Bengals Beat: Joe Burrow Knows Where Improvements Need To Be Made ‘There’s always learning experiences from every drive, every play, every game’

CINCINNATI — Joe Burrow was his calm, cool and collected self Wednesday, two days after breaking down the film of his uncharacteristically uneven performance against the Browns in a 17-16 win Sunday in the 2025 season opener.

He completed just 14-of-23 passes for 113 yards, including a one-yard touchdown pass to Noah Fant on a flare pattern in the end zone.

“Yeah, certainly I think we’d be having some different discussions in here if we had lost that game,” Burrow acknowledged. “I’m sure I’d be getting some different questions too, but regardless of win or loss, there were things that we had to get better at from Sunday and so we’ve addressed those and we’re going to continue to address those until they get fixed.”

Burrow has never started a season 2-0 with the Bengals in his five previous seasons. Neither has Zac Taylor in his six. But that doesn’t keep him from thinking this team isn’t capable of putting together a run, early in the season or late.

“We know what it takes to win a Super Bowl,” Burrow said. “We know what it takes in this league. We’ve been there and done that so in we know where we have to be and how we have to get there.”

What really needs to get fixed is getting more yards on first and second down so that they’re not playing behind the sticks or face third-and-long like they did for most of the second half Sunday.

“It’s efficiency and rhythm and volume,” offensive coordinator Dan Pitcher said. “We had 26 snaps in the first half and a good amount of normal down plays where you’re calling whatever you want to call off the sheet. You’re in a rhythm. We got into the second half and it went away. Mainly, I attribute it to opportunity. We had a decent pin-and-pull run in the third quarter. They got tough at the end. The four-minute execution was poor, and we’ve got to evaluate that part of it. We come away feeling terrible about the second half in a lot of areas. I don’t attribute that to him or anything he did. He was where he needed to be and made the plays.”

The Bengals looked like they were intent on running it down the throats of the Browns on the first drive of the game, with Chase Brown running seven times for 28 yards and catching one pass for seven yards.

“I thought we got in a rhythm,” Pitcher said. “We were efficient on early downs that led to really good production on third down, a couple of extended drives. Even the one didn’t end in points we got in plus territory there and Myles made a play as Joe is escaping. Really only three drives, which you know in the back of your mind it has a chance to be that kind of game. You get the opening kickoff and the next time we touch the ball isn’t until 12 minutes to go in the second quarter. That’s OK, it’s what it is. I thought our guys responded well, so that was the good part.

“Listen there is going to be all sorts of weird things that happen and things that are not advantageous over the course of the season and we have to be strong-minded, strong-willed, focused and be able no matter what the circumstance is go out and execute. For the most part in the first half I thought we did that; the second half was a different story.”

The Bengals had 14 points at the half and looked quite functional for the most part on offense. What changed in the second half?

“The early down efficiency went away and struggled on third down,” Pitcher said. “Really there are three plays outside the numbers where if we make one of them we feel better coming out of it. We didn’t make any of them. They’re tough plays, they’re not easy plays to make. The defender made a good play on the one to Tee (Higgins). I thought Tee did everything he could to stay inbounds on that one. (Greg) Newsome made a strong play on the ball to Ja’Marr. None of this occurs in a vacuum. We’re playing a really good defense. The scheme is tailored toward their people. They play aggressively. They’re a challenge. They got the better of us in the second half.”

There was plenty for Burrow to break down in film.

“You try to find, just try to figure out what happened on the first time you watch it,” Burrow told me. “There’s a lot of stuff going on throughout the game and you remember the plays and what happened, but the film tells a different story and so you try to figure out if what you remember happening is actually what happened on the tape. And then you look at how did what they did affect what we did, did we do the right thing depending on how the defense played, and yeah, there’s of course always some plays that you’d like to have back and certainly depending on the situation, there’s sometimes one that you could have maybe been a little more aggressive with the ball as opposed to what you did decide to do with it. So there’s always learning experiences from every drive, every play, every game.”