Let us, in the words of Willy Wonka, enter a world of pure imagination, a world in which the past two weeks were a statistically accurate microcosm of the whole NFL season. A world in which Joe Burrow performed at the level he has in the past fortnight over a full 17-game season.
Should the Cincinnati Bengals quarterback do that, he would be on pace to throw more than 6,500 yards and almost 60 touchdowns, with no interceptions. Needless to say they would all be NFL records and then some.
While we’re at it, let’s be similarly fanciful and extrapolate his team’s results. If we’re going on the past two games alone, on the back of such stellar performances from their quarterback, they would achieve… an 0-17 season. Yes, for all Burrow’s wizardry, the Bengals lost 34-27 to the Chargers and 35-34 to the Baltimore Ravens in consecutive weeks to fall to 4-7 on the year.
As Opta STATS points out: ‘Joe Burrow is the first QB in NFL history to throw for 300+ yards with 3+ TD passes and 0 INT in back-to-back games but lose both in regulation.’
In fact Burrow now has more losses in a single season (three) with those statistics than Tom Brady had in his entire 23-year career (two), according to CBS Sports research.
But this is not about Burrow. How can it be when he attains such a level and the team finds different ways to lose each time?
The games each played out in a similar vein – a team opens a lead, their opponents fight back, the game is decided on the last play, Bengals lose.
Last Sunday against the Chargers they fell 27-6 behind, fought back to parity, but then they found a way to lose the game to a JK Dobbins touchdown with 18 seconds left on the clock after momentum stalled.
Against the Ravens, the Bengals flipped the script: they opened up a 21-7 lead in the third quarter, were pegged back and lost when they failed in a two-point conversion when an extra point would have sent it to overtime.
Maybe Zac Taylor was scarred by the overtime defeat by the Ravens in week five; maybe he’s just not as clever as he thinks he is. Maybe Ja’Marr Chase can pinpoint the reason for the narrow defeats?
‘I play football on the field,’ Chase said in the locker after the Chargers defeat. ‘I don’t call plays for us, you know? So I can’t really do nothing.’
Except he can – he can shine a light on the discontent that appears to be simmering at a franchise that has failed to kick on from its Super Bowl appearance in Burrow’s stellar sophomore year.
As for the reasons for dissatisfaction, take your pick. Blame the front office for underwhelming drafting and poor personnel decisions; or look at the coaches for poor playcalling, the players for poor play.
With Chase, there are also personal issues with the front office stemming from their summer impasse over a new contract, so grumbling is to be expected. But this too speaks to the wider problem of a franchise that doesn’t seem to fully grasp what it takes to give their star player the best shot at success.
Burrow has said that the Bengals’ Super Bowl window is open as long as he’s there. Obviously saying that he was aware it might be closed each year on the field by Patrick Mahomes or Josh Allen; not by his own organization at pretty much every turn.
Burrow has been sacked 26 times this season. It is the 11th most in the NFL and not exactly fulfilling the Bengals’ aims of keeping their star man upright. Yes, in the year they got to the Super Bowl he was sacked 51 times in the regular season but that is simply not sustainable, and it speaks to his talent that he is putting up such numbers behind a porous offensive line.
James Dator in SB Nation wrote: ‘Of course, it doesn’t help either when every draft pick Cincinnati has spent on their OL has turned into a pumpkin with Adarius Mims, their first pick in the 2024 draft, currently leading the league in penalties, and ranked 2nd in the league in sacks allowed by a lineman.’
No organisation lands with every Draft pick, but when a franchise appears to fail with every Draft pick, they either need better scouting, or be better at helping the player make the step to the NFL.
But it is not just the O-line.
The defensive rankings do not make for pretty reading: 24th in yards allowed – 23rd against the pass and 21st against the rush. Obviously, these are not the worst in the league, nor are they the marks of a team harboring hopes of reaching the Super Bowl. That said, in the year they reached the big game, in the 2021 season, they were 18th in yards conceded per game. Crucially they were 12th in points conceded. While they rode Burrow’s hot hand that year, it smacks of a team who have failed to address the deficiencies.
Against the Chargers the defense gave up 272 yards in the first half alone; kicker Evan McPherson missed two fourth-quarter field goals (admittedly at 48 and 51 yards they were by no means chip shots). This season Bengals have shipped 296 points. Only the Jaguars and Panthers – both 310 – have conceded more.
‘We are watching an MVP quarterback and a triple-crown-winning wide receiver be wasted in Cincinnati,’ said Dan Orlovksky, the NFL quarterback-turned-pundit.
In a more realistic assessment, Burrow is on pace for a 4,600-yard season, with 42 touchdowns, and six interceptions. He should be in the MVP conversation, but barring miracles he won’t be.
The single-season record stands at the 5,477 yards thrown by Peyton Manning for the 2013 Broncos. In the same year he threw for a league record 55 touchdowns, but their season ultimately ended in a humbling defeat by the Seahawks in the Super Bowl.
But right now it is hard to see the Bengals even making the playoffs – a more apposite comparison for Burrow would be Matt Ryan’s 2018 season. The Falcons quarterback had a passer rating of 108.1 with 4,924 yards, 35 touchdowns and seven interceptions. The Falcons finished 7-9 and missed out on the playoffs.
He has been helped by throwing to Chase, who is the first receiver to pass 1,000 yards this season and stands 144 yards ahead of Justin Jefferson, and Tee Higgins has been his usual reliable self, when fit.
But the running game has fallen victim to mismanagement. They were prepared to let Joe Mixon walk for nothing, before trading him to the Texans for a seventh-round pick. ‘In my situation, I had no choice but to feel like I got to take that s*** personal,’ he said recently.
His replacement, Chase Brown, has 607 yards and five touchdowns. Yes, Mixon at the same stage last year had 621 yards and four scores, but has 764 yards and ten touchdowns this season – having played only eight games with the Texans. That is an indictment of the Bengals and a failure to appreciate what they had, and a failure to get their best out of a high-class player.
As Dator adds: ‘As much as people might want to will Chase Brown into that role [RB1] he’s 121st in the league in yards-per-attempt, getting mediocre numbers off volume rather than quality.’
Some of Burrow’s best performances have come in defeats – in the week five loss to the Bengals he threw for 392 yards and five touchdowns; in Week 3, a 38-33 defeat by the Commanders brought three passing touchdowns and 324 yards.
Is it that the team relax when Burrow is on song assuming that he, Chase and Higgins will see them right? Do the defense panic when required to keep their side of the bargain? They need to use this bye week to find answers.
Coach Taylor, in public at least, is not throwing in the towel just yet. He has gone on record saying: ‘We believe in our guys. We’ve got good systems in place, and we’re going to hang in there and support each other and find a way to get this thing done. And if we can get it done, it’s going to be a dang good season.
‘It’s not so far what we would have written for ourselves, but I tell you, I stand here today with the utmost belief that we can still get this done on the back half of our schedule.’
It’s hard to say what grounds he has for such optimism. Maybe he’s just trying out that world of pure imagination.
