Bengals safety Russ Yeast, who nearly lost a leg to football, has never lost his mind, bearings, or composure, according to a straw poll of coaches and teammates.

"Unshakable," is what safeties coach Jordan Kovacs calls him. "Invaluable at that position.'

As starting safety Jordan Battle listens to Yeast roll off the notes of a meeting, he says, "Russ does it in the coolest, smoothest way. He's the most mellow, coolest dude on the team."

Even this week, another one of injury and uncertainty at Paycor Stadium in the secondary and at wide receiver as they prep for the Dolphins Sunday (1 p.m, Cincinnati’s FOX19) in Miami.

After Thursday practice, it looked like Yeast was playing. Just like he did Sunday here against the Jags when he played his first game in nearly two years.

Backup safety Kyle Dugger (quad) didn't practice again and starter Bryan Cook (ankle) was easing back in limited. But Friday may bring something else. Maybe after practice. Or maybe getting on the plane Saturday. Will he or won't he? He knows he'll get on the plane, but as tourist or tackler?

But, hell, that's nothing. For about two or three weeks at Louisville's Norton's Hospital as Thanksgiving turned into Christmas during 2019, Yeast didn't know if he'd keep his leg. Never mind play again.

"We went through rehab during COVID. It was just me and him. Work ethic off the charts," says Matt Summers, the Bengals trainer now and the Louisville trainer then who got him to the hospital just in time.

Couldn't walk for two months. At Norton for 35 days with his mother coming up from Danville, about 80 minutes away, staying with him while she worked her commercial realty job remotely. He stared at four surgeries in front of what looked to be an impossible 2020 season at Louisville.

"It was a good moment of time where I really was kind of contemplating," Yeast says. "Trying to figure out what my life was going to look like."

Never mind playing against the Dolphins Sunday.

"Just staying mentally ready. All the things that I've been through in my life, been through in my football career, so anything like that is pretty easy for me to do," says Yeast Thursday, just off the field from a walkthrough he took some of the reps against Kovacs' cans disguised as Dolphins.

"There's always worse things. So just be happy and be joyful about the opportunity that you have, and be happy to come into the building every day. You have to be ready because you never know when the time comes and you have to play two weeks in a row when you haven't played two weeks prior to that."

Kovacs is dividing up the snaps in walkthrough and practice because that's just the way it is this week of unknowns. The Dolphins might be winless, but they are an early-season complication with a new coaching staff and a quarterback in Malik Willis who is drop-dead gifted.

"A lot of play-action. Misdirection," Kovacs says. "Plus, it's early in the season, so there are going to be those in-game adjustments. The biggest thing is a lot of  pre-snap motions, pre-snap window dressing. Our message is just do a good job communicating. Get your cleats in the ground. Play fast."

Yeast, born a week after the Bengals took his dad in the last draft of the 20th century, is the consummate play-fast veteran who reflects the Bengals' philosophy when it comes to the practice squad.

"We really prefer to develop our practice squad players. We're not just here for two weeks and spit them out and go look at somebody different," said head coach Zac Taylor this week.

"And I think there's been a lot of ways that's paid off for us over the years, where guys have been here for two years, three years, even finally get an opportunity. They know the system inside out. They go in there, do their job, allow others around them to do their job, and have played significant roles for us."

There are different demographics of practice squad players as the Bengals walk the line between developing young players with traits that fit their systems, and vets who can help right away in an emergency.

Take PJ Jules, the safety who rotated with Yeast last Sunday and took a career-high 40 snaps. Undrafted, he served for a year on the practice squad before graduating to the roster last year as a special teams ace who took eight snaps from scrimmage.

Known for developing their receivers, undrafted Jordan Moore is in his second season on the squad while undrafted rookie Noah Thomas, like Jules, is putting in his time because they like what he offered in camp. Both are the lean, lanky kind of receivers the Bengals love to cultivate.

By the time Russ Yeast arrived at the headquarters of his favorite team growing up, it was after the cutdown of 2025. A late-round pick of the Rams in 2022, he was on his fourth team and 26, a year older than Craig Yeast when he played his last season with the Jets after running routes with rookie wide receiver Chad Johnson at the Bengals' Georgetown College training camp, a 15-minute ride from where Craig played at the University of Kentucky.

Look on Russ Yeast's right arm after Thursday's practice. A tattoo of a photo from that camp. Craig holding Russ while Russ peeked from under his dad's striped helmet.

First, they loved Russ Yeast in L.A., where he played 33 games, two fewer than Craig played during his NFL career. Then they didn't love him.

"The thing about him," says Craig Yeast, Russ' coach at Ohio's Ross-Fremont High School, "is he's always going to be prepared, and he wants to play, and he cares about it. That's the most important thing for him. He is a professional. He's a highly intelligent individual on and off the field, and he cares about it."

Matt Summers, the Bengals director of sports medicine, found that out when he was at Louisville all those years ago. Russ Yeast came into the training room the day after the '19 home finale against Syracuse for the weekly injury re-check following a painful night of no sleep.

The knee was bad, but there was something more as Summers felt below the knee, where there was sharp, intense pain. It felt tight. Something wasn't right, and Summers knew the right thing was to get him to the hospital quickly.

Lower leg compartment syndrome. The blood rushed into the compartments, and the fear was amputation or drop foot.

"A loss of a lot of functionality," Summers says. "They went right into surgery, both sides of the lower leg, and drained the blood of there."

With COVID, the four surgeries and the endless rehab, they somehow got back for the 2020 opener. It is, Kovacs believes, an example of why the practice squad guys elicit the most emotion from their teammates on Sundays.

"It's like being a walk-on in college," says Kovacs, a walk-on at Michigan who was also a practice squad player for, of all teams, the Dolphins. "These guys are really the lifeblood, the culture of your program.

"You can look at the practice squad the same way. These guys carry the culture in some way. They've overcome a lot. As a teammate, coach, you love those guys … When a guy like that who hasn't been out there in a long time makes plays, that's the most amped up an NFL sideline gets.

Yeast and Jules are one in the same but vastly different. Yeast overcame his injury to get 20 snaps in a playoff game with the Rams. Jules overcame poverty and a stutter to play the most demanding defensive position at the highest level when it comes to communication. Jules is a ball of fire, a guy Battle has to remind, "PJ, take it easy on your teammates." The glacial Yeast is back there calculating.

"When he was a sophomore," Craig Yeast says of his high school days, "I asked him to get up and explain the play that we were installing, and he was able to get up and articulate every detail of what I was looking for in that play, from the offensive line to the quarterback to the tight ends to the receivers and to the running back, he knew every single detail. He knew exactly what to say. He could also draw it while he was talking."

That's why Craig thinks he'll be a coach. Battle's not so sure. He knows there is a business in his hometown of Danville, Ky., called "Yeast Stables," where the family has show horses. Standard-breds. A Saddle-bred. Some ponies.

"He could be a coach," Battle says. "But I think he'll be a rancher."

This week, he sounds like a coach.

"Communication is going to be key this week. Just like  like any other game," Russ Yeast says. "You know, getting the guys lined up, getting our cleats in the ground, just so we can play fast and keep it simple for the week."

Even if he's not.

"Either way," says Russ Yeast of a who-knows-who-dey week, "you have to be prepared."