Former Cowboys QB Will Grier expected to sign with Bengals practice squad

Following a dreadful preseason performance from the Bengals’ offense, Cincinnati brass has decided to add another QB to the team to potentially back up Joe Burrow.

According to NFL insider Adam Schefter, the Bengals will pick up Will Grier, a career backup quarterback who played with Dallas in the preseason. Here was that report from Schefter:

“Former Cowboys’ QB Will Grier — who threw for 305 yards and ran for 45 more in his final game with Dallas — is signing with the Bengals’ practice squad, per source.”

Not officially on the team, but Grier joins as a practice squad player who doesn’t have a lot of competition in his way for the QB2 spot behind Burrow. Based on that one preseason stat-line alone, he easily clears both of the Bengals’ options in August.

With Burrow sidelined for another preseason, this time due to a calf strain, the backups had the show to themselves. The two in contention for the backup job: Trevor Siemian and Jake Browning.

Siemian has some real experience, as he took over primary quarterback duties for nearly all of the 2016 season for Denver. Coming off a Super Bowl win, he led the Broncos to an 8-6 record as the starter and even did well enough to start 11 games the next season, though things fell apart for him after that ’17 season.

Meanwhile, Browning doesn’t have much of an NFL track record since leaving Washington. However, he is a staple of the Cincinnati practice squad and has been there since 2021. Now, after a horrible zero-touchdown preseason by Siemian and an alright one for Browning, he’s the QB2 on the roster while Siemian was cut.

Now, in comes Will Grier to give Browning another guy to battle. Grier showed out in his final Cowboys preseason game but wasn’t kept since the team just traded for a high-profile backup QB in Trey Lance, the former 49er and third overall pick in the 2021 draft. In the NFL, you typically don’t roster three QBs, so Grier had to move on.

Now, he finds a dream spot in Cincinnati with the opportunity to take over a backup job behind Joe Burrow after a disappointing preseason performance from the team’s other two QB options.

The only experience the 28-year-old Grier has in actual NFL game action came in 2019, when he started two games for the Carolina Panthers and threw for just 228 yards on 52 pass attempts while tossing zero touchdowns vs. four interceptions.