Zac Taylor Notes Positive Bengals Injury Outlook, Reasoning For Right Guard Selection Entering Week 1 Matchup

 Zac Taylor gave his first weekly press conference of the 2025 regular season on Wednesday. He noted a great injury environment for Cincinnati entering game week practices, with Taylor stating he doesn't expect any notable players to be limited on Wednesday.

He also dove into the right guard battle that so far has Lucas Patrick as the winner after Dalton Risner just arrived last week. Taylor gave reasoning for rolling with Patrick, at least for this week, despite him being up and down in the preseason (52.2 Pro Football Focus grade against Philadelphia, 70.2 PFF grade against Washington).

"I like his experience," The Bengals head coach said. "I like how he's interacted with the other linemen. I've got a lot of confidence in him. He showed me what I needed to see, so I'm excited for him."

The Bengals' head coach had a nice smile on his face when discussing the 2025 path to the regular season that has resulted in less off-the-field turmoil entering this campaign than in years past.

"Yeah, I'm excited about where our team's at," Taylor said. "I think we got all the work done we need to get done. Put together three great days of practice, clean it up on Saturday, and get ready to go ... It's a really focused team right now. There's an urgency that's ramped up, and I'm excited as I see that and anticipate, feeling it in practice and get these guys ready to go, get themselves ready to go, coaches ready to go. So it's upon us now, and we're excited about it. You can see urgency."

It all gets rolling at 1 p.m. on Sunday afternoon in a road matchup against the Browns.