CINCINNATI — The message that Bengals fans want Joe Burrow to send to the front office was delivered in a very subtle and nuanced way following Cincinnati’s latest embarrassing showing on Sunday against the Steelers.
“I would say we need to change a lot of things this year. We haven’t been good enough to win games, so it starts with your division,” Burrow said after Sunday’s 44-38 loss to Pittsburgh. “We have to do a better job.”
Burrow threw for another three touchdowns and 309 yards and now has an NFL-leading 30 touchdown passes on the season to go with just five interceptions. He was strip-sacked twice, one leading to a defensive score. But his play on Sunday again was the reason they had any hope at all.
The Bengals are not known as an organization that makes sweeping changes in the way they do business. Mike Brown and Katie Blackburn lead the most fiercely committed franchise in the NFL to the status quo.
They will occasionally make a coaching change or two but they do business the way they do business. Increasing their scouting department to bring in the best players is not something they are inclined to do.
It’s not because they don’t have the money. It’s because they don’t want to cede power in the player personnel department. They have Duke Tobin. They have a handful of scouts. They have Mike Brown, Katie Blackburn, Troy Blackburn and they feel that’s enough.
What Joe Burrow said after Sunday’s 44-38 shootout loss to the Steelers that dropped them to 4-8 is a message from their most important player is that significant change is needed. He didn’t sign up for this.
“You try to give your opinion in ways that you feel comes off the best,” Burrow said of giving his opinions as a leader in general. “This is a tough season, and the cornerstones of this organization are going to be remembered by more than this season. We will be remembered by how we handle this.
“It’s still an exciting opportunity to go out and play for this city and this team, week in and week out. That’s something I don’t take for granted, especially with my injury history. I’ve been on the sidelines and that’s not a fun feeling. I love being out there with the guys for the city, the team, and the ownership. I love playing.”
Burrow wanted to get a lot off his chest Sunday and chose his words carefully but strategically. He praised the ownership publicly but he realizes that the way they’re doing business as a franchise isn’t translating on the field. Burrow wasn’t around in 1981 or 1988 when the Bengals made the Super Bowl and were quickly has-beens in two years. That formula is happening again right before our eyes.
The hard truth Burrow must now face is that unless the Bengals find a miraculous solution to all of the holes they have on defense, he’s going to be in this boat for the foreseeable future.
The Steelers, Ravens and yes, even the Browns, have a toughness about them that defines the AFC North. The Bengals don’t. The AFC North was considered a division so proud and tough that NFL Films and HBO decided to spend a whole in-season “Hard Knocks” devoted to it.
The Bengals are the ugly duckling of the family when it comes to what the division stands for. The Bengals should be so much better off because they have a great quarterback. But history tells us that a great quarterback doesn’t guarantee success if you don’t build around him.
The two greatest examples that come to mind are Dan Fouts and Dan Marino. Fouts never made the Super Bowl after back-to-back appearances in the AFC title game in 1980 and ’81 (vs. the Bengals). Marino famously made the Super Bowl in his second season and never made it back.
Both teams were unable to build championship defenses around them and expected their quarterback to carry the entire weight of the team. The Bengals apparently are headed down a path where they expect Burrow to do the same. The real lesson of this failed season is that he can’t. No one can. It’s a pressure that Burrow himself acknowledged after Sunday’s loss.
“I feel it. I feel the pressure on me to be great,” Burrow said. “That’s part of playing quarterback in the NFL. I have to play to the absolute peak of my ability every week for us to go and win. Some games I’ve done that, some games I haven’t. So, I’m just trying to be as consistent as I can for the team, try and take care of the ball better and go from there.”
Great quarterbacks often emerge with multiple championships when they’re in a supportive culture with winning built around them. Pittsburgh and Baltimore are the best examples of this in the division.
Then there’s New England of the 2000s. Tom Brady was not Tom Brady in 2001, when the Patriots’ veteran-laden defense led by the likes of Willie McGinest, Ty Law, Lawyer Milloy, Richard Seymour, Bryan Cox and Tedy Bruschi paved a path to the Super Bowl with the coaching of Bill Belichick. Brady’s job was to keep them on the path and not mess up. Add in Rodney Harrison in 2003 and Vince Wilfork in 2004, and you had more than enough attitude on defense.
The Patriots built the toughness around Brady before the Dynasty 2.0 emerged in the 2010s. The Patriots were committed to do whatever it took to build leaders around Brady. Like any team, they missed on their fair share of picks in the draft but they were committed to players like Vince Wilfork, Devin McCourty and Dont’a Hightower. They brought in the likes of Darrelle Revis, Aqib Talib and Stephon Gilmore in the secondary.
Save for Trey Hendrickson, the Bengals just have none of that right now.
One of the reasons Brady was able to play until he was 45 is because he protected his body from the brutal hits week after week that Burrow is taking right now. Sure, Brady would take a shot or two during a game, every quarterback does. But Burrow’s physical play right now is not sustainable.
The Bengals have almost never brought in alpha dogs to help in a project like the one that faces them now. They better change that part of it quick.
While the front office certainly deserves some of the blame in this lost season, Burrow knows the players in the locker room can use a mirror. And he also put everyone in that room on notice on Sunday.
“I think we’ll learn a lot about who we have in the locker room,” Burrow said. “The guys we can count on going forward, and the guys we can’t. The next six weeks will say a lot about who we can count on and who we can’t.”
There needs to be accountability but also self-awareness. After a brutal performance by the defense that featured countless missed tackles, there seemed to be a blatant disregard to read the room.
“Not that much, I don’t think,” linebacker Germaine Pratt said of the tackling effort Sunday. “They were just getting the ball out quick. (It was a) quick game in the screens. That’s all it was… We didn’t win, so it’s always disappointing. It doesn’t matter about the defense. We lost.”
“I think we tackled. They’re pros, too — they’re going to make people miss,” Mike Hilton added. “But for the most part, I felt like we tackled well. They just made their plays.”
Hilton’s words were not wrong it’s just that they lacked any sense that the defense has got to be better than what it’s showed this season with Burrow at quarterback. There’s a malaise on this defense that permeates the entire organization.
It’s not just about scouts finding the right talent, it’s about the organization finding the right killer attitude in players that teams like the Steelers, Ravens and Patriots have always found in their championship runs.
The Bengals did win back-to-back division titles in 2021 and ’22 and Burrow famously said that “this is the standard” that the Bengals will be playing to.
The Bengals have failed to play to that standard. And they aren’t going to the playoffs for a second straight year, barring a miraculous turnaround and every possible break in the AFC standings.
“Playoffs are the furthest thing from my mind,” Burrow told me. “You never know what can happen, so I’ll keep putting one foot in front of the other and try to be the best player I can be for the rest of the season, week in and week out.”
Burrow has spoken. Maybe he’ll sit down with the ownership and the front office again between now and when the season ends in early January. He talks with Zac Taylor every week about a multitude of things. Burrow has a voice in the organization. Burrow has the chance that many fans wish they had – to express disgust with the direction of the franchise.
Will it matter? Will the Bengals ever change? Fans are frustrated and some are finished with the same story repeating itself. What we learned Sunday is that Burrow is starting to feel their pain.
