The Bengals were on the field for day 3 of training camp on Friday. We got some good news at the start of practice, as Tee Higgins and Myles Murphy were both back, after leaving yesterday’s session. Murphy was back with the first team defence.
Unfortunately, there was some bad news on the injury front. Lucas Patrick left early with the trainer after he got hurt on a run play during 11 on 11’s. Possibly a calf injury.
There was a lot of redzone work today, with the offence having the upper edge. Burrow found Higgins on one play, and Chase, who made a one handed catch, on another. Jermaine Burton also caught a TD from Jake Browning, as he beat Nate Brooks in coverage. A positive play for the defence was Geno Stone dislodging one that was intended for Chase Brown.
The TD wasn’t the only play that Burton made. He caught several passes, and most of them were from Burrow. You can see that his routes are very crisp, and he has been putting in the work. It is early, and these practices have been padless thus far, but he has been performing very well. One negative was that after one of his TD catches, he flipped the ball into the face of Tycen Anderson. Obviously, this would be a penalty in a game scenario, and there are still some growing pains when it comes to the maturity issues that we have seen in the past. But there have been a lot more positives than negatives up to this point.
Isaiah Williams was another one who had a good day. He caught a couple of passes from Burrow that went for some solid gains, and one for a TD. Williams contributed in the return game for the Bengals last season, and flashes offensively in camp can help him secure a spot for this coming season.
On the OL, Dylan Fairchild had a couple of nice plays in the run game, showing off some good athleticism to get to the second level and stack a couple of blocks. Hopefully he can keep it up once the pads come on.
In addition to redzone, the Bengals also did some special teams work. They spent some time practicing kickoffs, in what will be the second season with the new kickoff rules and formation. Then, at the end of practice, Evan McPherson hit a 52 yarder to conclude the day.
