgins taking the big hits and instantly jumping back up these days.

That’s another area where strength has been a larger part of his game this year. He has no completions over 17 air yards. Yet, he’s proven lethal moving the chains in the intermediate. He’s caught 81 percent of those targets (5-13 air yards), which is good for third-best in the NFL among receivers (minimum 15 targets). The league average is 68 percent.

He’s been forced to play through contact with more throws underneath and in traffic. He’s made a habit of catching passes with a defender draped and extending the ball up and away to keep the chains moving.

So many catches in traffic have created plenty of opportunities for Higgins to showcase his pop-up-game progress.

“I’ve been taking a lot of hits this season,” Higgins said, quickly shifting to his point in the back-and-forth with Burrow regarding throws in traffic. “I’ll put it like this, any way you get me the ball, I’m all for it. It ain’t going to do nothing but help me in the long run.”

Tee Higgins breaks tackles after a catch against the Ravens in Week 5. (Sam Greene / Imagn Images)

He’s carried defensive backs for a few extra yards and also cut all the way across the field looking for a lane to break a tackle on multiple occasions. In every circumstance, he hasn’t gone down to avoid contact even with a first down in hand.

Anybody looking for business decisions from Higgins in a contract year should look elsewhere.

Instead, as players like to say, he’s standing on business.

“I think his level of urgency since he came back has been high,” Burrow said. “He’s been excited about his ability to go out and make plays this year, and he’s continuing to show that he can. He’s going to continue to get a lot of opportunities. When he gets the ball in his hands, he’s been lowering his shoulder and getting those extra 4-5 yards, which the way teams play us has been big.”

The way teams play the Bengals involves leaving the defense vulnerable to Higgins working the intermediate levels due to fear of him striking over the top.

Chase leads the world in yards after catch on those routes — and just about all routes — but it hasn’t overshadowed his partner internally. With new additions and scheme tweaks around them, they’ve augmented each other at new heights.

Chase, Higgins and a healthy Burrow are blowing away efficiency and production numbers when on the field together for the greatest stretch in the history of this holy trinity of Bengals offense. It’s not close.

*2023 numbers post Burrow calf injury, Weeks 5-11 only

For reference, the highest EPA/play by any team in a full season this century is the Indianapolis Colts, who posted 0.26 in 2006. It’s a small size for the Bengals, but it merely illustrates how absurd they’ve been to this point.

In fact, the above marks for yards per play, first downs per attempt, third-down conversion percentage, success percentage and passer rating if posted over a full season would all also qualify as the best by any team this century.

“The balance is simply a result of the defense having to pick their poison,” offensive coordinator Dan Pitcher said. “And if they’re gonna devote the type of resources that most defenses are gonna look at and say they need to devote to try to limit Ja’Marr, that is just very naturally going to lead to some more opportunities for Tee. You can choose to devote those kind of resources to both those guys, and then that opens up a whole world of everything else to everybody else. That’s the dilemma they’re in.”

There’s another dilemma, as well.

You have to wonder whether the Bengals are rethinking if it’s possible to keep these three together. They have watched the way Higgins approached this season, kept his head down and went to work on the franchise tag and then dipped into a new level of toughness to put forth what Taylor dubbed the best football of his career. He added to his game and continues to prove himself as a complete receiver. He merely needs to keep it going through a full season.

Time will tell. That’s the elephant in the room about the next level for Higgins. Does this change how it ends? Could this still be part of one last dance in Cincinnati?

“Obviously, I want to make it something special just because we want to win the big one as a whole,” Higgins said. “Man, if it is the last one, then obviously, yeah, I want to make it something special.”

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(Top photo: Grant Halverson / Getty Images)