The Bengals couldn’t dig themselves out of the 1-4 hole they dug for themselves at the start of the 2024 season and a history of slow starts led the team to shift gears this summer.
Starters are playing more in the preseason as head coach Zac Taylor tries to make sure that the team is firing on all cylinders right away. Going with the first team worked out well last Thursday as Joe Burrow threw a pair of touchdown passes in the first quarter, but another one of the team’s stars isn’t leaning into the notion that a faster start to the year will solve all Cincinnati’s problems.
During an appearance with Adam Schein of Mad Dog Sports Radio, Higgins said that he doesn’t “like the narrative of getting off to a hot start” because he believes the path back to the playoffs will come down to executing in all three phases and “finishing the game.”
“It’s just stop with the narratives, just go out there and just play football,” Higgins said. “Execute as a team. That’s really all I can really say about it.”
The nice thing for Higgins and the Bengals is that both starting fast and finishing strong are good paths to the record they failed to achieve last season.