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"Prove-It" Year For Burrow?


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I know most people and analyst are sold on Burrow; he's a top-5 QB and that's who he is.  He got us to a SB behind a terrible o-line and was really good for most of the season.  Now, his line should be closer to average and he still has all of his weapons, this should allow us to open up the playbook and not have to scheme around the line as much.  Three questions (though 1 & 3 are similar):

 

1.  Is there anyone out there waiting to see how this year goes before being all-in on Burrow?

2.  What makes Burrow great?

3.  Is this a prove it year or has Burrow already proven it?

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1. Anyone who isn’t already all in on Burrow hasn’t been paying attention 

2. Accuracy, fantastic football intelligence, ultra competitive, ice water liquid nitrogen in his veins

3. Already 

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He hard-carried this team to a SB while getting sacked 100+ times.  If they'd signed even an average FA OL last year we'd probably have the first franchise SB win.  

 

What more do we need to see?  Turning water into wine?

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He's already proven it. 

 

He's in line for a huge contract but I think he'll likely not ask for top dollar (ie more guaranteed money with a lower salary average) and might wait until 2024 for his second contract. That leaves more on the table for his team mates. 

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33 minutes ago, WRAPradio said:

I know most people and analyst are sold on Burrow; he's a top-5 QB and that's who he is.  He got us to a SB behind a terrible o-line and was really good for most of the season.  Now, his line should be closer to average and he still has all of his weapons, this should allow us to open up the playbook and not have to scheme around the line as much.  Three questions (though 1 & 3 are similar):

 

1.  Is there anyone out there waiting to see how this year goes before being all-in on Burrow?

2.  What makes Burrow great?

3.  Is this a prove it year or has Burrow already proven it?

 

 

Not sure if his passing yards will be better this year.. We have a better o-line which will open up Mixon as well. Mixon is better than what he's showed us so far because the O-line sucked. So From Burrow I am looking for 4000+yds 30+TDs and 12-ints. 

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If the NFL did a fantasy draft and all teams started from scratch, Burrow would be the #1 pick if I was choosing first.

 

There isn't a single player more valuable to their team than Burrow is to the Bengals. This is a 5-12 team without him. He deserves to be the highest paid player in the NFL when his contact is up and for once you will be able to say he's worth every penny (value wise).

 

* For the record, if I was picking #2 and Burrow was taken with the first pick, I would take Justin Herbert as I think from a talent and youth standpoint he's the closest value to Burrow (over Mahomes). If I was picking #3 and Burrow and Herbert were both gone I would take Chase.

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While I absolutely agree with the consensus of opinions above, I do think there are still some out there with the mindset of "same ole Bengals", "got lucky last year", etc.  To that end, I think there is still some out there who do think this year is kind of a "prove it" year...but it maybe not so much for Burrow individually, but for the Bengals as a team.

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11 minutes ago, esjbh2 said:

While I absolutely agree with the consensus of opinions above, I do think there are still some out there with the mindset of "same ole Bengals", "got lucky last year", etc.  To that end, I think there is still some out there who do think this year is kind of a "prove it" year...but it maybe not so much for Burrow individually, but for the Bengals as a team.


It might be more of a “prove it” season for Zac Taylor.   
 

 

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14 minutes ago, BlackJesus said:

The confidence of knowing you're the best QB in the division ...

 

 

 

This is why I love the guy.. Already he's by far my most favorite Bengal QB ever. 

 

Dalton would have been a close second if he ever put black stripes in his hair.. dammit.. Wouold have been so epic. 

dalton.JPG

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As everyone else seems to agree, Burrow is a proven winner. There is no one in their right mind questioning Joe Big D*** Burrow!!

He already has the keys to the Franchise and the Lumina, picking the new guys up at the airport and taking them to dinner and a movie back at his place and having cupcakes, and milk 😄  Joking aside, as the QB you are either the Franchise type, that everyone believes can win every week, and can carry a team, or the Andy Dalton Trent Dilfer type that needs really good defense and supporting cast but in general is not going to lose games for you but not going to win a lot of shootouts either. We have a Franchise QB who is the complete package on and off the field, and I couldn`t be happier.

 

 

 

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43 minutes ago, CalifBengalfan said:

As everyone else seems to agree, Burrow is a proven winner. There is no one in their right mind questioning Joe Big D*** Burrow!!

