Bengals Beat: With His Season Over, Joe Burrow Plans Different Way To Lead Bengals To Playoffs ‘I Love Everybody In That Room’

CINCINNATI — Joe Burrow and Zac Taylor have every intention of making sure the Bengals don’t fall off a cliff without their star quarterback. Oh yeah, Jake Browning will have a pretty significant role in that, too.

Burrow will be in the building as much as possible, before and after likely surgery on his right wrist, offering support and guidance. Taylor will be meeting with coaches to scheme new plans to make sure Browning has the best chance to produce points.

The first step came Friday. The Bengals collectively have to get over the shock of losing their star quarterback for the season.

The initial instinct from many Bengals fans and observers was that any chances for the playoffs went down with Burrow’s torn ligament in his wrist.

“That’s fine. I think I would be doing myself a disservice if I started hopping into all the different narratives of a good player going down,” Browning said Friday. “Not really my job. My job is to keep trying to get better, focus on the day to day week to week and game to game. It sounds kind of repetitive, but there’s a lot of different ways your mind can go. If you take everything and just narrow it down to, hey, here’s what I really need to focus on. Here’s what actually matters. And everything else kind of falls into place.

“I think they probably feel how all of us feel. It sucks Joe went down. A very important part of the team. That’s not my job how to tell fans how to feel or anything like that. I think if you get caught up in all that it takes away from things you’re trying to focus on. Having a good week, taking those practice reps, learning from those and just keep stacking those.”

The first snap that Browning took came after the Ravens had just reclaimed the lead, 14-10, and Burrow realized his night was done with the wrist injury.

“‘Here we go buddy,’ and that was it,” Browning said. “It was kind of in Joe fashion.”

The playoff roadmap is still out there for the Bengals. And there is a case to be made for Jake Browning leading the Bengals to the playoffs. Here it is:

Browning rediscovers what he had at the University of Washington, when he led the 2018 Huskies to a Pac-12 championship before losing to Ohio State in the Rose Bowl.

The Bengals defense gets back to the way it was playing in their four-game win streak. Yes, they were opportunistic and there are those who say creating two turnovers a game isn’t sustainable. But before the Bengals lost Burrow Thursday, they had started to show they were capable of slowing Lamar Jackson and forcing punts. Play complementary football. It’s been talked about as a “want to” before. It’s a “must have” now.

“Absolutely. We are counting on everyone to step it up even a notch further,” Zac Taylor told me. “You spend more time today probably looking around the locker room at the guys we have on the team. We have a lot of great players. A lot of great men on this team. I’m excited to see how everybody responds. I think it’s a great opportunity for this team to really band together and continue to make something of the rest of the season.

The Bengals double down on running the ball. Part of what caused Burrow to take a beating in the last two games was the fact they couldn’t run the ball on their own terms and the Texans and Ravens started to load up the rush over the ‘A’ gap. Burrow was getting crunched too much.

Run the ball and then slow the game down. The biggest was to help Browning win games is to make sure he’s not getting into track meets and feeling the pressure to put high numbers on the scoreboard. Mixon and the offensive line show have shown flashes, like in the first quarter Thursday night. But they’re going to need to do more than just flash potential.

This is the path that current quarterback A.J. McCarron followed in 2015 when Andy Dalton suffered a broken thumb against the Steelers. The Bengals lost that game, 33-20, before McCarron led the Bengals to a win at San Francisco before losing in overtime in Denver. The Bengals went 2-1 with McCarron and it was McCarron who nearly authored a rally from 15-0 down in the fourth quarter against the Steelers in the playoffs.

Yes, the Bengals still have seven games to play and are 5-5. The Bengals were 10-3 at the time of Dalton’s injury. But they still had three games to finish, including a road game on Monday night against a Denver team that would wind up winning the Super Bowl and an always tough Baltimore team at home.

The Bengals, of course, lost Burrow in 2020 to a torn ACL in Week 11. The Bengals fell to 2-7-1 and were already out of playoff contention. That 2020 team knew the season was over when Burrow went down. The roster was nowhere close to competing for the playoffs.

This Bengals roster, even without Burrow, is still built to get to the playoffs. It’s just that with Burrow, they’re a leading Super Bowl contender.

“We’ve got great guys. We’ve got the guys in the room that can get it done,” Burrow said. “And I love everybody in that room. I’m going to lean on those guys the throughout this whole process and they’re going to continue to go out and win games without me. That’s what has to happen. They’re going to continue to grind it out. It’s tough season. It’s a long season, but we’ve got the guys to continue to win games and make the playoffs and put ourselves in good position at the end.”

Now, it’s up to the active Bengals to prove it to themselves, starting with Browning himself.

“I just keep going back to the fact that it’s unfortunate that Joe went down, but I’m close to everybody in the locker room for a while, worked really hard behind the scenes,” Browning said Friday. “I think a lot of guys have seen that, so I think there’s ‘some rally around the guy that’s getting a chance.’ I think you kind of saw that last year. I remember watching Trenton Irwin get that chance and stepping up to the challenge. It was like ‘All right. That was pretty cool to see. That’s gonna me at some point.’

