Bengals QB Joe Burrow could miss ‘several weeks’ with calf strain, coach Taylor says

CINCINNATI (AP) — Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow could miss “several weeks” with a right calf strain, coach Zac Taylor said Friday.

The 26-year-old franchise quarterback hobbled on one leg and then went to the ground after a scramble play near the end of Thursday’s practice. He rode off the field in a medical cart.

“It will take several weeks, and that’s all the information we have,” Taylor said.

Burrow did not practice Friday, with backup QBs Jake Browning and Trevor Siemian taking the snaps. The Bengals play their first preseason game on Aug. 11 and open the regular season Sept. 10.

Taylor said Burrow “has seen the doctors” and was present for meetings at the team’s training facility Friday. The quarterback was wearing a compression sleeve on his right calf when he pulled up with the injury, but Taylor said Friday he was unaware there was anything wrong before that play.

Burrow is still negotiating with the Bengals on a long-term contract that could make him one of the NFL’s highest-paid players.

The team’s top draft pick in 2020 had talked Wednesday about how good he felt at the opening of camp after his first three NFL training camps were disrupted and how he hoped to play in some preseason games.

Preseason practice was truncated in Burrow’s rookie year in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic. In 2001, he was still rehabbing after knee surgery the previous December. On the first day of camp last year, he was stricken with appendicitis.