Cincinnati Bengals head coach Zac Taylor speaks at Cincinnati Bengals training camp on the Kettering Health Practice Fields in Cincinnati on Sunday, Aug. 4, 2024. Albert Cesare/The Enquirer / USA TODAY NETWORK

Zac Taylor Gives Perspective on Training Camp Scuffles

Originally posted on Cincinnati Bengals on SI
By Russell Heltman | Last updated Aug 8, 2024 2:54 PM ET

Zac Taylor gave his thoughts on the heated (literally and figuratively) Wednesday practice that saw multiple scuffles break out between the Bengals offense and defense.

Cincinnati has a game arriving on the schedule at the perfect time.

"I think our guys are playing with an edge," the Bengals head coach said. "They're competitive. And all those issues were really with our ones versus our ones and they're tired of each other. And they're getting to the point where it's let's start tackling and being a little more physical and so again, I like the edge that our team has right now like that they're protecting each other. Offense versus defense. I want more protection, obviously, as a team, and we're gonna get to that we're through this training camp phase really. I think we have five practices by ourselves, you know, until final cuts come because we've got these games, we got the joint practices. So we're at that point now where it's good to go play Tampa Bay and I think our team is in a really good position right now."

Ted Karras stood in defense of his offensive teammates a few times as Taylor liked seeing the fire from his team to an extent, especially when no one gets injured in the acts.

We just can't afford to lose anybody. It's football, man, it's competitive. You feel like something happened to you. And so I'm going to do this. Then you watch the tape, and everything's always just a little bit different than how maybe you remember or how you thought you saw it happen live. I hadn't really addressed it (fighting in a team setting) because it hadn't come up yet. I was waiting for it to come up. I knew it come up at some point. It came up yesterday, and I think our guys responded the right way, and I expect us to move forward and practice as normal."

Cincinnati battles Tampa Bay on Saturday night at 7 p.m. ET inside Paycor Stadium.

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