Here's the situation as the Bengals go into Sunday's opener (1 p.m.-Cincinnati’s FOX19) against the Buccaneers at Paycor Stadium:

Never in his eight seasons has Bengals head coach Zac Taylor committed so much of their time to situational football in the spring and summer.

Veterans like Orlando Brown Jr., who won a Super Bowl with eight seconds left and broke in under the most successful special teams head coach ever in John Harbaugh, say they have never seen as much of it as they have getting ready for Tampa Bay.

"Who knows how many times we'll be in those situations?" Brown asks after Thursday's practice. "But it definitely gives everybody a lot more comfort knowing we've done the work. A lot of the big emphasis was on every kind of situation, and to me, that's the best part. We've gone over it all."

A painstaking notetaker, Taylor let his guys have it after the preseason opener when he wasn't exactly enthralled with the way they finished the win over Detroit. If they thought there was a lot of emphasis on the four-minute-end-of-half-end-of-game stuff in camp, just wait.

Captain and center Ted Karras, fresh off viewing Seattle's nervy win over the Patriots that opened the NFL season, knows it's a harbinger.

"It came down to who executed better in a two-minute situation," Karras says. "Most NFL games are decided by four and seven points. One or two situations can make the difference. We have a lot of coaches on staff who are very knowledgeable, and Sam Francis, our data guy, is a very good presenter."

Taylor said earlier this week he went back through the last two years of tape and didn't limit the review to the tough moments of 12 one-score losses or the seven ties and/or leads lost in the fourth quarter. His staff, headed up by Francis, the club's director of football research, eviscerated the rest of the league for all sorts of situations.

"I'm talking about five minutes extra a day. It's not anything Earth-shattering," Taylor says. "But you get a chance to show players the video of the situations we have been in that have decided games the last two years."

With defensive coordinator Al Golden in place for a second year, Taylor hopped on the advantages of continuity in all three phases.

"We've been in so many of those situations in years past. That's the benefit of the staff returning," Taylor said. "We have gone through the installs, especially on offense, and special teams a million times over the years. Al and his group two years now. I feel really good about a lot of guys returning. Now you get a chance to spend not just time on scheme in your area but situationally as a team."

Wide receiver Tee Higgins became a situational master last year when he broke away for what would have been a go-ahead touchdown, but he went down at the Steelers 7 with 1:39 left so that the Bengals could bleed the clock for a field goal that denied Aaron Rodgers any heroics.

Yet the play that inspired that happened maybe even before Higgins got into the league in a Kirk Cousins-Russell Wilson shootout. Still, it was tagged and in the Bengals' vault as Taylor grew the analytics department in the early days of his tenure.

The situational work this season is more offscript compared to the others, much like the last period of the joint practice the Bengals had with the Bears last month. Taylor did this a lot in training camp for both sides of the ball, giving them, say, a one-point lead with 3:30 left in the half or the game, and then letting them play it out.

"And we had two-minute drills rolled into that, too," says Brown, and it could evolve any number of ways with three-and-outs or role reversals with the lead.

A big part of that offscript script is running kicker Evan McPherson out there.

"We've worked at end of half, end of game trying to get into range and you could say we've definitely done that a lot more," McPherson says. "Definitely more situations this year.. Like kickoffs from the 50. If there's one second left, what do we do in that situation?"

Here's another situation.

Taylor is still reaping the benefits of one of his more underrated moves. Early in his run here, he appointed a different staffer to be in charge of situations, and guys like Dan Pitcher, now the offensive coordinator, say it helped expand their skills. So even though Francis is now the day-to-day situational coordinator, he has a knot of coaches who have been through it before.

"All these situations carry names, and the names carry rules," Pitcher says. "How you're supposed to behave within those moments and then take walkthrough time and, in some cases, full-speed reps and put guys into that mindset. And we will eventually get it. You just want to make sure guys aren't experiencing it for the first time.

"We could look (at tape) that happened to us, or it could be stuff that happened to other people around the league."

Bengals backup quarterback Joe Flacco, also schooled on situations at Harbaugh's Ravens, has been impressed by the diligence of this staff, which, by the way, in Harbsian fashion, has the most tenured special teams coordinator in the NFL in Darrin Simmons. If there's a situation Simmons hasn't seen, then it happened in rugby..

Don't worry, Flacco says, there's a situation that just happened.

"Maybe in the first two games, and they'll put it on  tape, and maybe we'll see it Saturday," Flacco says. "The big thing is having the situation come up and then being able to recognize it."

Like the Higgins play, certain situations from the past two years are seared into the mind. But it's just not those plays that Taylor has broken down. Or even this era.

"Us or other teams that sometimes you know a situation you've talked about a lot, but you've just never actually had to do it," Taylor says. "We haven't been in a ton of down, down clock situations where you've got to complete the ball, get down, spike it with one second left, like Chicago had in the preseason against us.

"We've repped it a billion times, but it's maybe happened once or twice in the last seven years here. One of them being 2019 in Miami. So, those are things that sometimes you just have to show other teams doing it because it just hasn't happened to you yet."

Taylor is referring to wide receiver Tyler Boyd's man-cave play in the 2019 Joe Burrow Derby in Miami that decided who got to draft Burrow No. 1. Paralyzed by a cramp, Boyd knew an injury timeout would ignite a 10-second runoff and end the Bengals' comeback. He got back to his feet , and the Bengals were able to force overtime.

"We've really put the work in on the practice field and made our players go through those exercises, and coaches go through those exercises, and you learn something new every year. I've been here," Taylor says.

And since this is an opener, you know there's going to be a situation.

Taylor's first four openers were decided in the fourth quarter or overtime. The last two were decided by a total of seven points. Bucs quarterback Baker Mayfield was lethal in the last quarter last year with four comeback wins.

The situation is this Sunday. There's going to be a situation.

"I feel like you see the great teams make those wild plays look normal," McPherson says. "They don't happen all the time, but when they come up, you want to execute them the way you're supposed to do it and cleanly."