Bengals Training Camp Day 2: Shemar Stewart Update, Iosivas shines!
John Sheeran recaps another eventful day of Bengals training camp, breaking down the latest on Shemar Stewart's injury, Andrei Iosivas' standout performance, and the key developments fans need to know as Cincinnati continues preparing for the 2026 season.
Video Transcript
The best news from Bengals training camp so far is still not so great news on the surface, but it sure as hell beats what the alternative could've been.
I'm John Scheuren of A to Z Sports Cincinnati.
This is A to Z Sports Cincinnati, covering your Cincinnati Bengals throughout 2026 training camp.
Yesterday was quite intense, both with Shamar Stewart being carted off from injury, and Ja'Marr Chase, DJ Turner, and Jaylen Davis scrapping in a fight that took the entire team to break up.
Day two was a little bit more low-key, and we did get some phenomenal news from Zac Taylor following the two-hour session.
Taylor revealed after practice that Shamar Stewart officially has a hyperextended knee, and while he will be out for several weeks, it is not a season-ending injury.
It is not a ligament tear.
There's no structural damage within Stewart's knee, so he will be out for an extended period of time, but he will probably play Not probably, he will be playing in the 2026 season.
That is not going to be a concern.
Now, Taylor is historically very conservative when it comes to, injury timelines and estimated time of recovery, so several weeks could mean a multitude of things.
I think several weeks was actually the exact description that he used to describe Joe Burrow's calf strain, or maybe that was the appendectomy.
Whatever, they all kinda run together at this point.
I would interpret this as Shamar Stewart missing basically at least the next month.
I would not expect him to be playing in any of the Bengals' three preseason games, which, again, is unfortunate.
There's a lot of development time between now and the start of the season that could've really benefited Stewart.
But I do think that there is a good chance that he is back at least practicing by the time the regular season begins.
In the meantime, this is a phenomenal opportunity for rookie defensive end Cassius Howle to get some increase in his reps during practice and the preseason as well.
I think at first he may still be behind the veterans of Cedric Johnson and Isaiah Foskey.
I guess veteran is, like, a loose term for Johnson.
He's just entering his third year.
But he slowly built trust with the coaching staff o- over the last two years, you know, at, at the bottom of the defensive end group.
Foskey is also got some experience to him, and he stayed with the team for basically the entirety of 2025.
So both those guys are probably gonna get some reps, a- ahead of Howle at least to start.
But I think as this month or as, as these next four weeks progress, we will see Howle slowly but surely get more and more opportunities as he starts to separate himself as the third best defensive end edge rusher, edge defender in this group behind starters Myles Murphy and Boye Mafe.
This is a great opportunity for him to prove himself in a slightly larger role, and by the time that Stewart comes back, I think he'll be in a good spot to be a pretty significant contributor to this defensive line.
And look, guys, I get it.
I was not the biggest fan of the Bengals drafting Shamar Stewart.
I thought that was a major risk when they did it in the first place.
Of course, when that happened, there was, "Oh," like, "Let's see what he does in his rookie year."
And his rookie year is a pretty big disappointment, as he misses most of the year with multiple injuries, and he doesn't really do much when he's on the field.
Now, the opinion of Shamar Stewart across the fan base is rather negative, and the fact that he suffered another injury is not gonna help with that.
But the guy is not going to be better, he's not going to get better by being on the sidelines recovering from his third injury in just two years of NFL action.
He's not going to develop by not playing football.
It is a bad thing for the Bengals to lose a guy like Stewart for the next handful of weeks or maybe even a little bit longer in, in case there's a setback.
It is not good for this to happen, despite the fact that Stewart is not quite yet a competent player yet.
So for all the people who are like, "Oh," like, "What, what does it matter if Shamar Stewart is hurt?"
He needs to be healthy.
He needs to be practicing.
He needs to be developing in order for him to get better, to get to that next level beyond where he is right now.
It is not a good thing for him to be injured, and anything who thinks that or anyone who thinks it's an overreaction for us reacting to this injury, learn that.
In other injury news, it seems like B.J.
Hill is still progressing on the practice field while he's on the physically unable to perform list.
And Jonathan Allen also was not practicing.
He was seen with a calf sleeve over his leg.
It appeared to be a veterans rest day, and that was confirmed by WLWT's Charlie Clifford.
This is gonna be pretty natural throughout the course of training camp with the defensive line.
You have two 31-year-olds in Hill and Allen.
Their reps are gonna be managed even if Hill was out there practicing and on the active roster.
I think the same could be said for Dexter Lawrence.
He's probably gonna get some veterans days here and there.
It's just sprinkled throughout.
They know who these guys are, right?
As long as they're still around the team and still a part of practice in some capacity, that's all that matters, right?
They're gonna get their work in, but they're not gonna be practicing every single day.
So yes, Jonathan Allen was not practicing today, but nothing to be concerned with on that regard.
I also did wanna bring this up.
This is not a shot at Jake Liska, who is a phenomenal follower for Bengals coverage, and definitely check out our interview with Jake earlier this month.
But I have seen Boye Mafe being dropped into coverage, spread a little bit across other parts of social media, and I think the natural reaction is, "Why in the world is a pass rusher in Boye Mafe being dropped back into coverage and being in s- open space like this?"
This is probably what's happening right now with the Bengals defense.
They are deploying their base defense, their base set, their base formation, in which Boye Mafe is out on the field on the edge, and the offense is deploying various sets, various formations on the other side of the ball, and the defense is just matching.
