CINCINNATI – The sentiment surrounding struggling Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Jake Browning has gone from “unwavering” support Wednesday to an evaluation stage Sunday to “we’ll see” today.

Bengals head coach Zac Taylor did not say that Browning will start Sunday in Green Bay.

Nor did he say Browning won’t.

The deadline to make the decision on Browning – who is 0-3 as a starter and has thrown eight interceptions in the previous last four games, including three in Sunday’s 37-24 loss to the Lions – is less than 48 hours away.

At 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, the Bengals will hold their first practice of the week, and Taylor made it clear the decision has to be made before the team walks across the street for the 105-minute session.

“It’s just every rep is critical,” he said. “I mean, if you get two reps on a play during the course of the week, a pass play, that’s quite a bit. You know, two full speed reps. So it’s difficult to balance quarterbacks.

“You’re in on one quarterback and need to get a move on,” Taylor added. “And you got to find ways to evaluate the other guys that are on the team in different ways, whether that’s on practice squad, whether that’s in group install period. You have to use every resource because it is very challenging during the season to get multiple guys reps, to evaluate how they’re going to look in your offense, with your receivers and the alignment and all that stuff. It’s just a real challenge.”

The variables are plentiful.

They start with Sunday’s fourth quarter against the Lions, in which Browning threw three touchdown passes to dress up what had been a 28-3 deficit.

Regardless of whether the Detroit players already had one foot in the showers at that point, Browning showed some glimpses of what he was able to do in 2023 to warrant one more start.

Does that matter?

“Nobody wants to hear that because if you don’t win, nobody cares; including us,” Bengals offensive coordinator Dan Pitcher said. “You care in that you take the next day, you try to remove the emotion, the disappointment and then look at it from a more scientific lens in what can we take that was positive? How do we build off of this?

“There’s no moral victories,” He continued. “We’re not in that business. That doesn’t give any of us much consolation. But we’ll look at what we did well toward the end of that game, and we’ll see what can translate moving forward.”

Another variable that could be in play is what we heard, not saw.

Browning turned his postgame news conference into a therapy session, but he didn’t stop at just accepting blame and harshly criticizing himself.

His admission that mistakes are more mental than physical and born of frustration could give Taylor, Pitcher and the rest of the staff pause about whether he’s in the right headspace to lead the offense.

“We had a long conversation today,” Pitcher said. “You feel for him. It’s something that most athletes can relate to going through, a similar stretch. It’s really difficult when you’re doing it in front of the world, and you’re not playing up to your own standards and having a hard time pulling yourself out of it.

“You be there to support that guy, and because you trust in him and you believe in him, and you want to see him have success,” Pitcher added. “All at the same time, you know, it’s a results-based deal. And you know the play has got to be better. He knows that, and you just try to help him through it.”

Wide receivers Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins said they still have confidence in Browning after Sunday’s loss.

That’s a variable that carries considerable weight.

Not only are they the best two healthy players on offense, they have hundreds of reps banked with Browning, not just in his seven-game starting stint in 2023, but in all of the training camp practices Burrow has missed with the appendectomy, calf and wrist injuries.

“We’ll see where it goes,” Taylor said. “Like all personnel decisions, we’ve got to evaluate it. Jake’s been very accountable for how the game went for him. I’ve got to be accountable for how the game went for me as well. And so we’ll continue to progress here through the days.”

Is the waffling legitimate uncertainty?

Or is it simply gamesmanship as Taylor prepares to face his best friend in the NFL coaching fraternity, Matt LaFleur?

Does backup Brett Rypien, who has been a member of the team for 40 days, have a good enough of a grasp on the offense.

How long before Mike White or Sean Clifford, who were signed to the practice squad 20 days ago, would be considered options?

“We do try to create some opportunities to isolate them and let them kind of get things staged during practice to perform, which we’ve done over the years,” Taylor said. “And so we try to look for assistant position coaches a lot of times to work with those guys as well, to try to elevate their game, so that we’re making progress with them from a developmental standpoint as the season goes on. So that’s a critical part of – I hate saying the bottom part of your roster – but it’s those 16 guys on practice squad. You’re going to be counting on them at some point, and we don’t want them to go by the wayside.”

“As they’re running our scout teams, we try our best to use our terminology so they can picture that and they can apply it and we can evaluate them as they rep some of the things that we rep, so there’s a lot of lot that goes into that and trying to make sure that we fully evaluate when the situation occurs where we want to call somebody up that maybe we have acquired from somewhere else that wasn’t in our training camp or an offseason program, you feel like you got information that could give you your best guess on how they are going to perform.”

All of the variables likely go out the window if Browning gets the start Sunday and it looks like the last three weeks.

The idea of changing quarterbacks on a short week with a Thursday game – as Week 7 will be with the Pittsburgh Steelers coming to town four days after the Bengals play the Packers – seems crazy.

“There’s a lot of things we’ve grown into over the course of six years or whatever it has been. Jake has been there for five of those,” Pitcher said. “It would be unrealistic to think somebody who hasn’t been here, not saying you have to be here all five years to be able to do those things, but it’s different.”

If the Bengals stick with Browning and the offense continues to struggle, 2-5 is a real possibility.

If they make a change this week and it fails spectacularly, going back to Browning in a short week would be doable from a logistics standpoint.

But Browning already is struggling with confidence, so how would a benching affect that dynamic?

Contingencies aside, riding with Browning in Green Bay seems like the most likely choice.

“Obviously we’re battling through it right now as an offense,” Pitcher said. “And when you find yourself there, it’s hard. It feels like it’s going to take a Herculean effort sometimes, and that’s not necessarily true.

“It’s really just a matter of making the plays that are in front of you,” he added. “I just think that that’s kind of where he’s at right now.”