NFL teams
Ben Baby, ESPN Staff Writer 4y

Cincinnati Bengals keeping QBs in separate rooms during virtual workouts due to coronavirus

NFL, Cincinnati Bengals

CINCINNATI -- Rookie Joe Burrow and a few of his Cincinnati Bengals teammates have all the space a quarterback could ever want.

As the Bengals work through the early phase of training camp, Burrow and the other three quarterbacks on the roster -- Ryan Finley, Jake Dolegala and Brandon Allen -- are taking isolation to another level. According to coach Zac Taylor, each of them is in a separate room during virtual workouts as Cincinnati takes the necessary precautions to keep them healthy during the coronavirus pandemic.

"We keep them apart as best we can right now," Taylor said during a news conference on Tuesday. "Obviously with the social distancing, we're going to keep them in different offices so we can limit that interaction over the course of the day."

Other teams around the NFL have broached the idea as teams look for a different kind of way to protect the most important position on the roster. The Raiders, Lions and Packers are among the teams that have openly pondered separating quarterbacks from the rest of the team.

"We've floated around that idea a little bit," Packers coach Matt LaFleur told reporters Sunday. "[We] have not made a decision on that at this point, but that's certainly something that's not out of the realm."

In Cincinnati, Taylor said the quarterbacks are the only position group not meeting as a unit. And the isolation may not even be the most extreme preventative measure.

Allen, a recent addition, stayed apart from the team's other three quarterbacks during Tuesday's walkthrough, Taylor said. Cincinnati officially signed Allen on Saturday to give the team another potential quarterback option.

Allen made three starts with Denver last season and was with the Los Angeles Rams during Taylor's stint as an assistant.

Taylor said the pandemic raises questions about keeping more quarterbacks and specialists than normal. In addition to signing Allen over the weekend, the team also signed kicker Tristan Vizcaino, who was in camp last summer before he was eventually cut.

"This will be an evolving process over the course of training camp," Taylor said. "We don't need to make any season decisions right now, but those are certainly things we have to think about and talk through as the weeks progress."

The Bengals currently have one player on pandemic reserve (rookie defensive end Kendall Futrell]) and have not had any positive COVID-19 tests since they started being administered last week.

As with everything else during the current climate, the Bengals' quarterback plans could change throughout camp. But for now, Cincinnati is doing everything it possibly can to make sure it can at least have one healthy quarterback.

"We have four right now and we feel like we're doing a good job keeping them all safe," Taylor said.

ESPN's Rob Demovsky, Paul Gutierrez and Michael Rothstein contributed to this report.

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