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There wasn't a lot of news to come out of Day 11 of training camp with Thursday's game vs the Chiefs looming. The Bengals will be without Geno Atkins, Andre Smith, Andrew Whitworth and Sean Porter for that game.
At practice today, it was fairly light with players going at about 60% speed most plays, but things did heat up briefly during 11-on-11s. Ryan Hewitt caught another touchdown, this one being off a play-action fake at the goal line. He's all but passed Orson Charles on the depth chart, whose been consistently quiet during camp.
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Andy Dalton was sharp again. The most notable improvement is in the short-to-intermediate passing game in the middle of the field. He's been weak at this, as evidenced by Pro Football Focus' passing charts:
Dalton has never been throwing in the middle of the field less than 10 yards from the line of scrimmage, which is typically where the most traffic is at.
But On Tuesday, he hit Mohamed Sanu and Tyler Eifert across the middle over at least one defender. It's early, and it's just practice, but it looks like Dalton has focused on improving this aspect of his game.
Cobi Hamilton had a great day. After getting a case of the drops early in camp, Hamilton has bounced back nicely and now is positioning himself on the right side of the roster bubble. Brandon Tate has cooled off a bit after his hot play to start camp made it look like he would once again make the roster. Hamilton, Tate and James Wright are still looking like the three candidates for those fifth and sixth receiver spots. The Bengals don't appear willing to take on seven receivers this year.
An interesting development came at weakside linebacker. Even though Vontaze Burfict practiced today, the Bengals still gave some of his first-team reps to rookie Marquis Flowers. The former Arizona Wildcat has been impressive since making his camp debut last week, and the fact that he's already getting first-team reps suggests that he's also pushing himself onto the right side of the roster bubble.
At this point, he's battling Sean Porter and Jayson DiManche for one of the final outside backer spots.