Bengals waive Jeff Driskel from IR

The Cincinnati Bengals have announced that Jeff Driskel has been waived from the injured reserve and received an injury settlement. He suffered what was initially believed to be a season-ending hamstring injury in the preseason.

Driskel joined the Bengals when he was waived by the 49ers after the team drafted him out of Louisiana Tech in the sixth-round of the 2016 NFL draft. He has spent the past two offseasons with the Bengals. Last year, he beat out Matt Barkley for the backup job behind Andy Dalton.

In 2018, he got his first shot to play meaningful time in the regular season. He saw all of it come in the final six games after Dalton went down against the Browns with a season-ending injury.

Driskel went on to throw for just over 1,000 yards with six passing touchdowns to two interceptions. He also added 130 rushing yards and two rushing scores.

Driskel finished the season only pulling out one win, which came vs. the Raiders, but the Bengals were within one score against the Steelers, Browns and Chargers, which isn’t too bad when you consider he didn’t have A.J. Green for those games.

Even so, Driskel was thoroughly outplayed by Ryan Finley in this year’s preseason, so even if Driskel had been healthy, he was still going to be at best the third-string quarterback.