Will Joe Flacco Play Sunday For Cincinnati Bengals vs Chicago Bears!?! | NFL News, Updates, Rumors

Will Joe Flacco Play Sunday For Cincinnati Bengals vs Chicago Bears!?! | NFL News, Updates, Rumors

Hello and welcome in to Chatterbox Bengals. Reed Mouse joining along here with Craig Sandlin. Uh some dreary news here on a dreary day in Southwest Ohio as uh we found out that Joe Flacco’s injury is probably a little further along or a little greater than uh us fans were hoping for. And it is, as Zack Taylor put it, 5050 that he plays this Sunday against the Chicago Bears. Craig, I bring you in here. Uh Joe Flacco has looked marvelous in his two and a half or three games, I guess I should say, uh playing for the Cincinnati Bengals. Uh how important is it, or do you think he’ll play? And how important is it do you that he does play this Sunday? Well, I mean, you look at the fact that he was able to come back in the game this past Sunday against the New York Jets, and you have to assume that that’s a good sign for his for this coming injury after coming back into the game. That was an injury that he battled through for the fourth quarter there. Um, so I do I do think that the odds are pretty good that he’s probably going to play. This is a a quarterback now and, you know, he’s 40 years old. He’s not going to get to do this a whole lot longer. He’s going to take every opportunity he can. The other piece of it is that even if it’s not 100%, he’s got the by-week after this game coming up that he can take advantage of and try to heal up and and get back to 100% before coming back for the Steelers game, too. So, uh, my guess is that he’ll probably play. I understand the 5050 comment from Zack. You have to wonder how much of this is similar to the Aaron Glenn conversation that we had a week and a half ago where it’s a little bit of uh cat and mouse game of will Terrod Taylor play, will Justin Fields play, will Joe Flacco play, will Jake Browning play? I don’t know. I’m not going to tell you. Yeah. The most the most pessimistic comment that has been made about this whole situation is 5050. Uh, from what we’ve heard is that Joe wants to play. From what we heard from Dan Pitcher, he’s optimistic that that Joe Flacco plays. How much of this do you think it is just smoke and mirrors? Just Zack just um if you have an opportunity to get a little bit of an edge to uh, you know, create a little bit of a smoke screen to take a little bit of time in preparation for the Bears preparing for Joe Flacco and now they have to prepare for Jake Browning. How much of it do you think that is? Do you think it’s just smoke and mirrors? I think there’s probably some of it, but he didn’t practice today, so there’s got to be some validity to the injury versus what we saw with the Jets where Terrod Taylor was practicing in a limited capacity every day. Uh, that felt a little bit more so smokes and mirrors than this. But, um, I I think it’s a legitimate injury. I mean, we saw him go into the into the locker room during the game, and there were concerns that Jake Browning might have to lead the game-winning drive, and obviously Joe Flacco wasn’t able to lead the the game-winning drive either. But the last couple drives of the game, he still looked fine. Uh, still made some throws that were very catchable that could have or should have uh converted first downs and and made plays. So, I’m not overly concerned about that. Um, but the question obviously is, okay, well, he’s relied a lot on on Jamar Chase. Uh, there’s been some questions about his usage of T. Higgins. There’s been some questions about Andre Yoshas’s ability to get on the same page as Joe Flacco. So, how much is this missed time during practice going to affect those connections and connections that we hope to see continue to improve versus throwing to Jamar Chase 20 times a game, which as a Jamar Chase fantasy owner, I’m not opposed to, but as a fan of the Cincinnati Bengals, you’d certainly like to see a little bit more diversity and uh certainly get some of these other receivers involved to take not only the pressure off of Jamar, but maybe get the monkey off of those receivers back and and give Joe Flack a little bit more confidence to be able to throw to them, too. Yeah, there’s there’s actually been some conversation about, you know, diving up the ball amongst these skilled players. And I’ll say this, from the moment that we saw the the chemistry start to click between Joe Flacco and Jamar Chase the last what 10 quarters that they’ve played, it’s been pretty successful. I mean, I know they didn’t win on Sunday, but they put 30 38 points, so I’m not too worried about this. So, let me ask you this question, though. If Joe Flacco is banged up, do you think that’s a better option than a fully healthy Jake Browning? Well, it’s interesting. I mean, because Zack Taylor went on the record today to say that he feels like you would have a different outcome with with Jake Browning than what you had during the three-game stretch with him at the helm earlier this season. You know, they talked about his professionalism and coming to work every day and and being ready to go. The truth of the matter is is that Joe Flacco is an extremely veteran quarterback. He has clearly made this team better and I’ve talked about it extensively, Reed. You’re starting to see the running game come together now. You’re starting to see the offensive line perform better and I’m a firm believer that that all starts with with with uh with Joe Flacco behind center and the fact that he’s seeing things differently. he’s setting up protections differently and he brings a different uh threat behind the line of scrimmage than what Jake Browning did. And so yeah, I think a banged up Joe Flacco is probably still a better option than Jake Browning. Um but to Zack Taylor’s point, you got to make sure that Jake Browning’s ready to go because if Joe Flacco isn’t able to, the last thing you want to do is have a backup quarterback who hasn’t had first team reps all week have to try and step in. um especially when his confidence is probably at an all-time low. That’s not a good look in what is essentially a