This is what you do just a few days after finishing one of the best seasons a Bengals running back ever had.
Chase Brown, toweling off Thursday's sauna, knows the general offseason to-do-list.
"Keep on hammering down my pass game stuff," Brown says. "More YAC. Little things that I think turn into the big picture when they all come together.
"The overall quality is a lot better than what I put out there last year. More consistent. I think the only thing I didn't like was the slow start. We'll figure out a way to get better."
This is what you do after catching 69 passes, most ever by a Bengals running back. Until he returns to Paycor Stadium in mid-April for the Bengals' voluntary spring workouts, Brown's sounding board is his offseason coach Drew Lieberman, and he knows there'll be a meeting before he heads to work with him in Atlanta in late February.
"We try to watch all the film. I'll have it all broken down," Lieberman says. "He dropped something like five or six balls this year. We'll watch all the drops and figure out, is there a common theme among these? So if we fix one thing, it will eliminate three drops. Or in his runs where we don't feel like he read the hole correctly, is there a common theme we can find among all those runs that will help fix the whole batch of them?"
This is what you do when you have your first 1,000-yard rushing season to go with 1,456 scrimmage yards. That's the eighth most by a Bengals back in the last 25 years on a star-studded list topped by Bengals Ring of Honor member Corey Dillon's three seasons in the top eight, where there are two appearances each by Bengals single-season rushing leader Rudi Johnson and Super Bowl back Joe Mixon.
"I think he could have been a little bit more consistent in his approach to start the season this year," Lieberman says. "Just finding ways to replicate what he's done in the second half of the year now twice in a row, and put a whole season together. Some of that is out of his control, but the things that are in his control, just try and tighten those things up. He's had two great seasons because he's worked hard and now you go back and go for another one."
Brown agrees. He'll spend the offseason trying to bottle those 5.1 yards per carry in the last 13 games.
"You can never get too many catches. You can never work the fundamentals enough," Brown says. "There's always things you can fine-tune and attack, and eventually they turn out pretty well."
No surprise he had 69 catches after 54 last year.
"No, a lot of checkdowns," Brown says. "But I left a few out there."
Still, he had the fifth most catches by an NFL back, a list topped by Christian McCaffrey's 102. Runner-up Bijan Robinson is in the neighborhood with 79, followed quickly by Jahmyr Gibbs' 77, Kenneth Gainwell's 73, and Brown's 69.
80 catches?
"That's attainable," Brown says.
This is what you do after a season you had more yards from scrimmage than Saquon Barkley, D'Andre Swift, and Josh Jacobs and you're on a top five list with McCaffrey.
"I do think I have to do more to be mentioned with those guys, but I think I'm on the right track," Brown says. "I think people watch my tape and when they say my name, they respect what I do. That's good enough for me."
But not good enough to stay home from Atlanta.
"Drew and I will meet," Brown says. "And we'll figure it out."
