Bengals Must Spend the Offseason Bolstering Joe Burrow's Protection

It’s a prelude to one of the most horrifying scenes in football: A quarterback, eyes fixed downfield at his intended target, with his plant foot confidently spiked into the ground. Unbeknownst to him, defenders converge from both sides. At the last second, each will aim at the polar opposite ends of the quarterback’s body, leaving the plant leg horrendously vulnerable.

Joe Burrow was carted off the field in the third quarter of Sunday’s game against Washington and headed off to an uncertain near future. That prelude forces the mind to wander. There is little doubt it produced a uniform grimace on the sideline as the future of the franchise awaited the nightmare scenario.

It’s a moment, though, that should force the Bengals to look both inward and upward. Upward to give thanks for a quarterback like Burrow who, even without knowing the severity of the injury, will continuously project the confidence of someone who will soon leave it in his rearview mirror with a flourish (he tweeted on Sunday that the NFL couldn’t get rid of him that easily). This is not to claim any additional insight into Burrow’s psyche, but simply an acknowledgement that he has not shied away from a grueling lift from the moment he landed in Cincinnati and stood behind that threadbare offensive line. He was the pace leader for Rookie of the Year by a comfortable margin and operated with the comfortability of a player years his senior.

They’ll need to look inward to wonder exactly how they’ll prevent something like this from happening again, and how they can use the time between now and Burrow’s next professional snap to offer protection adequate for a budding franchise star.

Burrow came into Sunday’s game as the third-most sacked quarterback in football next to Carson Wentz and Russell Wilson. He was pressured on one in every five snaps prior to facing Washington’s elite defensive line and over the course of four quarters, Washington was able to log double-digit quarterback hits on both Burrow and his replacement, Ryan Finley. Football Outsiders’ adjusted sack rate has Cincinnati as the league’s sixth-worst offensive line when adjusting for situational occurrences and opponents. Fellow rookies Justin Herbert and Tua Tagovailoa both have offensive lines in the top 15.

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Perhaps the hope was that Burrow’s quick release and a complementary offense designed by Zac Taylor could avoid an issue like we saw on Sunday and, for half of the season, that was true. Burrow’s average snap to throw time (2.69 seconds) is faster than that of Drew Brees, Kyler Murray, Jared Goff, Aaron Rodgers, Matt Ryan or Patrick Mahomes. But the reality of Cincinnati's rebuild—be it injuries to existing talent or squandered drafts from previous regimes prior to the Taylor-Burrow era—was always creeping. In the perfect world, a team can envision their old quarterback growing stale and replenish the talent pool up front, though a team that finds itself frequently picking at the top of the draft doesn’t always possess that foresight.

At the moment, the Bengals are slated to pick fifth in the 2021 NFL draft, though without Burrow their chances of remaining competitive in games against the likes of Baltimore, Pittsburgh and Miami look marginal at best. With that blooming capital, Cincinnati needs to provide Burrow with a peace of mind befitting of a franchise pillar. They’re soon to discover he is unlike any quarterback they’ve had in a long time (if they didn’t realize it already). So the instinct should be to protect him like that kind of player.