CINCINNATI – Playing starters in the preseason has been a Cincinnati Bengals offseason topic of conversation for years.
Injuries to quarterback Joe Burrow combined with a philosophical belief that the risk outweighs the rewards has resulted in Bengals head coach Zac Taylor giving his starters, especially on offense, fewer preseason snaps that nearly every other team.
Burrow voicing that he would like to play more coupled with the team’s 1-9 record in Weeks 1-2 since his arrival – and 1-11 since Taylor arrived – are sparking conversations about change.
There have been discussions about playing the starters more in the preseason in the past, and then there have been pivots away from it actually happening.
But a season-opening, playoff-costing loss to a dismal New England Patriots team coupled with a currently healthy Burrow have Taylor more publicly committing to giving the starters more snaps this August.
With a caveat, of course.
“I think the one thing I do feel good about is playing our guys won the preseason,” he said Tuesday following practice.
“That's always subject to change, depending on health and how things go with our team during training camp,” he added. “But that's one thing that we've openly talked about with our players, and I think will help us as we do it and so they know that we've talked about that, and we'll go from there.”
Burrow has played a total of three preseason snaps in his career – two handoffs and a screen pass to Ja’Marr Chase in the 2021 finale.
Ben Roethlisberger has more than five times as many preseason snaps at Burrow from 2021-24, and he retired after 2021.
Here are the 2021-24 preseason snap totals, per SportRadar, for all the quarterbacks who have started a conference championship game since 2020:
Brock Purdy 160
Patrick Mahomes 132
Josh Allen 68
Jimmy Garoppolo 47
Tom Brady 35
Jared Goff 32
Jalen Hurts 18
Jayden Daniels 18
Aaron Rodgers 10
Lamar Jackson 10
Joe Burrow 3
Matthew Stafford 0
“I think playing in preseason games will help,” Burrow said Tuesday during his first news conference since minutes after the season-ending victory against the Pittsburgh Steelers on Jan. 4.
“We haven't had those discussions yet, but based on the little that we have, I imagine we'll be playing more,” added. “And I think that'll help. But we'll see. I think at the end of the day, we just have to take some ownership and come out of the gates and execute and play better.”
To counteract the lack of preseason snaps, Taylor has embraced joint practices, where the starters get a lot of good-on-good reps against another team’s starters.
But it’s still a step or two below live game action.
Another reason to believe the Cincinnati starters will see more time under the lights this preseason is that Taylor said he’s not anticipating any joint practices this year ahead of the team’s preseason games at Philadelphia and Washington and at home against Indianapolis.
Taylor said there is more to putting the sloth-like starters behind them beyond just playing starters in the preseason, but he didn’t want to get into specifics.
“We talked about as a team what that actually means, not just saying the term ‘fast start,’” he said. “I won't get into it all here. Some of the stuff we'll just keep for our team meetings. But I do think you’ve got to be specific with what our approach will be going forward, training camp, season, some things that we've identified that we think we can prove that in ways to start the season off on the right foot.”
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