He already has the keys to the Franchise and the Lumina, picking the new guys up at the airport and taking them to dinner and a movie back at his place and having cupcakes, and milk 😄  Joking aside, as the QB you are either the Franchise type, that everyone believes can win every week, and can carry a team, or the Andy Dalton Trent Dilfer type that needs really good defense and supporting cast but in general is not going to lose games for you but not going to win a lot of shootouts either. We have a Franchise QB who is the complete package on and off the field, and I couldn`t be happier.

 

 

 

Having said that, every year is a prove it year for every player. Think most of us have the confidence JB will be just fine.

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3 hours ago, WRAPradio said:

I know most people and analyst are sold on Burrow; he's a top-5 QB and that's who he is.  He got us to a SB behind a terrible o-line and was really good for most of the season.  Now, his line should be closer to average and he still has all of his weapons, this should allow us to open up the playbook and not have to scheme around the line as much.  Three questions (though 1 & 3 are similar):

 

1.  Is there anyone out there waiting to see how this year goes before being all-in on Burrow?

2.  What makes Burrow great?

3.  Is this a prove it year or has Burrow already proven it?

You know the answers to all those questions allready.

 

JB has no self made doubts on what this team can achieve

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7 hours ago, esjbh2 said:

While I absolutely agree with the consensus of opinions above, I do think there are still some out there with the mindset of "same ole Bengals", "got lucky last year", etc.  To that end, I think there is still some out there who do think this year is kind of a "prove it" year...but it maybe not so much for Burrow individually, but for the Bengals as a team.

 

its been a very telling offseason on talking heads who have hinted at this, one in a podcast i heard today said "the bengals had incredible luck with injuries last season, thats not something you see that often, they had almost no injured players". lol dude what. we had 1 starting lineman play all games? higgins missed time, Uzomah missed time, Awuzie missed time, daniels, and reader right? like half the starting players missed time. how are people this dense.

 

i will say, sure you cant likely have like 8 games with vital last second wins and big plays, but we also got better in the biggest hoels on the roster and added depth so they shouldnt have to.

 

one also said the AFCN is the toughest division in football, as if the AFCW didnt exist...

 

7 hours ago, Cricket said:


It might be more of a “prove it” season for Zac Taylor.   
 

 

 

lol wut. prove he can rebuild a trash roster into a winner? done prove he can win in the post season? done. prove he can drft successfully? done prove he can lure free agents? seems good there too. wtf is he gonna prove exactly?

 

9 hours ago, WRAPradio said:

I know most people and analyst are sold on Burrow; he's a top-5 QB and that's who he is.  He got us to a SB behind a terrible o-line and was really good for most of the season.  Now, his line should be closer to average and he still has all of his weapons, this should allow us to open up the playbook and not have to scheme around the line as much.  Three questions (though 1 & 3 are similar):

 

1.  Is there anyone out there waiting to see how this year goes before being all-in on Burrow?

2.  What makes Burrow great?

3.  Is this a prove it year or has Burrow already proven it?

 

he did seem kinda shook early in the superbowl, i know no one wants to talk about it. but i also dont blame him, and i wouldnt forsee that being an issue should he get that chance again.

 

4 hours ago, BlackJesus said:

IMG_20220519_225818.jpg

 

AY/PA is more telling, but then you cant factor scheme restricted by o-line talent or bad WR play, this stat is one of those i hate. as you can see garoppolo is second by dumping passes to his TE and Deebo for hella Yac. worthless information, IMPO. too many factors make these good or bad that dont really have anything to do with the QB.

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3 hours ago, GoBengals said:

 

he did seem kinda shook early in the superbowl, i know no one wants to talk about it. but i also dont blame him, and i wouldnt forsee that being an issue should he get that chance again.

 

 

 

If I remember correctly, LSU started slowly in the Championship game vs. Clemson, then got rolling.  Only concern I really have with Burrow is turning those 5 yard sacks into 12 yard sacks.  He makes so many plays by getting out of danger, but when it doesn't work it looks really bad and flips field position.  I guess there's a balance, you want him to make those plays, but based on time and score, he needs to know when to eat the ball or throw it away.

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You really are stretching to find something to complain about. An upgraded line will make a huge difference on his ability to extend plays. And, while we are here, I will 1,000,000 times out of 1,000,000 take Burrow looking to extend plays and make things happen downfield over Andy Dalton's approach...

