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Bengals player personnel director Duke Tobin said Wednesday that Mixon will act as the team's lead runner in 2018 and will be relied upon heavily, Katherine Terrell of ESPN.com reports. "Joe really came on for us in the later part of the [past] year, second half of the season. He's going to be our bell-cow running back," Tobin said. "We are going to combine him with [Giovani Bernard] and we really feel good about that position group."
As a second-round rookie out of Oklahoma, Mixon saw lighter usage behind starter Jeremy Hill (ankle) during the Bengals' first two games before effectively emerging as the top back on the depth chart for the bulk of the campaign. Though he battled an ankle injury over the final quarter of the season and yielded more work to Bernard as a result, Mixon evidently made enough of an impression over his 14 games to earn the clear No. 1 role heading into 2018. In order to maintain the bell-cow role for the balance of the season and limit Bernard to change-of-pace work, however, Mixon will likely need to display more efficiency than he did during his first year in the NFL. Mixon's 3.5 yards per carry last season was the third-worst mark in the league for players who toted the ball at least 170 times, ahead of only Carolina's Jonathan Stewart (3.4) and Washington's Samaje Perine (3.4).