“Now that opportunity is here and I’m looking to make the most of it. I think there’s a lot more that goes on in the locker room, a lot more close friendships and connections with teammates. It’s not like I just got here two weeks ago. I’ve been here for a long time helping the defense out a lot, talking to everybody. I’m kind of like the counselor of I know everything that’s going on, but I’m not right in the heat of it. So if some guy needs to go vent about something, I’m usually the guy they’re gonna go to. I’ve got a lot of close friendships in this locker room. It’s a great locker room. Zac does a great job getting guys in here and rallying around and keeping them positive.”

Burrow said one of the reasons he appreciates Browning so much is that he sees a lot of himself in him. Browning is chill, won’t be overwhelmed into making poor decisions or getting unglued. That’s why making a playoff run won’t overwhelm the

“I don’t feel a lot of weight,” Browning said. “Maybe I’m the one off with that assessment. I don’t feel a lot of weight about anything. It’s day by day. Rep by rep. Kind of the main thing I was trying to do when I went into the Ravens game. One play at a time. Even some of those last drives we were down by a couple of scores. Don’t try to score 14 points in one throw. And I just keep staying on making the right reads and know that we’ve got a good offense and I’ve seen it operate at a high level. And I kind of know what it takes to do that.”

“He has a lot of experience as a player,” Taylor said. “(He has) a lot of time on the field. He’s not just a backup quarterback that’s been a backup quarterback. This guy has played in a lot of football games for various teams at various levels.

“He’s got a lot of confidence. He fits in the room really well. He’s got great rapport with Joe (Burrow) and Dan (Pitcher). That’s a big step when you add an experienced piece to the room. That has fit to a tee, everything we wanted out of that guy. It’s been really positive having AJ here and do have trust in him watching him operate on scout team and practice and all that stuff. He’s what we expected him to be.”

Browning said that while it didn’t mean the difference between a win and a loss, the 2-yard touchdown to Ja’Marr Chase did show he could lead the team on a drive against a starting defense like the Ravens.

“It was kind of a garbage time touchdown, but the throw to Ja’Marr… I don’t think I make that throw if I don’t have all of August throwing those throws to him,” Browning said. “A lot of timing involved. It allowed me to be able to hop into the game. Hey, I’ve been going against our defense for all of August, which I would argue going against the same defense day after day, that make you really refine your game to stay one step ahead of what they see on you. Jumped in against a good defense, felt comfortable and felt like I threw the ball where I wanted to on all my throws.”

Don’t mistake Browning’s quiet demeanor out of the spotlight for a lack of confidence.

“There are a lot of good quarterbacks out there,” Browning said. “I feel like I’m one of those. There are a lot of storylines you run with, but I think my job is just to go day by day with my routine to have the best Monday, have the next Tuesday, keep stacking those days and with every rep learning from that and every live rep in a live pocket in a game and learning from that and now having that runway to do something with that and not just going out for the first or second quarter of a game in August.

We’re a long way from Washington in August when Browning won the backup job. Browning is about to enter the most critical – and he hopes most enjoyable – part of his career. His drive to the playoffs begins next Sunday against the Steelers at Paycor.

Coming to grips:

Joe Burrow has been through so much in his career already. He missed his first offseason due to the pandemic. He tore his ACL in Nov. 2020. He banged up his pinky finger in a playoff run in 2021. He had an emergency appendectomy after a burst appendix before the 2022 season that weakened him entering the season. He had a right calf strain this year. He was finally back before his season-ending torn ligament in his right wrist on Thursday. Despite all of it, Burrow wasn’t feeling sorry for himself.

“It’s tough but that’s the life we live,” Burrow told me. “That’s football. You’re going to get injured. Things are going to happen. You’re going to have to overcome things. Everybody’s overcome things in their career to where they’re at. Everybody in that locker room has. Everybody across the league has. This is nothing different from anything anybody else has experienced. It is what it is.”

Defending his guy:

One reason Zac Taylor is respected and appreciated so much inside the Bengals locker room is that he has the back of every player in the room. No where was that shown better than Friday when national talking heads were taking cheap shots at Logan Wilson, calling the Bengals linebacker a dirty player for taking down – and out – three players. Tight end Mark Andrews suffered an ankle injury on the game’s first drive. Lamar Jackson was tackled as he raced toward the Ravens sideline on a scramble. And Odell Beckham Jr. was taken out with a tackle that injured his shoulder. National analysts were trashing Wilson’s play. Taylor would have none of it.

“One thing that was frustrating is the narrative that’s been brought up about Logan Wilson,” said Taylor, who went off unprompted at the end of his Friday press conference. “Logan is everything we want to be about with the way he plays the game. He plays with a toughness and physicality I think is important at that position. It’s been brought to my attention the narrative that’s out there right now which I think is completely reckless. He plays the game the right way.”

“People have gotten ahead of themselves. Labeled him a certain way. It’s frustrating to see that. I know what the guy is about and that guys are playing the game the right way. It’s unfortunate any time a player gets injured. But he’s a guy I’m proud to coach and proud to be a part of this team. Frustrating and a little bit maddening when you see the narrative about him. That’s not the case at all. He’s a guy just trying to help the team win.”