Joe Burrow leads great offensive training: 2021 Bengals training camp

Bengals fans heard nothing except how the offense struggled for an entire week. Well, some fans attended practice on Saturday only to see the exact opposite.

Joe Burrow, in his third padded training session, has had his best day of training camp so far. It came just hours after expressing personal frustration to members of the media over the struggles of the past week.

The main problem Burrow talked about was starting to feel the pass rush again and working the pocket. There is obviously no real threat of a pass rush during practice since defenders can’t touch Burrow, but the feeling of a condensed pocket is something the young quarterback has said he does. was getting used to it again.

For this reason, the trainers have tried to give Burrow a safe throwing experience in the middle of traffic, even if that literally means standing next to him during exercises.

But Saturday would have been unlike anything the Bengals have seen of No.9 and the offense this month. With the pre-engagement checks and audible signals now implemented in the 11 of 11 job, the unit clicked on all cylinders. The high school was downright fantastic, but today they forced just one failure as Burrow completed nine of his 10 passes for 71 yards and a touchdown, as AllBengals’ James Rapien reported. com.

Ja’Marr Chase’s 16-yard, according to Cincinnati.com’s Charlie Goldsmith, came on a third and long and featured tiptoe action on the sidelines.

As for Higgins’ take, well, it was spectacular. And he came in fourth.

I will say this. Every season there is at least one Bengals wide receiver who has a fantastic training camp. I remember that in 2019 it was Damion Willis. The hype for Willis ended up being too huge for him to handle, and it quickly faded a few weeks into the regular season.

It’s a dangerous game to exaggerate receivers in August. The difference here is that Higgins is a legitimate talent who was already a very good entering player this month. It looks and behaves like a real WR1.

It was simply a record breaking day for the offense, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. Putting on a productive show for the impatient fans must feel good for Zac Taylor and Co.

Burrow and his receivers garnered the most attention during a week in camp, but the running backs were also impressive despite the struggles surrounding them. Joe Mixon looks like the 2018 version of himself when he has passed all the AFC rushers, and rookie Chris Evans looks like a capable replacement for Giovani Bernard out of the backfield.

Evans’ pass-detecting abilities were a pleasure to hear and see during camp.

Up front, we understood why Michael Jordan, and not Quinton Spain, took the majority of the first team representatives to the left guard. Spain are facing a minor injury.

Coincidentally, it was also Spain’s 30th birthday on Saturday, and rookie goalkeeper Jackson Carman presented him with a cake at Spain’s request.

Spain are not expected to heal the injury for long, and the Bengals have tried a new face to the left guard. Rookie D’Ante Smith, who recently gained reps in left and right tackle, was playing a left guard on Saturday.

Smith, the team’s third fourth-round pick in this year’s NFL Draft, only played one game last season for East Carolina. If any of the recruits in this class need reps for the sake of needing reps, it’s probably Smith. And the more positions he trains, the more likely it is that coaches will deem him valuable enough to be one of the 46 active players on match days.

In other rookie news, Joseph Ossai looked like an imposing 21-year-old passer. This youngster may have gotten the better of him towards the end of practice when he made contact with Burrow at the end of his rehearsal. Ossai didn’t attack Burrow or anything, but touching the quarterback under any circumstances can be seen as a deadly sin.

Burrow was not injured, but it looks like linebacker Markus Bailey did earlier in practice. Bailey was taken off the field for some reason, but Taylor made it clear after practice that Bailey was dehydrated and doing fine.

Cincinnati has been largely blessed with injury luck as they enter the second week of August. And by recognizing that it can be considered a jinx, the rules of the universe will prevent it from acting like a real jinx. We hope.

The team’s working weekend continues tomorrow with another practice open to a limited number of fans.