When Friday’s injury report hit the streets, the physical portion of Bengals head coach Zac Taylor’s offseason plan to start 2025 like they ended 2024 had to be judged near genius, if not full.

The one name on it belongs to starting defensive tackle B.J. Hill, and that’s only because he went full on Friday after getting a rest day Thursday, making everyone available for Sunday’s opener (1 p.m.-Cincinnati’s FOX 19) in Cleveland.

But there’s also a mental side to it as Taylor has crafted ways to form “the closest locker room,” in the NFL. It’s not that he felt his team lacked camaraderie last season, but he wanted to pay more attention to it.

“Every year you have to emphasize it and not take it for granted,” Taylor said Friday’s practice. “It’s something you have to talk about, and I think our guys have taken it to heart.”

That’s why Taylor had longer team meetings in the spring. So players could tell their stories to the group. After doing some reading, he realized one way to cultivate that kind of bond was to have more people talk more often.

“They’ve all been really special (stories), which is what our building is made of,” left tackle Orlando Brown Jr. told Bengals.com back in June. “Guys with chips on their shoulders. Haven’t had it easy. Had to prove it no matter what round you were drafted, how much free agency money you got. That’s what being a Bengal is all about.”

Taylor also checked multiple boxes with the same concept. He assigned players, after meetings with their position coaches, to address the team about specific situations.

“We want to win games because of situational mastership,” Taylor said. “I’m hard-pressed to imagine more people talk about that than we do. We spend a lot of time on it over the course of the spring and training camp.”

Taylor ends every walkthrough going over two situations, so the last thing the Bengals do Saturday before they fly to Cleveland is listen to Taylor, the coordinators, and director of football research Sam Francis.

But they’ve also heard each other do it, too, in the lead-up to the opener. Center Ted Karras says he enjoyed safety Jordan Battle’s presentation on what the defense is supposed to do during a certain substitution, so they don’t get caught with the wrong number of players on the field.

“He was entertaining,” Karras said. “He brought the energy.”

Karris admits he had a more somber approach, but then maybe that’s because his topic sounds like something from the old Emergency Broadcasting System.

“Say there’s a 10-second runoff at the end of half or end of the game and the clock is going to wind on the snap,” Karras said. “If we have less than three seconds, I have to snap it on the whistle. If we have more than three seconds, it’s going to be a quick cadence. But we have to snap the ball because the clock starts.”

Karras says he thinks the idea has worked.

“Our coaching staff has done an awesome job always getting us prepared,” Karras said. “One of our goals was to have the closest locker room in the NFL. I think guys getting up and talking in front of the team is a big part of personal growth and also cultural growth as an organization.”