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5 minutes ago, membengal said:

You really are stretching to find something to complain about. An upgraded line will make a huge difference on his ability to extend plays. And, while we are here, I will 1,000,000 times out of 1,000,000 take Burrow looking to extend plays and make things happen downfield over Andy Dalton's approach...

 

Not complaining at all, simply saying there are things he can work on, he's said as much himself.  He's going into his third year, normally the biggest year for a QB,

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Tom Brady says Tom Brady has things to work on. Any player always has things to work on. Stop setting up weird message board goalposts to find shit to complain about with a QB who just yanked this franchise within one fucking missed block of winning a super bowl coming off an ACL injury and a 4 win season. 

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Dehner has a lot of relevant Burrow chatter/thoughts in today's piece at the Athletic:

 

https://theathletic.com/3323813/2022/05/20/this-week-in-bengals-joe-burrow/?source=emp_shared_article

 

Quote

 

For months since the Super Bowl, Joe Burrow was off the grid. Off the media grid, anyway.

 

He laid low, showed up at a UFC event, in the shadows of wedding pictures golfing in Arizona or in sweatpants helping land free agents at Jeff Ruby’s.

 

His voice was heard again this past week, loud and clear. He stepped in front of the mic for 15 minutes with media at Paul Brown Stadium on Tuesday and had an hour-plus conversation on the popular Full Send Podcast drop the same day.

 

Burrow doesn’t like doing these things. He again admitted as much to the guys at Full Send. He got bored, he said, and gave into their request and scooted down the road to record at Ruby’s.

 

He made headlines, but for the right reasons. As he admitted on Full Send, he’s really good at verbalizing what he wants to say and understanding its impact.

This isn’t news at all. What Burrow provided this week was a reminder.

 

Despite a narrative of concern that the regression-candidate Bengals could struggle to deal with both success of last year and the failure of losing the Super Bowl, there was their leader, cool as ever, sending the ideal message in the smoothest ways possible.

 

• “I am not going to accept losing.”
• “I watched (the Super Bowl) the next day. I just treated it like any other game week that week after. I watched it the day after and saw the things I need to improve and the things we did well and moved on.”
• “I’ve played in state championships, played in a ton of big games in college and at the time, those are the biggest games of your life, just like the Super Bowl was. I’ve lost a bunch of those games before it. I know how to handle losing and come back stronger.”
• “We have the experience now. Going into last year, we knew we were good, but I think going into the playoffs, we knew we could win but we weren’t really sure what it took. We just went out there and played really hard and together as a team and it worked out. Now, we know what it takes and we have that experience in our back pockets going forward.”

 

Confidence. Focus. Stability. Reinforcing the standard.

 

All four traits will be integral parts of recalibrating for 2022 and carry over the momentum from the end of the year.

 

Sure, Burrow was answering questions from us. He was also speaking directly to the locker room delivering the perfect message.

 

Nobody should be shocked Burrow said all the right things. That’s part of what makes him the entire package and an invaluable gift that keeps on giving. It’s also why so many of the narratives about the Bengals being lucky or a fluke don’t compute to those who’ve paid close attention to the inner workings of this franchise.

Burrow’s innate ability to portray the necessary message of the coaches and another year of understanding what it takes to reach the end goal is the ultimate Kryptonite to complacency.

 

This week was the latest reminder of that.

 

“What I try to do as a leader is put some heart into what Zac (Taylor) has to say to the team and take my spin of it,” Burrow said. “I think that’s the quarterback’s job to portray the message that the head coach is bringing down and trickle it amongst the locker room.”

 

Whether being asked to start and lead immediately as a rookie, bounce back from a gnarly ACL injury or recenter a team coming off a loss in the Super Bowl, you get the same casual, confident, competitive focus on the work that’s driven every step of his success. And consequently, the rejuvenated success of this organization.

Even as the Vegas odds turn against the Bengals, his return to the public eye restored the 2021 mantra: Don’t bet against Joe Burrow.

 

This week in Burrow

 

Much of this week has been all about Burrow, but two other comments from him this week stuck out.

