The Walkthru is a daily look at the Bengals, your questions and whatever else spills from the brains of beat writers Paul Dehner Jr. and Jim Owczarski. You can follow them on Twitter (@pauldehnerjr, @JimOwczarski), Instagram (@enqbengals) as well as Enquirer Sports on Facebook.

Bengals fans everywhere watch this punchless offense lacking playmakers and wonder what happened to the first-round pick that was supposed to be getting healthy.

Wide receiver John Ross injured himself in practice the week of Green Bay, was cleared to return to practice three weeks ago and has been a full participant essentially ever since.

He was active against Indianapolis, but played only six snaps and did next to nothing. He didn’t touch the ball.

He was a healthy scratch last week in Jacksonville. Instead, Cody Core was up for special teams and fourth-round pick Josh Malone played 79 percent of the snaps, catching one pass for 13 yards.

Ross watched.

The answer has been consistent with Marvin Lewis during this process. Ross has hardly practiced since being drafted. He needs to know what’s going on when he’s out there if he’s going to play in the game.

He said in a hypothetical scenario where he had to play, based purely on health, he could play a full game and be fine. He wasn’t even listed on the injury report last week and the Bengals would not be messing around with that, it’s not something they do.

So, he’s healthy, but not deemed able to play. I’ll just offer how Lewis explained the situation when I asked him on Monday.

Would you bring him in for the sole purpose of creating a spark for this team?

“You guys ask this same question every week. John has had three weeks of practice now. Let’s let him practice andlet's get him comfortable playing football again before we put him back in there. When he knows what to do and how to do it all the time, and when he can play productively, then he’ll play fast, he’ll play with confidence. But he wouldn’t be very confident (right now). Each day, he gets more confident with playing football. He hasn’t been playing football. That’s the thing. You have to (practice) 11-on-11 enough to be comfortable with it.”

Do you see John Ross getting better every day at practice?

"Oh yeah, there’s no question he becomes more comfortable. What he has to do is take what he practicing one-on-one and be able to play it 11-on-11. The more reps and time he has against the defense every day in practice and the more he’s part of the offense, those are good things, because he has to gain that confidence. It was three weeks ago, that every time he went on the ground, everybody held their breath. You’re going to get knocked down in football, and you’ve got to get up, go back to the huddle and do it again. He’s not made of glass — he’s not going to break every time he falls down —yet he’s got to practice football and continue to do it.”

Is John Ross’ path headed where you can see him contributing this season?

“Oh, I hope so. Yes.”

So, you can’t play fast if you’re not confident ...

“You have to know what to do, make the proper adjustments, and so on. Even when he was in the game two weeks ago, he’smoving at one speed, while everyone else is moving in another. You got to get used to playing.”

So, there’s where Lewis stands with Ross. When and where we will actually see him contributing, probably looks more like December than anytime soon if you look at those comments and what has been said in recent weeks.

Nobody has indicated a desire to create a small package of plays he knows which can take advantage of his skill set and let him loose on those until he learns more. They want him to know the whole playbook. Until then, he’ll be at the bottom of the depth chart, it seems.

You might not agree with it, but this is where the Bengals are at with him.

ON TAP TODAY

Bengals return to practice. There will be Marvin Lewis and Andy Dalton press conferences as well.

TWITTER QUESTION OF THE DAY



Thanks for the question.

Technically, yes, there will be as the Bengals brought back Eric Winston as insurance for whatever is ailing Jake Fisher right now. But, that’s not what was being referenced here.

No, nobody is making staff changes right now. Any staff changes that were going to occur during the season went down after Week 2.

Reading between the lines of Lewis’ comments, it’s more a reference to snap counts that can be adjusted. Certain players can be given more opportunity to play instead of maybe a few starters not playing up to standard.

We’ll have to wait and see exactly what the changes could end up being, but nothing they do is going to become breaking news. They don’t have much choice other than to rearrange the chairs on the Titanic at this point.

BEYOND THE STRIPES

Chris Smith was our guest last night. One of the reasons I enjoy BTS so much is being able to bring the engaging personalities of so many of these players for you to see. Smith is the perfect example. Joy to be around and that comes across during the show.

Plus, he loves Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, so that makes him wise beyond his years.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

First look at the Titans, who have won three in a row and Marcus Mariota is heating up.

Five crazy days for Bengals kicker Marshall Koehn.

A.J. Green catches a huge break and avoids suspension.

Jake Fisher is out for the year due to the illness that sent him to the hospital on Sunday. Eric Winston was re-signed.

BENGALS BEAT PODCAST

Love our BBP listeners. Happy to be providing some light in the darkness.

INSTAGRAM POST OF THE DAY

We had Marvin Jones on the first season of BTS and when he sang for us, everybody backed up in their chair. Kind of the same way Katy Perry does as Marvin went in to try out for American Idol in this video.

Good luck to the man I dubbed the Mayor of Burlington, for how much he loved living out there as just a regular guy in the community. Always a class act and this is cool to see.

KNOW YOUR OPPONENT

Titans (5-3): DeMarco Murray is struggling with injuries and been a big part of why the Titans running game hasn’t quite lived up to expectations.

AROUND THE DIVISION

Steelers (6-2): JuJu Smith-Schuster got his driver’s license. Does this mean we can please stop hearing about his bike?

Ravens (4-5): Baltimore believes they can win out and make the playoffs. Nobody else does.

Browns (0-8): Sashi Brown addresses all the woes. So many woes.

STAT OF THE DAY

Re-visiting a stat that I brought up a few weeks ago involving the Bengals running game potentially having more success out of the shotgun than under center, particularly for Joe Mixon.

Separating fact from fiction in Bengals run game

These were the shotgun carry vs under center carry stats through the first six games.

Running back: Shotgun carries, yards, yards per carry – Under center

Joe Mixon: 19 for 107, 5.6 – 38 for 83, 2.2

Gio Bernard: 9 for 47, 5.2 – 2 for 2, 1.0

Jeremy Hill: 5 for 24, 4.8 – 16 for 38, 2.4

TOTAL: 33 for 178, 5.4 – 56 for 123, 2.2

The Bengals appeared to make a slight adjustment in featuring the shotgun run more often against Jacksonville, not that it has made much of a difference.

Here are the stats the last two weeks:

Joe Mixon: Shotgun carries for yards -- under center carries for yards

Indianapolis: 1 for -1 – 10 for 19

Jacksonville: 7 for 11 (TD) – 6 for 20

Maybe we are seeing more shotgun runs, but a big minus-6 made his average go from bad to putrid last week. The best run of the game came for the 7-yard TD run, which was out of the gun. We’ll see if we continue to see more of that going forward or if it was merely situational against the Jags to see the uptick.

MO TIME

Here is the link to my 20 minutes with Mo Egger on ESPN1530 yesterday.

RANDOMNESS

You don’t want anybody’s child to be locked up in an Chinese prison, but if you had to choose somebody, you’d probably start with LaVar Ball.

Who decided the snooze button should be nine minutes? Stop telling me how to live my life.

And you thought lava lamps served no purpose other than to amuse college stoners.

AND FINALLY

Nashville music week is full of goodies. I’ll start with Kings of Leon, one of my favorite tunes.