must-win game. Yeah, there’s no doubt about it. A must-win is absolutely where you are. um going into the by-week. Uh it it’s it’s interesting because Joe Flacco in his really throughout his entire career, but especially in his uh 40s now, he’s kind of uh for lack of a he does one thing really well, and that is he’s got a lot of zip on the ball and he reads defenses, right? Like he’s he’s he’s a veteran. He knows how to to pick apart these. But you got to ask the question, what happens if that zip comes a little bit off, right? Because it is this throwing shoulder. What happens if there’s a little bit less on that on that ball? He’s he’s a great thrower of the football. What happens if that trait of his the trait that is allowing him to still be successful in the league? What happens if you take that back? Now, I think we all could agree that when we watch Jake Browning play, we’re not sure what he was doing well because the correct answer was he wasn’t doing anything well. He wasn’t he wasn’t reading defenses well. He wasn’t escaping things well. He wasn’t doing anything well and he certainly has no zip. So, I’m with you that probably a banged up Joe Flacco is still a better option than uh a fully healthy Jake Browning. And I’m with you in the everything you’re reading is that he is going to play. He says he wants to play. Dan Pitcher says he he thinks he’s going to play. Um so, let me ask you this now. He’s going to be a little banged up regardless if he plays or not. Do you think that they have a different style offense with Joe being in the capacity that he’d be in? Well, I it’s a good question. I mean, certainly you’ll have to see how he feels. Um, and one of the things that he his reporting this morning when the injury news really first started to break was that one of the quote unquote issues here is that because Joe Flacco’s only been with the Bengals for three weeks, they don’t really know what he can do on limited reps, right? And so they have to try and figure out with Joe and with this team exactly how he’s going to respond to these limited reps throughout the week. But I mean, you still are going into a game now where you’re facing a Chicago Bears team who offensively has been uh much better than in years past, I guess, is is what I’ll say. Um, you know, he’s uh he’s he’s they’re they’re offensively performing uh at a much better level than than what they had in in years past. And so there’s there’s that piece to it. But defensively against the Rush, they’ve been not very good. They’re allowing 143 yards on the ground per game this year versus being 13th in the NFL with 207 yards allowed through the air. And so it was a game where it was already probably lining up to try and take advantage of the improvements that we’ve seen in this running game uh with Sam Perine and Chase Brown uh taking a bulk of that. But the truth of the matter is is that Zack Taylor and the Bengals, regardless of any preconceived notion you may have about games, has never really leaned on the running game uh in terms of their offensive game plan. And so it’s hard for me to sit here and say, will they change it much? Because we can we sit here every week and we talk about the matchups and different things and there are certain weeks where the matchups are very clearly positive towards the running game. There are some where it’s very clearly towards the the passing game. There’s some weeks where they don’t have an advantage at all, and that’s to be expected in the NFL, too. But this week, the very clear, especially the way things have been going offensively for the Bengals, the very clear opportunity in my eyes is in the running game anyway. And so, yeah, maybe you’re not seeing deep balls from Joe Flacco, but we haven’t really seen a whole lot of that anyway. We saw him connect with T. Higgins for the 44 yard touchdown uh this past weekend, but we haven’t seen a ton of those deep balls from Joe Flacco. Uh it’s been a lot of easy reads. Get the ball in your playmakaker’s hands, specifically Jamar Chase, and let them take advantage of uh one-on-one matchups and see what they can do in open space. So, with that being said, I don’t know that a whole lot really changes with what they’ve been trying to do with Joe Flacco over the last several weeks, uh versus what they would do with him with an injured shoulder. I mean, as long as he can throw the ball 15 to 20 yards downfield, I think he’ll be perfectly fine and continue to execute the game plan that they’ve been able to execute for the last three weeks with him. Yeah, I think I’m with you. I don’t I don’t think too much has to I don’t think you have to overhaul anything even with a banged up Joe Flack. And I’ll give I know there was a lot made about the final two drives from the game on uh Sunday, but the last two games are two of the better games I’ve thought Zack Taylor has called in his tenure. Like I’ve saw some really intriguing plays. I saw um and some very simple ones, too, but I think they were executing uh a simple yet uh strategic plan uh several times throughout the the last two games. So, it’ll be intriguing to uh to see what they do this Sunday. And I’ll say this about this Sunday’s game. You called it a must-win. It pretty clearly is a must-win. You can’t fall to three and six and expect to do anything this season. Is when the Bengals were two and four and we were staring directly at this three-game home stand. Every single one of us would have said, “You go two and one, you’ll take it.” That’s the zoomed out perspective. You go two and one over those three games, you will absolutely take it. and that is still right on the table for the taking for the Bengals. And it just takes beating up Caleb Williams who hasn’t hasn’t looked great in his young career, but a Bears team that looks better nonetheless. They are three-point favorites as it currently stands this Sunday at Por Stadium. Craig Salem, thank you so much for for hopping on here. Hopefully, we see Joe Flacco play. I don’t have a whole lot of confidence in Jake Browning playing, but uh excited for the Bengals to to stay in this playoff hunt this Sunday. So, thank you so much for your time.

