Three years ago, in a series of postgame phone calls, Joe Burrow sold me—and I was genuinely sold—that the concept of the was dead. His version, he insisted, was there to stay.
Of course, the on-field product backed that up. Big time.
The 2021 group made it all the way to the Super Bowl. If not for Aaron Donald being Superman, that Bengals team would’ve won the franchise’s first Lombardi Trophy. And Burrow, Ja’Marr Chase, and the rest of the squad proved a year later it was no fluke, returning to the AFC title game and taking the Kansas City Chiefs back into deep water before bowing out.
So, late Sunday afternoon, after another one of those games where it looked like Burrow could do whatever he wanted, I asked the quarterback a question I figured I probably knew the answer to: Whether he thought the Bengals would be dangerous if they could somehow, after all that’s gotten them this year, find a way back into the playoffs for the first time since losing that conference championship game in Kansas City.
“I think everybody knows the answer to that,” he says.
Those eight words can go a long way in affirming what’s become obvious.
After the quarterback threw for 252 yards and touchdowns to three different receivers, logging a 134.3 passer rating, the Cincinnati defense took a step in the right direction and a Chase Brown–fueled run game produced again, the Burrow Bengals are back. They won their third consecutive game—this one 24–6 over the Cleveland Browns—to get within a game of .500, 15 games into what’s been an unbelievably uneven season.
The door for them to be team, the one no one wants to play in January, remains ajar. But the path is narrow. First, they’ll have to beat the Denver Broncos, which would pull them within a game of Denver and give them the tiebreaker over Sean Payton’s group. Then, they’ll need to win in Week 18 and have the Broncos lose to the Chiefs (something that might require Kansas City to lose on Christmas, so the Chiefs play their starters against Denver). Then, both the Indianapolis Colts and Miami Dolphins will have to lose at least one of their final two.
If it happens, then, yes, few would argue Burrow’s point. The Bengals would be dangerous.
If it doesn’t, it sure looks like they’ll continue forward, so long as they handle what’s looming in a critical offseason the right way.
