It May Be Time to Freak Out About Joe Burrow and the 0–2 Bengals

Cincinnati started off the season as a Super Bowl favorite, but consecutive losses against two AFC North teams raise the question of whether it’s time to sound the alarm.

July’s presumptive Super Bowl favorites, the Bengals, are now 0–2. Following a never-close, Bald Bull–style knockout at the hands of the Browns in Week 1, the team crawled to a respectable 27–24 finish against the Ravens. At the end of Sunday’s game, the Bengals were one defensive stop away from an opportunity to drive for a game-winning field goal, although it was not a likely scenario, with ESPN’s win percentage tracker giving the Ravens a 75% chance of sealing a victory.

Lamar Jackson, who is especially difficult to deal with in those particular scenarios (when you are trying to correctly predict an offense so as to maximize the usage of your remaining timeouts) proved to be too much for Cincinnati.

The big question, of course: Do we freak out?

Burrow appeared to aggravate his calf injury against the Ravens :: Sam Greene/The Enquirer/USA TODAY Network

Bengals fans will say, no, because the Bengals started last season 0–2 and finished the year 12–4. During their AFC championship season in 2021, they had two separate losing streaks and hovered around .500 for a large portion of the season.

Opportunists will say, yes, because it’s good business to write off a contender at this point of the season. It makes people (read: Bengals fans who, again, want you to know they started 0–2 last year) upset. Burrow has averaged a quarterback rating of 70.6 over two games. His completion percentage above expectation—a metric that takes various situational factors, and the throw itself into account—is a negative two, meaning that he is not, at least according to this metric, adding to the potential success of his wide receivers right now. For reference, last year it was a positive 2.8 and the year before that it was a positive 6.1. If your best player is not playing his best, it’s hard to imagine the Bengals as what they were before the calf injury.

This is where projecting the remainder of the Bengals’ season and deciding whether to freak out gets hard. We all saw Burrow on the sidelines Sunday, jamming a massage gun into his calf. It is a Please God Remove This Constant Nagging Pain face that those of us who have attempted athletic endeavors into our late 30s know well. Unlike us, Burrow does not have the luxury of taking a week off and ordering Del Taco next Sunday.

We can speculate as to whether he was truly ready to start the season opener against the Browns, and there were certainly moments against the Ravens when you saw the Bengals admit schematically that Burrow is still less than 100%. After the Browns pummeled them by manipulating the numbers in the “A” gap on both sides of the center—I think we all, by now, have seen the video of Myles Garrett pantomime dribbling between his legs—the Bengals made more of an effort to have a punt protector style up-back blocking during some passing downs.

We also saw Zac Taylor dialing up more creative ways to clear Joe Mixon out of the backfield. Burrow checked to a few runs that gave Mixon an edge and room to run. Taylor is doing what he can.

But, when looking at Burrow throwing this year compared to last year, I think one could assume there is still a great deal of pain when he is about to pull the trigger on a throw. Look at some of his 2022 highlights, and there is a kind of shoulder whip, like the torquing of a sprinkler head. This year, the motion seems to be a little less violent. The ball doesn’t seem to be coming out as fast (again, maybe Burrow altered his mechanics to look that way, maybe the Bengals are calling more touch throws to limit the pain tax on his calf, maybe I’m an idiot and there’s no difference). The Bengals’ offense, in turn, seems to be missing a little bit of that subliminal efficiency where Burrow can just fire a ball to a clean blade of grass and Ja’Marr Chase will be sitting there.

Cincinnati didn’t score offensive points until the third quarter Sunday, as its first points were the product of a punt return. Burrow threw for 85 yards and no touchdowns against the Browns last week.

His injury seemed to be embodied on a second-and-5 early in the fourth quarter against Baltimore: Burrow felt pressure, pressed himself up against his tackles as if he were attempting a rugby score and was then pummeled from his backside by Jadeveon Clowney. In the past, this is a play Burrow extends. I’m not going to say “easily,” because Burrow has earned the praise for his pocket footwork. But I do think that’s a play where, in years before, Burrow hits a completion and doesn’t have to face a Madden-style zero blitz on third-and-11. In this case, he was lucky to just get rid of the football (and if you do go back and watch that throw, it’s pretty amazing how Burrow is placing his passes despite not working with a full complement of biomechanics).

This is a very, very long way of saying that, unless this can change, it’s hard not to wonder whether we should freak out. Cincinnati has a relatively early bye week, and they do have a Cardinals game coming up in the near future that may not require Burrow to hurl himself around like a trapped surfer for four quarters.

It’s not all on the quarterback. The Browns had the fourth-best rushing yards per attempt average in the NFL Week 1. The Ravens’ lead back, Gus Edwards, averaged 6.2 yards per carry Sunday. Both weeks, the Bengals had to play physical, mobile quarterbacks who can extend plays and are complemented by a powerful offensive line.

As the Bengals know, though, this is an offensive league. While they wait for Burrow to recover, it’s wild to assume they can just render some of the best players in the league ineffective and keep the score down consistently. Burrow used to be the fix for that, simply because he could score more. Without that, it may be time to freak out.