The 2023 Bengals Are Much More Than Just Joe Burrow

Cincinnati rounded into form while its quarterback recovered from a calf injury, and the team may now be better off for it.

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What I am about to say is not to take anything away from Joe Burrow. The Bengals’ quarterback finished Sunday night’s showdown with the Bills having thrown for 348 yards and two touchdowns on 31-of-44 passing, further affirming that he’s just about all the way back, in case you somehow weren’t convinced by the game he had against the vaunted 49ers defense last week.

So yeah, he was great in another huge spot for Cincinnati.

But closing out a win in that huge spot wasn’t on Burrow’s shoulders as much as those types of moments have been in years past. And, if you listen to the people on the staff, that’s a great sign for where Cincinnati is at the season’s midpoint.

Mostly because it means there was a silver lining to everything the Bengals have been through over the past three months—and it could add up to Burrow’s coming back strong to the most complete team he’s ever had around him. The fact is, this particular group was forced to become that way as the quarterback worked through a very tough calf injury.

Burrow may have the most complete team he has ever had around him :: Kareem Elgazzar/The Enquirer/USA TODAY Network

And the final 8:08 of Sunday’s 24–18 win sure seemed to prove it. Burrow had engineered a 12-play, 85-yard drive that set up a 20-yard Evan McPherson field goal to give the home team a 24–10 lead. Burrow would have to complete only one more pass the rest of the way for a Bengals team that keeps showing its ability to win every which way.

Which, in subtle ways, is a product of the first two months of the season, in how the team’s dynamic had to shift on the fly as Burrow went through ups and downs in gutting it out.

“It just makes you be so much more situationally aware,” Bengals coach Zac Taylor told me late Sunday night from the stadium. “We take a lot of pride in situational football and turnovers and penalties. But it forced us to be pretty exact in those areas. Even in the games we lost, it gave me a chance to look back at moments in the second quarter that we didn’t capitalize on in those losses.”

The Bengals were exact when they needed to be Sunday, and that started with how the defense handled a Bills team trying to rally from two scores down.

Coordinator Lou Anarumo’s game plan was predicated on playing split-safety coverage (the Bengals generally don’t do a lot of that) to prevent the big plays, and being smart and disciplined with the pass rush—working to pin Josh Allen in the pocket, even if it made it harder, at times, to get to him. And that plan certainly was part of forcing the Bills, on the possession following the McPherson field goal, to nickel and dime their way down the field.

But there was more to it than just that. It was also the relentless effort to get guys on the ground efficiently, and do it inbounds. Allen completed six passes on the drive, and only his 17-yard touchdown throw to Stefon Diggs stopped the clock. So yes, the Bills scored, but they also bled the clock as they went. And when their 12-play, 75-yard grind of a drive was through, they’d taken 4:36 off the clock.

They’d also, it would turn out, seen the ball for the last time.

After Burrow started the next drive with a 32-yard connection on a sideline route to Tyler Boyd, with the receiver cutting the play back inside after the catch to keep the clock rolling, the Bengals sidled up behind their reworked line and veteran Joe Mixon to finish it. Mixon and the big fellas did just that, as the back chewed up two yards off the right tackle and five yards off left tackle, before bouncing a third-and-3 run outside to the right to get his final five yards of the game and put the Bengals in victory formation.

“That’s how we have to do it on offense because the defense gives us so much,” Taylor says. “[The Bills] had the touchdown drive, but our guys did a great job tackling, keeping them inbounds, letting the clock run. So that allowed the offense [to] really just get two first downs to end the game. … We gotta be able to close out teams on offense when we’re up one score and we got the ball back, where they don’t get to touch it again.

“We need teams to fear that they’re not going to touch the ball again, causing them maybe to kick onside, things like that, earlier than they want to. It’s important for guys to have that killer instinct that way.”

And that, of course, goes back to Taylor’s ability to rely on just about every unit.

The last three months have proved he can, because at different points, each unit has had to help the Bengals try to win a different way. With the team at 5–3 now, obviously, it hasn’t always worked out. But if the Seahawks win showed a defense that could carry the way and the Niners win brought an elite offense back to its accustomed level, this one showed how this has become a team that can lean on different facets to pull everything together.

“You can count on every position to step up because each one’s built the right way,” Taylor says. “Each one’s got a leader in the room or more. You love the units beyond that and then you love the team. And so this team is a blast to be around. They do everything the right way. You have very minimal issues ever that come across my desk dealing with these guys, and that’s the mark of a really good team that handles its business and knows we have a really tough path ahead of us and we embrace that.

“I think the guys like that every week it’s going to be a new battle. I mean, the Texans just did whatever they did. They’re gonna come in here with a lot of confidence. And our guys continue to rise to those challenges, and that’s the mark of a special team.”

And yeah, Taylor’s right that the Bengals have plenty of challenges ahead.

But if the past three weeks are any indication, playing against them won’t be any picnic going forward either—and it’s not just because No. 9 is the quarterback.