Tee Higgins Watching Tom Brady’s Receivers; Joseph Ossai’s Full Circle

With Bengals wide receiver Tee Higgins saying he expects “to be out there,” Sunday (4:25 p.m.-Cincinnati’s Local 12) in Tampa Bay after missing all but the first snap last week with a hamstring issue, you can wheel out that Joe Burrow stat.

With both Higgins, the Bengals leading receiver with 861 yards, and wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase, leading the Bengals with 64 catches, the Bengals are 5-1 and Burrow hasn’t thrown an interception while throwing 14 touchdowns for a 120 passer rating. Without Chase or Higgins, they are 4-3 and Burrow has thrown his nine interceptions with 13 touchdowns for an 87.9 passer rating.

And Higgins only took the first snap against the Browns because he made sure head coach Zac Taylor didn’t see him take the field for what amounted to his 39th NFL start.

“I was sneaky when I was younger. I had to pull it out again,” Higgins said after he went full in Friday’s practice at the IEL Indoor Facility.

They made him questionable for Sunday, just like they did slot receiver Tyler Boyd even though he went full Friday for the first time since he departed with a dislocated finger on last week’s second play. Both have indicated they’ll play and head coach Zac Taylor said after Friday’s workout that he “feels good,’ about them for Sunday.

“In practice you want to be cautious, you don’t want to open it up too much,” Higgins said. “But in a game, you just have go out and play and if it happens, happens.”

Higgins says it happened to the same hamstring he blew out in the finale of his rookie year two years ago. He had been battling a hamstring issue for the last month of that season and on the first series he had to leave after his 41-yard catch-and-run was wiped out by penalty.

This time around they played it safe after Higgins said the hamstring didn’t feel right when he ran a certain route in Sunday’s pregame warmups and it kept not responding. But he says he’s go after a full week of therapy and treatment.

It is not lost on Higgins that this is a game full…