Andy Dalton calls for fans to support Andy Dalton.
It took seven seasons for the Green-Dalton regime to generate any controversial headlines, hard to do since it came to be in the golden age of social media. Now in the wake of the Ken Zampese firing the nationals are making up for lost time with a wave of conjecture that Dalton is on the verge of being benched in favor of AJ McCarron.
McCarron isn't having any part of it and as the players reacted to the first time to Bill Lazor replacing Zampese as offensive coordinator after Monday's walk-through, he asked for the fans to get off Dalton's case.
"I wish people in this city would back him and go with it. Listen, I think I'm a great quarterback and I think he's an unbelievable quarterback. I love him to death. But he's our quarterback," McCarron said. "Stop making it into something else. It's not into something else. Ride with him. Trust the team. Trust the process. And trust what we are trying to do. And be a fan of who is playing. We are all part of a team. It's not we are divided."
On Friday, the day after Dalton failed to generate a touchdown for the second time in four days to open the season, head coach Marvin Lewis said Dalton's job is secure. But that didn't stop at last one published story from reporting over the weekend some Bengals are wondering if Colin Kaepernick is an option. He's not and McCarron says he's Dalton's teammate and not rival.
"It's not that way. It's tough for me, it really is. I love him I love our relationship," McCarron said, "Been with him for a long time now. It sucks for me to see. For other people if we didn't have such a close relationship things like that can make the process weird between quarterbacks on other teams if that starts happening. Me and him have a great relationship and I think we've both handled it really well. We know what nonsense is. We trust and love each other. He's our quarterback and I'll leave it at that. I trust him every time he steps out there and I think we are going to win every time he is under center. It's part of football, though, you win some lose some. That's the way it goes.
