Joe Burrow and the Bengals Not Panicking Despite Frustrating Week 1 Loss to Steelers

Cincinnati lost to Pittsburgh in overtime on Sunday.

In a full display of disappointment, Joe Burrow sat slumped back in a chair in front of his locker following the Bengals' loss to the Steelers. His arms crossed over his body and his eyes blazing in frustration as he stared forward in silence.

He had just answered questions in his postgame news conference about a game where he threw four interceptions for the first time in his NFL career. He also had a lost fumble. 

When asked about his rough day at work, he pointed towards a trait of this team that existed last season during their magical Super Bowl LVI run. They kept their cool, and didn’t give up.

“Obviously you don’t want to throw four picks, but I never panicked," Burrow said. "We stayed even keeled and we came back and put ourselves in position to win.”

The game was brutal from the start. Burrow was sacked by Cam Heyward on the Bengals' first play from scrimmage. The second play was even worse. He zeroed in on Tyler Boyd on second down and Steelers safety Minkah Fitzpatrick stepped in front of the veteran receiver, caught the interception and ran it in 31 yards for a touchdown. 

Later in the game following Burrow’s fourth interception, Ja’Marr Chase was visibly upset. Furious, he threw his helmet to the ground. Mitchell Wilcox picked up Chase’s helmet and gave it back to him only for Chase to launch it towards the bench on the Bengals sideline. The adversity was hitting hard all game long, but once he cooled off, and the offense took the field with yet another chance, you’d see Chase talking to Burrow off to the side of the huddle.

“If he throwing picks I’m just going to let him be for a minute because I’m mad too," Chase said. "Let him breathe, let me breathe and then I’ll go tell him let’s go fix it and get back on track."

The Bengals brand new, retooled offensive line could not survive the predation of Pittsburgh’s front seven. In their first game together at game speed, the unit gave up seven sacks and 11 quarterback hits.

Similar to the 7-sack, 3-point loss in Super Bowl LVI, Burrow looked up at the scoreboard and realized he had to pull his team out of a hole and give them a fighting chance to win, only this time he had less game clock to work with.

Cincinnati trailed 17-6 with 4:41 to go in the third quarter when Burrow hit Boyd for the touchdown and followed that up with a 2-point conversion to Mike Thomas cutting into Pittsburgh’s lead 17-14.

“Once we had that touchdown and Mike had the two point conversion I knew we were going to keep scoring,” Boyd said. “All we needed was one solid drive to get to the end zone and that’s when Joe is going to get into a rhythm and keep going and lace up like he usually do.”

The Bengals were in a position to win the game multiple times, despite the five turnovers, but would ultimately lose 23-20 in a chaotic week one battle that ended in sudden death overtime.

“We executed in the second half coming out,” Chase said. “We just didn’t score in the fourth quarter and overtime when we had the chance to. We’ve got to capitalize on that.”

Cincinnati starts the year 0-1, and while their third-year quarterback had possibly the worst game of his young career, evidence of panic was not present.

“When things weren’t going well we didn’t overreact,” Burrow said. “When things were going well, we didn’t overreact as well. I thought we stayed even keeled. Obviously, we would have liked to have come out with a win.”

Burrow faced a substantial amount of adversity, some of it he brought on himself. Teams now have an entire season of game tape on Cincinnati’s offense and every win this season will be much harder as they transition from being the hunters to being the hunted.

As long as Burrow is able to continually climb over the psychological mountains like he did on Sunday, he will be able to put his team in positions to win.

Burrow handled that loss as expected, stewing at his locker trying to process what happened. His teammates would be shocked if they saw that type of performance from him again in 2022. 

“Burrow is a guy, we know what type he is,” Boyd said. “He’s a great leader and he’s always going to bounce back no matter what because that’s the type of person he is because he shows it week in and week out.”

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