They're not subbing in and out.
They're not treating it like it's an actual game in which you have to adjust for personnel.
You have to adjust for what the offense is doing, right?
The defense is completely reactionary here.
It's all about pinpointing tendencies and making sure that your reserves and your subs are out there for the different formations and different packages that you wanna deploy.
The Bengals aren't doing that just yet.
It's the second day of training camp.
So they're starting defense out there.
They're starting base defense.
It's just gonna be out there against whatever the offense throws at them.
And in some cases, yeah, you may need to be in a situation where you need to be in your dime or your nickel sets, and you're not, right?
So in some cases, yeah, maybe you have your outside linebacker being put into the slot and dropping back into coverage just to match up the numbers that the offense are deploying out there.
That's just part of training camp.
If this was some sort of intra-squad scrimmage or an actual regular season game, no, you probably won't see this as much.
You may see it sometimes, because this is ultimately a 3-4 defense, and your outside linebackers are supposed to be dropping back into coverage every once in a while.
It was kind of odd seeing, like, Sam Hubbard and Trey Hendrickson do it in years past, and it will be a little bit weird seeing Boye Mafe in those situations, as well as Myles Murphy, but it is part of the job description for what the Bengals defense is gonna be.
It's just not gonna be as often.
And seeing this pop up on your timeline while the Bengals are operating training camp in which, again, their defense is not subbing in and out as much as they will in a game, it's not an indication of what the defense is gonna be.
As far as standouts from today's practice, I did see Andre Josh make a couple of good catches along the sideline.
He was testing DJ Turner in vertical coverage.
Turner made a good play on the ball as well.
Dax Hill made a couple of pass breakups.
He even got Tee Higgins wanting a pass interference call, but he said, "No, you gotta run, you gotta run the route.
You gotta run through it.
You're not gonna get that call."
So I think it was an overall good day for the defense as a whole.
Demetrius Knight made a couple would've been tackles for loss, and I think he even intercepted a Joe Burrow pass as well.
So couple of good performances, but I think Andre Josh deserves some, some credit here.
He looks really good, he looks really fast, and looks a lot stronger this year entering training camp and entering a critical contract season, so we need to see him stack some good practices here, and I think, f- Thursday was a pretty good one.
And to cap things off, right as practice was beginning at 10:00 AM Eastern, the NFL Top 100 continued its list with players 44 through 43, I wanna say, and Joe Burrow ended up being the number 44 player in this year's list.
Means a lot, I think, considering he was number six in last year's list when he was coming off of his second Comeback Player of the Year, season in 2024 when he played an entire year and he basically put up MVP caliber numbers.
So to drop from six to 44 while missing half the season and not putting up, you know, gaudy numbers, I think is still a testament to how much Joe Burrow is respected around the league by his peers.
And that can't be stated more than looking at what a rival player, an AFC North enemy, Mike Green, said about Joe Burrow, saying, quote, "Burrow and Tom Brady, you could compare the two.
They're both in-the-pocket quarterbacks, pick up reads and blitzes easily.
I think they play similar."
And can I just say, I was never that big of a fan of this comparison, not just because it is incredibly unfair to label any quarterback coming after Tom Brady as someone similar to Tom Brady, because, again, that bar of expectation is just incredibly too high.
And I know it's more of, like, a stylistic comparison.
I know it's more about how they play, th- they maneuver in the pocket, how their accuracy is, and I guess their, you know, mentality and all their intangibles, but still, it is a high bar to reach.
But even still, Tom Brady was a statue in the pocket.
Now, he was great at maneuvering and kind of leveraging himself to where rushers were coming from, but he was very easily sackable when the pocket collapsed around him.
He did not have a lot of mobility and a lot of ability to kind of escape the pocket and create on his own.
He was the pocket passer of his era, along with Peyton Manning.
Joe Burrow was not that, and he was never that l- at LSU.
He was always able to step up and escape the pocket and create on his own and extend plays and find guys down the field outside of the pocket and also, you know, gain some rushing yards on his own.
I always thought that Burrow stylistically was even closer to Tony Romo, and that seemed like more of an insult because Romo was not the quarterback that Tom Brady was.
But Romo was also very creative in getting out of the pocket and throwing off platform and just having this very unique arm whi- in which, he didn't have a cannon necessarily, but he was very accurate on all levels of the field.
And again, the ability to maneuver around the pocket, to manipulate the pocket, and to get out of there and create on his own, I always thought that matched Burrow a little bit more.
But I think the fact that Burrow is now seven years int- into his career and this comparison has followed him and basically him alone in the NFL.
No other quarterback in the NFL consistently gets compared to Tom Brady as much as Joe Burrow does, or basically at all compared to Burrow.
And whether or not you think that it's accurate, it's undeniable how much it permeates throughout the NFL.
And do I think that there are 43 players in the NFL better than Joe Burrow?
No, I do not.
But that's the nature of the list.
If you miss a lot of time and your numbers aren't that good and you don't put out that much tape as you did the year prior, you're gonna drop.
So call this motivation if you want, but I think everyone in the NFL still recognizes that Burrow is a killer and he's still one of the best quarterbacks in the league.
We got two more training camp practices this week.
I don't believe tomorrow, Friday's session, is gonna be completely open to the public, but we will still get some reports from local beat writers who are gonna be on site.
They're gonna be practicing Saturday.
They're gonna take Sunday off, but then they'll be back at it on Monday and Tuesday.
But how do you think the first two days of Bengals training camp has gone?
Let me know down in the comments below
