"I don't think I'm curious to see how I'll respond. I think part of that response is already happening. I think I'm going to be able to look back at it and feel like I handled it well, but going out there and playing the game is a different thing. You've got to go out there, and you've got to play a good game and be consistent. I'm not worried about how I'm going to handle the situation. I am not worried about that much. I just want to go out there and keep it simple and play the best game I can."
The wives have been on deck all week. Flacco's wife Dana doesn't usually help with game plans, but like her husband said. This is a unique week.
"I've never had my wife kind of read stuff out to me and but the other night, and sitting in the hotel, I did have her read some of the base game plan to me and have me repeat it back to her," Flacco said. "She didn't do badly, because there is a rhythm to it. There's a rhythm not only to like saying the play in the huddle, but there is a rhythm to giving someone the play, like as Zac would give me the play."
If it sounds complicated, it is. The key for Zac Taylor this week is to pare down his system without dumbing it down.
"Sometimes, I'll call a personnel and stand there until he repeats it until I heard him say the personnel that's in the huddle," Taylor said. "He's so easy-going. He has probably been coached a million different ways before. Now we'll get to the last 48 hours, the honest feedback portion of things. Which plays do you not want? Is there something we're missing that you think you'd be good at? That's where this next 48 hours goes."
And, yes, he'll be looking at a wristband Sunday, but so would Burrow and Jake Browning, who have been in the playbook a combined 11 years.
"We always have a wrist-band plan for the road. Especially in the low red zone, often you can't hear anything," Taylor said. "We'll wristband it all.
"I'll try to give him a heads-up on the play I'm about to call so at least he knows what's coming at him before he reads the wristband. So he can picture the concept and then read it so he's not reading it and visualizing it for the first time. We'll do that. I have a couple hand signals. So far, he hasn't really needed any of that."
Lewis is going to tell his national audience that the Bengals made a good move with Flacco and that's high praise. No head coach but Mike Tomlin has played him more. And Flacco is 9-11 against Lewis for his only losing record against teams he's played more than seven times.
"It gives you a chance. He gets the ball out of his hand," says Lewis, who always feared Flacco's deep ball. "That's how they won the Super Bowl. They weren't that great in the regular season. But in the playoffs, his deep ball was awesome."