{"id":4490,"date":"2016-01-06T09:03:09","date_gmt":"2016-01-06T17:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/dalton-has-cast-removed-could-be-backup-qb-against-steelers\/"},"modified":"2016-01-06T09:03:09","modified_gmt":"2016-01-06T17:03:09","slug":"dalton-has-cast-removed-could-be-backup-qb-against-steelers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/dalton-has-cast-removed-could-be-backup-qb-against-steelers\/","title":{"rendered":"Dalton has cast removed, could be backup QB against Steelers"},"content":{"rendered":"

CINCINNATI<\/strong> \u2014 Andy Dalton\u2019s passing hand was finally free on Tuesday, liberated from the black cast that has covered his forearm and his spirits for the past three weeks.<\/p>\n

And his coach held out the possibility he might have a backup role for the Bengals\u2019 playoff game.<\/p>\n

Call it one for the thumb.<\/p>\n

Dalton ran a couple of plays early in practice on Tuesday and threw a pass \u2014 with his left hand \u2014 before raising his arm in celebration and heading back to the sideline to continue his conditioning work.<\/p>\n

What are the chances he could be on the active roster when the Bengals host the Pittsburgh Steelers on Saturday night?<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d love to be in there playing,\u201d Dalton said.<\/p>\n

His right thumb will likely prevent it.<\/p>\n

The AFC North champions are getting AJ McCarron ready to play against their division rival. Dalton broke the thumb on his passing hand while making a tackle during the Steelers\u2019 33-20 win at Paul Brown Stadium on Dec. 13. McCarron went 2-1 as a starter in the past three games.<\/p>\n

Although Dalton got the cast removed on Monday, he has to rebuild the strength in his hand.<\/p>\n

Also, he hasn\u2019t practiced in three weeks, leaving him rusty \u2014 a bad combination for playoff time. So the Bengals are heading into the playoffs with McCarron as the starter.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis team\u2019s built for this kind of stuff,\u201d Dalton said. \u201cAJ\u2019s going to do a good job when things happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coach Marvin Lewis indicated on Tuesday that there\u2019s a possibility Dalton could be active as a backup, depending upon how his hand feels. The Bengals don\u2019t have an experienced backup should McCarron get hurt. Receiver Mohamed Sanu has taken snaps in wildcat formations and could be an emergency quarterback.<\/p>\n

So McCarron will get a chance to overturn a lot of bad history in his fourth NFL start.<\/p>\n

The Bengals haven\u2019t won a playoff game in 25 years, the sixth-longest postseason drought in NFL history. They\u2019re the only team in league history to lose an opening-round game four years in a row. And no quarterback with so little starting experience has won a playoff game since 1979, when Gifford Nielsen led the Houston Oilers to a win in San Diego, according to STATS.<\/p>\n

McCarron thinks his bowl experience while winning two national titles at Alabama will help him in the playoffs.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like this is comfortable,\u201d he said. \u201cI get to go home to my house every day and see my wife and the little dog and sit on the couch and watch (game) film and make her watch some.\u201d<\/p>\n

And then he gets a chance to show how far he\u2019s grown in the past month.<\/p>\n

The second-year quarterback got his first significant playing time when Dalton broke his thumb during the first quarter of the loss to Pittsburgh. McCarron threw a pair of interceptions, one of which was returned for a touchdown that put Pittsburgh in control.<\/p>\n

Thrown into the game on such short notice, McCarron felt like a teenager again.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the first couple of snaps, it kind of reminded me of my first high school game,\u201d McCarron said on Tuesday. \u201cWhen I came to the sideline after two possessions or something, I asked my offensive coordinator: Did they have more than 11 people on the field?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

McCarron was a lot better in the past three games. He didn\u2019t throw an interception, although he fumbled a snap that ended a 20-17 overtime loss in Denver. He\u2019s looked more like a rookie at times against some of the league\u2019s best defenses, but he\u2019s also made some impressive throws, too.<\/p>\n

And he\u2019s grown a lot since that last game against the Steelers.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust the poise,\u201d offensive coordinator Hue Jackson said. \u201cObviously he\u2019s done a really good job of not turning the ball over. In that game we had two turnovers. That kind of led to our demise on offense and losing the game. I think if you take care of the ball and play the way we have, you have a chance to have great things happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Notes: The Bengals weren\u2019t required to provide a practice report on Tuesday. They\u2019ll have one on Wednesday indicating which players are limited. … They signed LB Jayson DiManche to the practice squad. The Bengals waived him earlier this season, and he played one game for Cleveland. … McCarron recalled that after the loss to Pittsburgh, he talked to Ben Roethlisberger and told him that he\u2019d watched him play with Miami (Ohio) in the 2003 GMAC Bowl in Mobile. \u201cAfter the (GMAC) game, I went under the stadium to the locker room, met his mom, his dad, his sister and him,\u201d McCarron said. \u201cI remember he gave me a wristband and some other stuff and how cool it was. I told him after the last game, and he started dying laughing.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

AP NFL website: www.pro32.ap.org and http:\/\/twitter.com\/AP_NFL<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CINCINNATI \u2014 Andy Dalton\u2019s passing hand was finally free on Tuesday, liberated from the black cast that has covered his forearm and his spirits for the past three weeks. And his coach held out the possibility he might have a backup role for the Bengals\u2019 playoff game. Call it one for the thumb. Dalton ran […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-4490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4490\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4490"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=4490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}