Joe Flacco Injury Update
Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Flacco sustained a sprained AC joint in his right throwing shoulder during the fourth quarter of the team’s 39-38 Week 8 loss to the New York Jets on October 26, 2025.

The 40-year-old veteran, acquired via trade from the Cleveland Browns on October 7, appeared to injure the shoulder after a sack by Jets edge rusher Will McDonald. He briefly exited to the locker room for evaluation but returned for the Bengals’ final offensive drive, completing every snap without missing plays.

Post-game, Flacco admitted he “wasn’t feeling 100%,” while head coach Zac Taylor initially labeled him day-to-day with shoulder soreness on October 27.

On October 29, NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport reported the specific AC joint sprain diagnosis, confirmed by Taylor, who called Flacco’s availability for Sunday’s Week 9 home game against the Chicago Bears “probably 50-50.” The coach noted the pain in Flacco’s throwing arm but praised his determination: “He wants to play… It’s impressive.”

Flacco sat out Wednesday’s practice, listed on the injury report alongside DE Trey Hendrickson (hip).

In three starts since joining Cincinnati—filling in for injured starter Joe Burrow (turf toe)—Flacco has gone 64.3% completions for 784 yards, eight total touchdowns, and zero interceptions, energizing an offense featuring Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins.

If unable to go, backup Jake Browning—who started three games earlier this season—would step in.