Bengals defensive end Sam Hubbard said he voted Thursday to practice on the grass fields outside because Sunday’s AFC title game (6:30 p.m.-Cincinnati’s Local 12) against the Chiefs is on the grass of Kansas City’s Arrowhead Stadium.
It sounded like it wasn’t unanimous, but a couple of key guys carried the day.
Even though Bengals wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase had roamed through last Sunday’s flakes in his first snow game as if he had been born at the North Pole (he scored the game’s first touchdown and led the team with 61 receiving yards), he admitted he wanted nothing to do with Thursday’s 34-degree day.
“The cold? Hell no,” said Chase, the Louisiana native, after Thursday’s practice, still bundled in a hooded sweat shirt under his No. 1 jersey. “Once I got drafted here I had no choice but to be ready for the cold. We practiced outside today, actually. I’d rather be inside, but if the quarterback says we need to be outside, we’ve got to outside. So that’s what it is.”
It is, as they say, what it is.
“I wanted to practice outside,” said head coach Zac Taylor, “so we were outside today.
“Not quite as cold as it’s going to be, but it’s the last day outside for us. Players had a good attitude about it and we had a good practice.”
The expected temperature for Sunday’s kickoff keeps inching up, but there is an overnight low of 12 degrees predicted. The coldest game in the Burrow Era is the 17-degree Christmas Eve win in New England.
Taylor is a creature of habit. Ever since the Bengals opened the IEL Indoor Facility the first week of November, the Bengals haven’t lost practicing indoors every Friday. He’s following last week’s routine, working on the Paycor Stadium turf Wednesday, going across the street to the grass fields Thursday and finishing up the week’s work inside Friday.
Plus, they use the indoor every day for their pre-practice walk-throughs.
“(The indoor facility) has been great,” Taylor said. “The really big difference is just the walk-throughs. We do so much work…
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