Bengals Beat: Joe Burrow Expects Bengals To Finally Wake Up, ‘Live Up’ To A Winning Standard

CINCINNATI — The mannerisms were there for everyone to see Sunday in the midst of a 41-24 win over the woebegone Las Vegas Raiders.

Joe Burrow is sick and tired of the clown show and pajama party going on around him.

Just ask Jermaine Burton.

The Bengals star quarterback should have been laughing on the sideline after throwing four touchdowns and completing 90 percent of his passes Sunday, leading the Bengals out to a 31-10 lead over the hapless Raiders.

Instead, after another failed offensive series in the third quarter, he came over the sideline and yelling at Ted Karras, yelling at teammates and came over to the bench and slammed his helmet to the Paycor turf.

He was pissed.

Maybe he was just sick and tired of a team that didn’t want to execute at a level needed to contend for the playoffs, let alone a Super Bowl.

He has warned his teammates all season long and told the public through press conferences that the Bengals are “no where close to good enough” to be a playoff team.

On Sunday, during a laugher that turned tense for a very brief moment, Burrow reminded everyone why he was so upset and why winning actually matters to him.

“I’m going to have my standard of play, and I’m going to have my idea of the standard of what we should live up to as an offense — the coaching staff, and myself, and everybody,” Burrow told me. “When I feel like we live up to it. I’m going to let us know. And when I feel like we don’t live up to it, I’m going to let us know too. Like I said, (there was) good and bad today. So, (there isn’t) any time to sit and dwell on the good we had. It’s a short week. We have to learn from the bad and move on.”

Mike Gesicki said after catching his first two touchdowns in Stripes that Joe Burrow exudes the kind of confidence and swagger the Bengals desperately need.

“That man is one of one, and I mean that in the most positive way,” Gesicki said of his quarterback. “He’s incredible, his demeanor, the way he carries himself, his confidence, his swagger, he’s incredible. So we go as he goes. And today, five touchdowns, we go.”

Gesicki is spot on.

Burrow completed his first 15 passes Sunday. He was 22-of-25 at one point, and that’s with three of his receivers unavailable and his best one getting double and zone coverage. Burrow has thrown 20 touchdowns and just four picks. He’s completed 70.2 percent of his passes and has a superb passer rating of 108.1, third in the NFL behind Lamar Jackson and Jared Goff.

After that third-quarter tantrum, it didn’t get better. As a matter of fact, Burrow threw a pass on the play that has been the bane of the offense’s existence this season, the bubble screen. Raiders defensive back Jack Jones jumped it for an easy 29-yard pick-6 and suddenly it was 31-17 with 14 minutes still left in the game.

Jones was still 20 yards from the goal line and Burrow hung his head in shame, knowing this laugher was needlessly a game with 14 minutes left. On the ensuing drive, the Bengals could do nothing with their possession and punted to Desmond Ridder and the Raiders. If it weren’t for the fact that the Raiders – who fired their offensive coordinator and two other coaches after the game – weren’t such a hot mess, this might have been a big problem.

“We didn’t exactly have a very good third quarter,” Burrow explained. “There’s just a combination of things that I felt like we didn’t do good enough.

“I’m not just going to ignore the bad and dwell on the great that we did. I don’t think that’s a recipe for improvement. I don’t think that’s a recipe for getting better. I’m going to be hard on myself. I’m going to be hard on us to execute the way that I feel like we need to. And I feel like we didn’t put ourselves in great positions in times of that game to finish off the right way. We ended up doing it. The defense came up big, but I think we could have done better.”

When Burrow finally tossed his fifth touchdown of the day, a 47-yarder over the middle to an unguarded Gesicki, Burrow just trotted over to the sideline, sat down and stared down anyone in his path, like the benched Jermaine Burton, who couldn’t be bothered with fulfilling team commitments on Friday and Saturday and found himself disciplined on a day when the offense was already without Tee Higgins, Charlie Jones, Zack Moss and lost Erick All Jr. earlier in the game.

The body language directed at Burton on the bench was unmistakeable. Burrow was making it clear that immaturity has no place on an NFL sideline.

Give Burrow credit, he didn’t throw Burton under the bus. Why? Because Burrow knows full well he’s going to need him going forward if this offense is going to have a chance against the likes of the Ravens Thursday night and the Steelers twice.

“Jermaine is going to be a great player,” Burrow said. “You just have to do the little things right. He’s a guy that has a demeanor that you like. You like his energy. He practices hard. He has a chance.”

Burrow acknowledged that he will chat with the mercurial receiver who showed up in pajamas to the game on Sunday two days after joking about how he struggled to get out of bed to show up for work as an NFL player.

“We’ll have discussions,” Burrow said. “And just like any young player, you’re going to try to help him in any way that you can. And, as he gets older, he’ll understand things in a different way. He’s a young guy right now.”

Instead of grilling Burton in public, he’ll let the Burton issue marinate privately. He chose to shine a light on the likes of Mike Gesicki, Drew Sample, Chase Brown and Kendric Pryor, who caught his first NFL pass Sunday because Burton decided not to show up on time Friday and Saturday.

“We had guys step up,” Burrow said. “We had guys get their first playing time, make their first catches and make some big-time plays for us. So I was confident in the guys we had out there.”

Another way Burrow is leading this season is through his unmatched toughness as a quarterback. Burrow, like Tom Brady in New England did for years, is take hits and not complain, like the shots that he took from Raiders All-Pro edge Maxx Crosby, including one on which Crosby crushed him unabated to the quarterback.

“In the first quarter I just told him, ball’s coming out quick today, Maxx, you’re gonna have to get back there a little faster. Defensive linemen like to go up to the edge of what’s allowed, and that’s part of gamesmanship. That’s part of football. He’s trying to make me feel the heat, and that’s something that I expect defensive players to do. That’s smart. But I don’t think his late hit was dirty. That’s why quarterbacks, when you hear whistle you’re supposed to throw it in the dirt so you don’t get hit like that I didn’t hear the whistle.”

No excuses from Burrow. Just like there won’t be from him on a short week when they travel to Baltimore and won’t have Erick All Jr. and Zack Moss, two of the toughest blockers he’s had on offense this year. Maybe they get Tee Higgins and Orlando Brown Jr. back. Maybe they don’t. All Burrow knows is that this is perhaps the final chance to be a player in the AFC North in 2024.

“I think just how the season has gone, knowing what’s ahead of us, knowing what we’re going to have to do to get back into this, one win isn’t going to make or break our season,” Burrow said. “So, I’m going to strive for perfection every — every day and every game. So, until that happens, what’s there to be happy about?”

Burrow might better be able to answer that with a win Thursday night in Baltimore.