You could be forgiven if you got a sense of deja vu watching the Cincinnati Bengals and Los Angeles Chargers last Sunday. For the second week in a row, Joe Burrow torched a defense. He hit one dazzling pitch after another. In the final tally, he threw for 356 yards, three touchdowns and didn’t turn the ball over. And yet the result was the same: the Bengals lost by one score.
What Burrow is doing this season is unprecedented. Never before has a quarterback played at such a high level, with such a heavy workload, while being let down by almost everyone around him. Only Tony Romo in 2010 and Aaron Rodgers in 2018 came close, but even that duo had the benefit of solid protection against their linemen. Not Burrow. Burrow has outscored every quarterback in the league, despite flailing those around him.
The loss to the Chargers marked the third time this season that Cincy has lost in a game where Burrow has thrown for over 300 yards with three touchdowns and zero interceptions. According to NFL research, Burrow is the only quarterback since the league merged in 1970 to post those numbers in three losses in a single year. With the latest effort, he became the first quarterback in league history to put up such production back to back games. To put that in context, Tom Brady only played two such games in his entire 23-year career, according to CBS Sports. Weft.
The Bengals are 1-6 in one-score games this season, a notoriously weak measure of how good a team is Actually is, and 4-7 overall. A bounce of the ball, a sloppy play call, a decisive call (or non-decision) or a defensive stop can tilt a one-score game in either direction. Finally, we like to ascribe virtues to teams that achieve one-score victories. They are tougher – or smarter. They wanted it more. Their ‘culture’ has won them over. Sometimes those things are true: great teams limit penalties and execute the small details that can make the difference in a game decided in one or two plays. But sometimes we chase those clichés as comfort food to mask the obvious: it’s happiness. One-score games are little more than a toss-up.
Related: NFL offenses struggle with two-point conversions. Nobody knows why
In the case of the Bengals, both are true. They have faced bad luck And botched plays at crucial moments, or too often dug themselves into a hole that even Burrow couldn’t drag them out of. There are missed field goals, decisive holding penalties, garbled coverage and blows that prompt calls for must-have-it downs that, had any of them gone the other way, would have been the difference between winning and losing. They have lost one-score games against AFC heavyweights: the Chiefs, Chargers and twice against the Ravens. In all four games, Burrow was nearly flawless, throwing for 1,428 yards and 15 touchdowns with one interception.
It’s almost impressive to lose six close games with a quarterback playing so well. Burrow’s numbers this season are insane. He has thrown for 3,028 yards and 27 touchdowns and has only four interceptions to his name so far. He is on his way to the best rush season of his career, as he rushed to make something happen. He tops the league in QBR and is third in the RBSDM composite, which measures the value of a play and how much the quarterback can be considered responsible for the value. In a normal year, Burrow would be at the top of the ballots for the league’s most prestigious hardware. Instead, he’ll have to compete for the final playoff spot in a crappy AFC wild-card race (NFL.com gives the Bengals a 12% chance of making the postseason). Most likely, the Bengals will be on the outside looking in by the time the postseason rolls around.
When asked after the loss in LA if this was the most frustrating season of his career, Burrow replied: “Yes.” Why? “It goes without saying,” Burrow said. “Our margin for error is small…I have to make those plays. We all have to make those plays.
It was just three seasons ago that Burrow led the Bengals on an improbable Super Bowl run. Back then, everything came together around the quarterback. Cincinnati had a solid run game, one of the most dynamic receiving corps in the league, a playful defense and a clutch kicker. Besides his receivers, everything else has collapsed around the quarterback this season.
The team’s defense, once a calling card, has fallen off a cliff, coughing up 26.9 points per game, the fifth-worst total in the league. Only the Panthers — a franchise with a CFL roster on defense — have been worse against the run this year. The team’s pass rush is also gone, with only Trey Hendrickson providing a reliable threat. They have fallen to 28th in the league in sack percentage in eleven weeks. And this is a unit that the Bengals have prioritized. They are spending more on their defensive line this season than all but three teams and have drafted more defensive linemen than any other franchise since 2021. In terms of investment, there have been no worse returns since the election. NFT bubble.
They are just as sloppy in attack. All attempts to diversify the crime have failed. The group is still flowing like Burrow and his receivers, Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins, are flowing. They don’t have a run game, falling to 30th in the league in success rate (and that’s despite a defense afraid of getting blown over by Burrow and Chase!). Is this a good time to mention that they traded Joe Mixon, back to his prime in Houston, last offseason for a seventh-round pick?
To top it all off, their kicking game is flat. Evan McPherson, once seen as Justin Tucker’s heir apparent as the league’s premier kicker, now looks like 2024 Justin Tucker. McPherson has made just 50% of his kicks from 40+ yards this season and has made his last four missed punts from more than 50 yards, including whiffs against the Ravens and Chargers in one-score losses.
In addition, the Bengalis still face protection problems. Burrow has been hit more than any quarterback since entering the NFL. Part of that comes from him holding the ball and waiting for deep throws. But most of it is due to a sloppy offensive line. Despite throwing cash and draft capital at the problem, the Bengals still can’t put together a functional line. Since Week 5, the Bengals have allowed pressure on 40% of Burrow’s dropbacks, one of the worst numbers in the league. And Burrow continues to get drilled. According to Pro Football Focus, he has been hit 37 times this year. That’s twelve more than the nearest quarterback. They weren’t soft, nice to meet you hits either; they were crushing shots, including a few after the whistle. How long can he withstand this physical toll? He has already missed two seasons due to serious injuries, tearing his ACL in 2020 and tearing a ligament in his wrist last season.
When an offense focuses on a few pieces – in the Bengals’ case Burrow, Higgins and Chase – it becomes plodding and predictable. Yet, despite being under siege, Burrow has persevered and performed, putting together the best season of his career. Not only has he kept the Bengals’ offense afloat, he’s also pushed it into the top 10 in the worst stats. On a points-per-game basis, they rank sixth in the NFL. Can you imagine what it would look like with just a bad offensive line or a bad running game instead of the worst in the league?
If the MVP award is truly about “value,” it’s hard to think of anyone who has brought more to his unit than Burrow. Put a league-average quarterback — Russell Wilson or Baker Mayfield — in Burrow’s spot, and Cincinnati’s offense would crumble. Forget a possible late playoff push, without Burrow playing at his current level, the Bengals wouldn’t even be competitive.
Any hope that the Bengals can claw their way back into the playoffs rests on the idea that the team’s defense can finally get its head above water. But it would also require the run game to start chugging and Burrow’s protection to improve.
At this point they need a small miracle. But in some ways, the team has already experienced that miracle: Burrow is playing at an MVP level despite the chaos around him. Asking a quarterback to maintain that standard for an entire season is fanciful. At some point, the odds will certainly tilt in Burrow’s favor. A ball is tipped. He will misread a defense – like he did late against the Chargers. When the margin for error is so small and the quarterback is under constant pressure, he will eventually make a mistake. And if the Bengals drop one game because Burrow falls back to earth or takes one too many hits, their playoff hopes are over.
Many teams have ruined the careers of exceptional quarterbacks. But the Bengals make a case for earning a carving on Mount Rushmore. From the mishandling early in their careers, to the inability to commit Burrow’s main weapons to long-term deals, to the failure of a defensive rebuild, they’ve ticked all the boxes. They’ve wasted Burrow’s best time so far. Now one of the best quarterback seasons ever will become an afterthought. As far as team building goes, it’s inexcusable.