Yeah, I asked about the crackers and the cupcakes. They were mostly to keep things light, but the lead-up was really in curiosity about his view on the latest round of recruitment during free agency. He’s spoken before about his appreciation for being involved in the process. So many times across the league we see this lack of involvement in the process a part of the frustration that forces quarterbacks to air grievances with their teams or even request trades.

 

I thought Burrow’s answer was revealing in terms of how important nights like the crackers and cupcakes party are to him.

 

“That’s something I want to do every year,” he said. “I want to make sure the guys we are looking to bring in feel at home in Cincinnati and with the team because that is the culture we are building in the locker room. We are really, really close as a team, coaching staff, players, strength staff, trainers. I just want to portray that to the guys that are thinking about coming here and that we want to sign.”

 

Not something he has to do. Something he wants to do. There are different levels you see this same sentiment play out at by other quarterbacks. There’s the welcome to the team texts. There’s even making a phone call or a video. There’s trying to recruit every available free agent on Twitter.

Then there’s wanting to be a part of the hosting of the players every year to make sure everyone is aware of the culture they are selling. That stuff matters. It matters to the coaches. It matters to the front office. And it definitely matters in the new pieces immediately feeling welcome to a new home.

 

Part 2

 

Burrow also was asked about playing Tom Brady this year. Specifically, the question revolved around watching and learning from the greatest of all time.

The stock answer would be something about watching him play, admiring him and trying to emulate some aspect of his game. This was particularly insightful to Burrow’s nuanced approach to position and self-improvement.

 

“I’ll try to take things here and there from different people,” he said. “But I’m really focused on finding my routine and everything that I do to be the best me. And I don’t think I can take something that makes Tom Brady great that might not make Joe Burrow great. So maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. You know, I listen and study all these things and maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t and I try a lot of different things. But going back down the stretch to the season and talking and thinking about all the things you’ve worked on in the offseason, you throw some out because you think, no, I don’t have time to really refine this, to get it ready to go by the season. So some things will stick, some things won’t.”

...

Overly researched stat of the week


On the Full Send podcast, Burrow was talking about how he doesn’t like the sack stat because not all sacks are created equal. He specifically mentioned third-down sacks don’t matter as long as they don’t take you out of field goal range. He’s always going to try to extend the play to get a first down, specifically in the red zone. He’s talked about this before, in fact, Jay Morrison did a deep research dive on the topic when Burrow talked about it at the end of the regular season.

In that breakdown, the 51 regular season sacks filtered by down were as such:

 

• First: 17
• Second: 12
• Third: 21
• Fourth: 1

 

Only one of the third-down sacks took them out of field goal range (Week 2 against Chicago). That doesn’t mean every third-down sack was a matter of Burrow trying to extend the plays, but you can see the significant portion of them coming in those situations. Jay breaks them down much deeper in the story.

When doing the same breakdown of the 19 sacks in the postseason, they split up this way:

 

• First: 6
• Second: 5
• Third: 8
• Fourth: 0

 

Again, only one of the third-down sacks took them out of field goal range (at Tennessee).

 

None of this is to make excuses for the line play last year, but merely to back up Burrow’s point about his mentality and style of play affecting the sack stat. One of the primary reasons he thinks it’s an overblown stat.

 

Without question, a look at more specific analytics like pass block win rate, pressure percentage and even PFF pass-blocking grade paint a far better picture of true performance than sacks. The idea that Burrow will suddenly be one of the least-sacked quarterbacks in the NFL this year because of an improved line isn’t true as much because of his view of the stat and mentality on third downs as anything. That’s not changing.

 

 

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38CF1651-9E23-4F9B-9DA4-1F4DF064299D.jpeg.c3587d6da90b6c078e9d3b2354011ade.jpeg

——————————-

 

Prove that he (and Callahan) can make the right play calls…and decisions for when to (and not to) go for it on fourth down.  Do you not recall that there were many calling for Zac’s head mid-way through the season?  Did the team’s success wipe that from your memory banks?  
 

In the regular-season KC game, going for it on 4th down at the goal line was not the smart play.  If the ref doesn’t throw the flag (and we’ve all seen obvious penalties not called…especially late in a game), all KC needed was a FG to win.  It ended up perfectly, but we got lucky. 
 

If the team “goes south” this season, do you think that it’s more likely to be due to Joe Burrow underperforming or Zac Taylor underperforming?  My answer is Zac…thus “it might be more of a ‘prove it’ season for Zac Taylor.”

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