Press conferences: They’re either the most important thing in the world or something to be entirely ignored, depending on if they validate how you already felt or not. Nonetheless, they are an important window into an NFL organization. Much as the eye in the sky don’t lie about players, coaches can’t cover up every emotion or lean they have when they’re asked questions. In omission, or in tone, even someone as tight-lipped as Bill Belichick or Nick Caserio can give something away. And that’s what this column scans for.
Let’s look at some of the trickiest situations for Week 6 lineups.
Yes, I think Jonathan Taylor will probably play in Week 6
OK, I typed out the conclusion. Now let’s back it up. Frank Reich, speak some words for us:
Reich on game plan with/without Taylor pic.twitter.com/vApjTzIpIY
— rivers mccown (alt) (@mccownclips) October 14, 2022
So there aren’t two different versions of the game plan, but if Taylor plays he’ll be a workhorse, but then otherwise ... “we’ll manage that.” One of those plans sure sounds a lot more developed to me than the other. It’s the one where Taylor plays and is a workhorse, FYI. The other big clue that I read into is Taylor giving a long media availability at his locker on Friday before practice, which is something you don’t usually get when someone is thinking about sitting. Here’s what he said about managing the injury:
Taylor about practice management Week 6 pic.twitter.com/F5exYfPJ9Z
— rivers mccown (alt) (@mccownclips) October 14, 2022
The fact that Taylor is scoping out a practice plan so that Sunday he’s able to get back out there tells me he’s definitely envisioning playing.
There are no certainties in this situation -- it’s a pain tolerance thing -- but this is an AFC South game and all the quotes lead me to believe that Taylor will be active and he’ll be playing through the injury. Which I think means you’ve got almost no choice but to start him on volume alone.
Tee Higgins? That’s an ankle I’m less certain about
Higgins left Sunday Night Football because his ankle didn’t feel right. Zac Taylor is one of those coaches who does the Friday presser without cameras, but the updates didn’t sound particularly encouraging on Higgins.
Bengals coach Zac Taylor: "Day to day" on Tee Higgins, not sure if he plays, "very encouraged" about Jonah Williams
— Michael Niziolek (@michaelniziolek) October 14, 2022
This is the sin of omission -- the fact that in the same breath that Taylor was optimistic about Jonah Williams but not about Higgins should set some alarm bells off. Higgins, unlIke Taylor, did not do any local media presser this week. What we have on the optimistic side is that Higgins doesn’t necessarily need to practice to play -- he barely practiced last week either -- but that led us directly to the situation we faced last week when everyone assumed that Higgins would be fine to play through it because he played through it after suffering the injury on Thursday Night Football. Taylor re-affirmed that Higgins could play without practicing in his Thursday presser:
Zac Taylor Tee Higgins can play without practicing pic.twitter.com/nrrQSjXSbF
— rivers mccown (alt) (@mccownclips) October 14, 2022
Still, the fact that Taylor wasn’t excited -- he was more affirmative last week about Higgins -- has me thinking he’s more on the pessimistic side of questionable. Higgins face-diving out of the plan this week wouldn’t be quite as devastating as it was on Sunday night when it came without any real warning, but after re-aggravating it in game I would probably break ties against using Higgins unless we get some extremely cheerful sounding updates on Sunday morning.
The extremely normal Cam Akers noise that can’t be dismissed
I tried to warn you in Week 3 that what was said about Akers was not normal, did I not? Sean McVay said that urgency was needed from the back after Week 1. And now Akers is the subject of today’s most bizarre rule-out, a personal tag that was explained like this:
Sean McVay Akers pre-amble and question answering pic.twitter.com/2JI91NBMTg
— rivers mccown (alt) (@mccownclips) October 14, 2022
This is not quite as impactful as even the pure transcript because the Rams announcers aren’t all that audible. But this, from Jourdan Rodrigue’s story, popped out at me particularly: “I would say it’s more like we’re dealing with things internally. I don’t know, exactly…these are kind of uncharted territories.” Rodrigue closed the piece by writing “Because McVay was non-committal about Akers’ future status with the team, it’s not out of the question to expect some sort of transaction in the coming days.”
It’d be irresponsible to speculate on what’s going on, but let’s talk about what it means for you. Yes, I know that Darrell Henderson is gone in your league in all likelihood. The other thing you need to do is pick up Malcolm Brown. Henderson is not necessarily locked in to a bellcow role just because Akers is gone. Brown is a favorite of the coaching staff and they talked him up plenty after bringing him on board. Dynasty leaguers should note that Akers potentially leaving is a big boost to the status of currently IR’ed back Kyren Williams as well.