Jake Browning Ready For Latest 'Opportunity' To Lead Familiar Bengals Offense

CINCINNATI — Jake Browning is facing a much different NFL playing picture during his second stint as the Bengals' starting quarterback. The veteran spoke to the media on Wednesday and touched on his confidence entering a second go-around after his time leading the team in 2023 to a 4-3 record as starter.

Browning is taking over a 2-0 team with plenty of talent to keep winning while Joe Burrow recovers.

"Mike [Gesicki] and Noah [Fant] are probably the newer people, but a lot of the other parts on offense have been in the system for a long time, including myself, so I feel pretty good about that and feel fortunate to be taking over an offense that does have a lot of weapons."

Browning performed at an above-average level in 2023 and could rack up a decent percentage of the production Burrow brings to the table in his third official NFL season (entered the league in 2019).

His understanding of the offense and years-long chemistry with Cincinnati's stars helped produce a solid 68.9 ESPN QBR on Sunday (would rank 11th leaguewide on the season), even with the three interceptions.

"I think you don't really know until you know what it feels like. And so in 2023, I had no idea what all that was going to feel like. I kind of had to make some adjustments on the fly. I think it's a little bit different getting thrown in Week 3 versus those like Week 11. So I'm a little bit closer to when I was actually last live versus getting thrown in Week 11. I think it had been three or four months since I've been in a real football game.

"So I think just the experience, and I look at last year. I didn't take a meaningful snap, but I had a good year, as far as just watching my film in practice and stuff like that. So I feel like I made some improvements that I needed to. Yeah, excited for the opportunity to play."

Browning has a chance to cement himself as the best Bengals backup option ever by going around .500 or better over the next three months and seeing what happens from there.

The task starts against Minnesota this Sunday at 1 p.m. ET.

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