CINCINNATI — The last thing the Bengals’ offense needs right now is for its most explosive weapon to be sidelined with an illness.
That’s why Zac Taylor sent Ja’Marr Chase home after walkthrough Friday to get some extra rest and be ready to go when the team needs him Sunday after reporting feeling under the weather on Thursday night. Chase leads the Bengals in receptions (32) and yards (374) and touchdowns (3). While the offense has struggled badly to open the season, Chase has been one of the more reliable pieces of the unit.
With the change to Joe Flacco this Sunday in Green Bay, it will be interesting to see if Chase and Tee Higgins are targeted more downfield earlier, like on first and second down. Chase Brown is also another weapon that has yet to truly activate this season, with just 160 yards in 65 carries for a 2.5 yards per carry average. His most explosive run is for 11 yards and he has just one touchdown, and that was on the season-opening drive in Cleveland.
Critical to pass protection and the run game is the situation at left guard. Rookie Dylan Fairchild tweaked his knee last week against Detroit. He didn’t practice all week, despite dressing in uniform and going through mental reps at practice.
Filling in at left guard will likely be Dalton Risner, who came to the Bengals before the season opener and filled in for Lucas Patrick at right guard, when Patrick went down with a calf strain. Patrick went on the injured reserve after the game and Risner started for Patrick in Weeks 2 and 3. But then Risner also went down in the the second half at Minnesota with a calf issue and rookie Jalen Rivers took over and then started the last two games at right guard.
The team has liked what they’ve seen from Rivers at right guard so now, with Risner back and Patrick practicing again, there are options at left guard with Dylan Fairchild, who is questionable this week in Green Bay, nursing his sore knee. While Fairchild is officially listed as questionable, it’s more likely the team gives the rookie more time to heal. As a matter of fact, it’s not out of the question that Fairchild gets this week and the game against the Steelers off to try and come back full strength against the Jets on Oct. 26.
While the team opened the 21-day window for Patrick to practice this week, he still remains on IR.
“(He’s) very close,” Taylor said Friday. “It’s just timing on getting him back on the roster. He’s been in great shape. I think it’s good to just let him get some physical practices in. I know next week is a little wonky, too, with no physical practices. But I think every day will be helpful for him. But he’s in a good place where I expect him back shortly.”
The news is also promising on defensive end Shemar Stewart, who turned his ankle against Jacksonville and hasn’t returned. He did not go on the injured list, with the team hoping he would only miss a couple of weeks.
“It’s good to get him back on the field this week to see where it’s at,” Taylor said. “He’ll be doubtful for the game. We’ll see where it ends up on Sunday. But it was good to get him out there physically going. I thought every day he looked better.”
If he misses this week, it’ll be his fourth straight game out of action.
Cleaning up the notebook:
“Yeah, very intelligent. It’s not overwhelming for him,” Taylor said. “Maybe it is, but he does a great job of not showing that and steadying on his own and coming back and being ready to roll. So I’ve been very pleased with what I’ve seen. You feel like you can go win a game with the information that he has about our offense and how to operate. It’s not going to be perfect. There will be some challenges, I’m sure. But he’s done a great job getting himself up to speed and other coaches helping him, players helping him. Ted’s done a great job. Protections, cadence, all that kind of stuff.”
“Well, I mean, not necessarily like formationally, but like, some of the concepts are the same from what I just came from,” Flacco said. “And even if they’re not the same, they’re almost called the same thing, or they’re at least ran the same way. So, I think in terms of that, it is very similar to the offense that I’ve been in in Cleveland for a little bit of the past three years. You go back to when I was in New York with the Jets, and Mike LaFleur was calling games, it’s similar to that, too.”
Mike LaFluer is the offensive coordinator of the Los Angeles Rams and the younger brother of Packers head coach Matt LaFleur.
Nearly everyone on the Bengals offense has expressed a desire to help out the defense, which held its own against Denver on the road and kept the high-powered Lions in check for most of the game last week. Cincinnati was still in the game at the half, trailing only 14-3. Al Golden believes progress is being made but they are striving for their first complete game of the season.
“I think we are making progress in many ways,” Golden said. “We are on an endless pursuit of a complete game from that standpoint. If I was going to start with the negatives, our team needs more takeaways right now. Our team needs more takeaways. Six is OK, it’s OK, but not what our team requires right now. We need to get some caused fumbles. We missed some opportunities on some sacks to dislodge the ball. If we get opportunities for interceptions we got to convert on those. That would be No. 1. No. 2, unforced errors. Opening drive two missed tackles and a bad coverage kind of lead them to explosive plays and move the ball down the field. We have to eliminate some of that.
“There’s a lot of little things we’ve talked about internally that I don’t think is going to help you characterize it accordingly, but we are working on them internally. Positive, we are better against the run. We let an 18 or 19-yarder out the back door, which we can’t have happen. We lost leverage in the B gap and on the perimeter. We have to continue to be good and get people into passing downs. We were able to get a team that just does not want to be in passing downs into some passing downs. We were able to get some sacks because of that. If you don’t earn the right on early downs it is really hard to do that. It hasn’t been perfect but we are resilient, we are tough, we hit sudden change. We had two sudden change stops and we really need to be a little bit better in some of those because we need another stop along the way, whether that is in the red zone or right when we go out there.”
