AP

Bill Lazor took over as the Bengals’ offensive coordinator last Friday and he’s now charged with finding a way to get an anemic offense into the end zone on a consistent basis.

With the season already underway, that’s not going to happen by radically changing the team’s offensive scheme or playbook but by tweaking what’s already on hand to make it more effective. Judging by what some of Lazor’s players have said, those tweaks are going to be focused on one thing.

Quarterback A.J. McCarron said the team needs to “have fun, play fast, keep it simple” and wide receiver John Ross said Lazor will “make it simple enough for us to incorporate it” quickly. Quarterback Andy Dalton opted for words other than simple, but the message was the same.

“We’re trying to make the easy things easy,” Dalton said, via the Cincinnati Enquirer. “You don’t want to overthink out there. Trust in your abilities. Everybody play free.”

After last Thursday’s loss to the Texans, wide receiver A.J. Green said that the ball needs to be in his hands more if the Bengals are going to be more successful on offense. We’ll have to wait until Sunday to see if that’s Lazor’s approach, but it would certainly seem to fit into an offense that doesn’t overthink things and lets its best players do their thing as much as possible.