CINCINNATI -- Hue Jackson left the Cincinnati Bengals' practice fields Tuesday afternoon fuming.
Upset over sloppy, inconsistent play from his players, the offensive coordinator had only one thing on his mind: making fixes.
As the Bengals opened this week's joint practices with the New York Giants, bad snaps, dropped passes, fumbled carries and penalties marred the day for Cincinnati's offense. The collective performance was a step back from where Jackson's unit had been trying to progress entering Friday's preseason opener.
"We're just not going to stand for that. That's unacceptable," Jackson said. "We've got to get it fixed."
Although clearly perturbed by some of the miscues the Bengals had, Jackson still felt no need to panic. While it may be running thin, his patience hasn't completely expired. After all, it's still the early stages of training camp, and the Sept. 13 regular-season opener at Oakland remains a little more than a month away.
"There's no wake-up call. It's practice," Jackson said. "These things are going to happen when you practice against other teams. These are unfortunate things, but these are learning moments so they don't happen when you really play. That's the key."
It wasn't all negative for Jackson on Tuesday, though. He was pleased by some of what the Bengals showcased in red zone drills late in the practice. He was particularly energized by the two scoring receptions A.J. Green had from Andy Dalton. Green opened those final exercises by putting a double move on a Giants cornerback before catching the pass as he crossed the plane of the goal line.
Green's next time up finished with a catch after he slipped past Giants safety and former Bengals defensive back Jeromy Miles.
"My expectation for the group is through the roof. And they know that," Jackson said of his offense. "We have to be that way all the time. We can't be slow starters, we have to be fast starters in everything that we do. We want to dictate to teams, and not have teams dictate to us."
Here are a couple more observations from the practice:
While the Bengals' offense may have struggled, their defense -- namely the cornerbacks and safeties -- had good back-and-forth battles with the Giants' skill players. Cincinnati corner Adam Jones started off a set of one-on-one drills by breaking up a pass to New York's Preston Parker. On the very next play, Bengals fourth-year corner Dre Kirkpatrick jumped in front of another pass from Giants quarterback Eli Manning and sprinted back for a likely pick-six."'Pacman,' Kirkpatrick, both those guys are good at press coverage," Manning said. "We tried to throw a couple to get over the top. But we had to throw some back-shoulder balls. They were all pretty well contested. There was a completed one, but they covered a couple of them, as well. The one-on-ones, that was good for our one-on-one, just going against different corners and different techniques. There were a lot of contested throws and guys going for the ball. That's what you want."
After fights dominated storylines at other camps in recent days, civility ruled over Tuesday's joint practice. The Bengals and Giants kept their cool."Guys were still playing tough and guys were still getting aggressive," Kirkpatrick said, "but we knew the lines and limits to play."