AFC North Notes: Evan McPherson, Marcus Williams, Bengals, Browns, Ravens

Bengals

Cincinnati K Evan McPherson missed a 54-yard attempt which was his fourth miss of the season already. McPherson isn’t worried about his struggles and knows what he needs to improve going forward.

“I just missed kicks. It happens every now and then,” McPherson said, via SI.com’s Jay Morrison. “It just can’t happen in those situations. I’m gonna work on it this week and get rolling back, and I know we’ll be fine.”

“I just pulled it a little bit and the wind didn’t help me out any. I’ve just got to know how to handle that situation for next time. It’s funny because I hit the ball about as well as I could have. But I think I just started the ball a little too far left and probably pulled it just a hair, and the wind definitely magnified it.”

• Bengals HC Zac Taylor said WR Tee Higgins (quad) spent Wednesday’s practice with their training staff, per Jay Morrison. 
• Cincinnati QB Joe Burrow said third-round WR Jermaine Burton has earned more playing time after playing well in Week 8 and practice over the last couple of weeks, via Ben Baby.

Browns

• Browns OC Ken Dorsey said he likes to call plays from the booth because it allows him to see the game differently than on the sideline: “You see the game very differently. It’s almost like playing a video game. You see things unfold as it’s happening. You rely on coaches on field for what’s going on down there.” (Scott Petrak)
• Browns G Joel Bitonio said his foot injury is improving but is unsure if he’ll be available for Week 9: “[It] is getting better every day…working through it right now. We will see how the week goes.” (Zac Jackson)

Ravens

Ravens HC John Harbaugh was asked to clarify why S Marcus Williams was benched and said that it was a “personnel decision” that the team would like to make internally.

“I don’t really think I have anything else to say about that,” Harbaugh said, via The Athletic. “There’s a lot of things going on all the time. A lot of it is kind of our business. It belongs in-house. It’s between us, and it’s not something that we need to tell everybody everything about. I don’t think you’re telling everybody about your family business. … There are some things that we can just choose to kind of keep to ourselves, and that’s going to be one of them. I never get up here and talk about why we put guys up or put guys down — I never have, so I’m probably not going to start doing that now.”

Harbaugh reiterated that Williams is still in the team’s plans, although he didn’t say whether or not he would be active on Sunday.

“I’m not going to try to get into too much about who’s going to play and who’s not going to play in the game, but I’ll just reiterate what I said before: Marcus is a heck of a player,” Harbaugh said. “I have the utmost confidence in him as a player, as a person, as a pro. He’s a great person; he’s a hard worker. Plays hard, practices hard, does everything at the highest level, and I anticipate him playing great football for us all season and very soon.”

Harbaugh said that the team will continue to churn out different rotations as they look to solve their defensive woes.

“It depends on what kind of changes are available to us,” Harbaugh said when asked about potential defensive changes. “We’re going to continue to turn over every stone with our defense and with every other part of our team, too, to get as good as we can get it over the course of a long season. Ups and downs, challenges, good plays and not good plays, so there’s a lot of things we can improve on. We’ll do whatever we can do.”