Joe Burrow has reached a rare level. So what's holding the Bengals back?

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Mike Sando - The Athletic:

 

(Editor’s note: This is excerpted from Mike Sando’s Pick Six of Dec. 30, 2024.)

2. Bengals coach Zac Taylor declared quarterback Joe Burrow the best player in the world. Why is it so hard for Cincinnati to win, then?

With Burrow passing for 412 yards and three touchdowns Saturday, the Bengals overcame the Denver Broncos, and themselves, to score a 30-24 overtime victory, sustaining their faint playoff hopes.

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The performance left Burrow with 4,641 yards passing, 42 scoring tosses, eight interceptions and a 109.8 passer rating.

Per Pro Football Reference, this is the 16th time since 1950 that a quarterback will finish a season with at least 4,000 yards passing, 40 touchdown passes and a triple-digit passer rating.

The other 15 quarterbacks won 79 percent of their starts, with none finishing worse than 10-6 (Aaron Rodgers with Green Bay in 2016). Tampa Bay’s Baker Mayfield needs one touchdown pass in Week 18 to join this exclusive club. His 9-7 Buccaneers rank 17th in points per game allowed.

Burrow has an 8-8 record. One reason is obvious.

The 2024 Bengals rank 29th in points per game allowed, lower than any of those other quarterbacks’ teams ranked. Still, the 2018 Chiefs ranked 24th in points allowed and went 13-3 as Patrick Mahomes put up big numbers (5,097 yards, 50 touchdowns, 113.8 rating).

Some might question Burrow’s play in critical situations, but if that narrative did not die Saturday, consider this update to our Burrow analysis from earlier in the season:

Burrow has led touchdown drives five times in nine career chances when trailing by 4-8 points and taking over possession with 1-8 minutes left in regulation. His 56 percent TD drive rate in those “need TD” situations beats the career rates for Lamar Jackson (6 of 12, 50 percent), Josh Allen (6 of 15, 40 percent) and Mahomes (5 of 13, 39 percent). That includes two TDs in three chances for Burrow this season, both against Baltimore in games the Bengals lost anyway (Burrow did fail against New England in that situation, contributing to an inexplicable Week 1 defeat).

The issues Cincinnati must resolve to win most of its games with the “best player in the world” might include:

• Game management: The Bengals used timeouts on offense during two third-quarter drives, adding to their league-leading total this season (10 of 35 third-quarter drives for 29 percent, more than double the rate for any other team). Cincy has used timeouts on offense during 15 percent of all third-quarter drives since Taylor was hired in 2019, the highest rate in the league and more than twice the average for other teams.

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Teams with offensive play-calling head coaches usually rank high on these lists. These coaches, at their worst, prioritize dialing up the perfect plays at the expense of overall game management. Taylor’s third-quarter timeouts Sunday preceded third-and-7 and second-and-17 plays. Cincinnati eventually converted first downs on those drives, at great cost.

The Bengals’ hotly debated end-of-regulation strategy against the Broncos drew scrutiny for the wrong reasons. Coaches from other teams were most alarmed by Cincinnati’s failure to help running back Chase Brown off the field to spare the team’s final timeout when the Bengals were trying to position themselves for the go-ahead field goal late in regulation.

The score was 17-17 with 1:39 remaining when Brown took the first-and-goal carry to the 1-yard line, where he purposely went to the ground. The plan was for the Bengals to rob Denver of its final timeout, which would have allowed Cincinnati to run the clock under 10 seconds by kneeling on second and third downs. The Bengals could have then used their final timeout before attempting the go-ahead chip-shot field goal, leaving almost no time for Denver.

 

The strategy changed when Brown suffered an injury at the end of his carry. Denver had used its final timeout at this point, when 1:31 remained, but officials restored that timeout, instead charging Cincinnati with its final timeout after realizing Brown was injured on the play.

Brown spent about three seconds on his knees after the play, but it wasn’t clear whether he would remain down. He then stood up and walked for another five seconds before going to the ground again. Cincinnati should have quickly carried Brown off the field because it was clear after he stood up that he was hurting, but not seriously injured, coaches said. Better yet, could Brown have gotten himself off the field, as then-West Virginia center and current Pittsburgh Steeler Zach Frazier did despite breaking his ankle in 2023?

“They also should have just taken the knee (at the 6-yard-line),” one coach said. “There is no reason to run it there if you are going to concede that you are not going to score.”

Some coaches also thought officials erred in restoring Denver’s timeout anyway because too much time lapsed between the end of the play and Brown falling to the ground a second time.

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• Defensive philosophy: Lou Anarumo earned high praise for the defense he coordinated during the Bengals’ 2021 Super Bowl season. His defense ranked seventh in EPA per play over the 2021-22 seasons. It ranks 29th since, a period that includes safety Jessie Bates’ departure.

Is the defense too complicated on the back end for the Bengals to plug and play young talent? Or do they simply need better talent? That’s a question execs in the league have asked, and one Anarumo seems to have addressed by simplifying things of late.

Bengals defensive starter average ages

Season	DL	LB	DB
2021	27.1	25.3	26.6
2022	27.2	26.4	26.5
2023	28.4	27.4	25.6
2024	28.5	28.0	26.3

• Proactive vs. reactive: The Bengals did not pay Bates despite a strong start to his career, eventually using the franchise tag before letting him walk as a free agent. They traded running back Joe Mixon for a seventh-round pick this spring to save $6.1 million against the cap. They are waiting to re-sign receivers Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins, who has played the 2024 season on the tag. They are not the “same old Bengals” of the 1990s, but neither are they known for getting ahead of the market.

“It’s hard to build a team around your stars if you don’t identify ascending players and take some risks to get them signed earlier,” one exec said.

These are all things to consider for an 8-8 team with a top-five quarterback (Burrow), a top-five receiver (Chase) and a top-five pass rusher (Trey Hendrickson).