Apparently, Andy Dalton has been avoiding all forms of media over the past week because he definitely didn't seem too concerned about recent reports that some players in the Bengals locker room are starting to lose faith in him.
Pro Football Talk reported on Sunday that some players were so upset with Dalton's play that they wanted to see the team give a guy like Colin Kaepernick a chance. Although there's roughly a zero percent chance that the Bengals would sign Kaepernick, Dalton was asked about the situation during his weekly press conference on Monday, and let's just say that the idea of some players wanting to add Kaepernick was news to him.
"I haven't heard anything," Dalton said, via the Bengals official website. "I can only worry about the guys that are on this team,"
Dalton then went one step further and completely brushed off the story.
"I mean, anybody can create a headline," the Bengals quarterback said.
Dalton said that he hadn't even heard about the Kaepernick report, or the possibility that AJ McCarron might replace him, because he hasn't been doing a lot of reading about the Bengals lately.
"I don't read anything. There's no reason to read anything because it doesn't mean anything," Dalton said. "People can come up with a headline all they want, but all that matters is what's being said in this organization, on this team, and what happens in this locker room."
The good news for Dalton is that he still seems to have plenty of support in the Bengals locker room, despite the fact that the Bengals have scored exactly zero touchdowns through the first two weeks of the season.
Some of that support has come from McCarron, who made it clear this week that Dalton is the team's quarterback.
"He's our quarterback, stop making it into something else," McCarron said. "Ride with him, trust the team, trust the process and trust what we're trying to do and be a fan of who's playing."
As for talk that Dalton may be losing some support in the locker room, left guard Clint Boling said that's simply not the case.
"I think we're all behind him. I think he knows that too," Boling said, via the team's site. "I'm not sure he even sees that kind of stuff and reads any of it. Hopefully he's got a good feel for what the locker room is like and where he stands in it. We all believe in him."
The Bengals offense has been so bad through the first two weeks of the season that the team responded by firing offensive coordinator Ken Zampese, which marked the first time in the franchise's 50-year history that an offensive coordinator had been fired during the season. Zampese had been with the Bengals since 2003, and served as Dalton's QB coach from 2011 to 2016, so it will be interesting to see how he responds to losing a guy he's worked with for more than six seasons.
"Zamp has meant a lot to me, he's been here my whole time as quarterback coach and coordinator and different things," Dalton said. "We've had a lot of experiences together. He was the foundation of my NFL career because he had me from the start, so I can't think him enough for everything he's done for me."
The Bengals will go into Green Bay on Sunday with Bill Lazor as the team's new offensive coordinator, and if Dalton can't get things figured out against the Packers, there's a chance that his leash could get shorter every week. Through two weeks, Dalton has a QB rating of 47.2. If you want to know how ugly that is, no other quarterback in the NFL has a rating below 55.0.