{"id":857523,"date":"2026-08-16T17:24:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-16T17:24:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/857523\/"},"modified":"2026-08-16T17:24:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-16T17:24:11","slug":"zac-taylor-defends-orlando-brown-jr-after-rough-preseason-opener","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/857523\/","title":{"rendered":"Zac Taylor defends Orlando Brown Jr. after rough preseason opener"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The reality of playing a franchise quarterback in the preseason entails the risk of the quarterback getting hit.<\/p>\n<p>On Thursday night, Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow got hit after left tackle Orlando Brown Jr. was <a class=\"Link\" href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/JoeGoodberry\/status\/2088046027035013586?s=20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">beaten around the edge<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Meeting with reporters on Saturday, Bengals coach Zac Taylor defended Brown, who\u2019s entering the final year of a four-year, $64 million deal that he signed in 2023.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think he\u2019s motivated to give us the <a class=\"Link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.si.com\/nfl\/bengals\/onsi\/zac-taylor-takes-stance-on-orlando-brown-jr-after-bengals-preseason-loss-01m03vf0rvby\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">best version of himself<\/a>,\u201d Taylor said, via Zach Pressnell of SI.com. \u201cHe\u2019s been a strong leader on this team. And I think anytime something doesn\u2019t go perfectly, he wears it and takes ownership for it. I think anytime Joe gets hit, all those guys are trying to figure out what they can do better. And we all are. None of us want to be in that position. And there\u2019s things that we can always do to help those guys work.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Preseason or regular season, Burrow\u2019s ability to play every game is critical to the Bengals\u2019 prospects. They\u2019ve missed the playoffs for the last three seasons. If the streak runs to four, things could get very dicey for Taylor in Cincinnati.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The reality of playing a franchise quarterback in the preseason entails the risk of the quarterback getting hit.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":857524,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[559],"tags":[64,63,593,85],"class_list":["post-857523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/857523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=857523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/857523\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/857524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=857523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=857523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=857523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}