Joe Burrow is being wasted by the Bengals, and their Super Bowl window closed before it opened

Only the Bengals could screw this up like they have.

The Bengals season is functionally over. As much as Zac Taylor might want to try and talk up Cincinnati’s chances of making the postseason, they’re cooked. At 4-7, with two remaining games against the Steelers and one against the Broncos, any hope of a fairytale win-out scenario is so preposterous they’re not even worth entertaining.

As disappointing as this has been for fans, it’s been even worse for Joe Burrow.

The biggest indictment of Zac Taylor and front office is how they’ve squandered Burrow at his best. Cincinnati’s QB is on pace to finish this season with an early vacation despite leading the NFL in passing yards and passing touchdowns. Burrow is projected to finish the 2024 season with 4,680 passing yards, 42 touchdowns, and 6 interceptions. He should be in the discussion as an MVP candidate, but instead a sub .500 record has turned the team into a joke.

There’s a lot of blame to go around in an effort to answer two lingering questions: How did the Bengals screw up so badly that they can’t win with the NFL’s hottest quarterback, and have they allowed their window to close before it ever fully opened?

Five years of offensive line mediocrity

It’s rare that a No. 1 overall pick enters the league with an established and tested offensive line, but Cincinnati has done functionally nothing to improve their line over the time Burrow has been with the team.

Burrow has been sacked 174 times in five years since entering the league. Factor in the rest of this season and games missed due to injury he’s averaged taking 47 sacks a year. That’s 10 more sacks a season than Justin Herbert and 20 more than Patrick Mahomes.

Since Burrow arrived the team has barely given their line a thought in the draft. With 34 total draft picks since selecting their QB with the first pick in 2020, only six picks have been spent on the offensive line, while seven picks have been on the defensive line. Of course, it doesn’t help either when every draft pick Cincinnati has spent on their OL has turned into a pumpkin with Adarius Mims, their first pick in the 2024 draft, currently leading the league in penalties, and ranked 2nd in the league in sacks allowed by a lineman.

Meanwhile in free agency the team has at least tried to find talent, but thus far it’s been a whole lot of spending for zero results. Alex Kappa and Ted Karras, their big one-two signings of 2022 have been utter trash since joining Cincinnati, making the team’s o-line ineffective, overpaid, and bloated.

Undervaluing running backs

Perhaps no team has been worse at reading the offensive tea leaves of the NFL than the Cincinnati Bengals. While most teams saw a needed-shift to establishing the run in 2024, the Bengals chose to more or less ignore it all together.

They rank 26th in the NFL in rushing attempts, 27th in rushing yards, and 28th in rushing touchdowns. Allowing their RB depth to dissolve over the years, there’s no excuse for Cincinnati to not use some of their cap space to find a true running back. As much as people might want to will Chase Brown into that role he’s 121st in the league in yards-per-attempt, getting mediocre numbers off volume rather than quality.

This means that everything about the Cincinnati offense comes down to Burrow’s arm, and that’s a unreasonable amount of pressure for a quarterback who is getting sacked as much as he is. Still, Burrow and the passing offense is managing to do its job, which is a testament to how talented Ja’Marr Chase is.

Yet none of this matters because …

The Bengals defense is putrid beyond all imagination

It takes a special level of talent (or lack thereof) to suck in every phase of defense the way the Bengals do. This is quite literally a team bad at everything on the defensive side of the ball.

• 23rd in passing yards allowed
• 21st in rushing yards allowed
• 28th in points allowed
• 24th in plays allowed per drive
• 29th in first downs allowed

This team allows too many points, allows its opponents to control the clock, can’t defend the run or the pass, eventually allowing too many points. All of this against one of the weakest schedules in the NFL, which has allowed anyone to have a shot of beating the Bengals so long as they can stop Burrow and Chase from delivering a few explosive plays.

This window closed before it ever actually opened

Nobody in the NFL had a brighter future than the Cincinnati Bengals after their incredible run to the Super Bowl in 2021. They had one of the best young quarterbacks in the league, the scariest receiving duo, and so much cap space it would take a concerted effort to botch developing this roster into a perennial contender.

Sadly, the Bengals managed to do just that.

Three years later we have a team with more holes than resources to patch them. Horrific drafting since that time has left the cupboards bare outside of a few star players, with the mid-to-late rounds not landing the starters (or even key rotation players) needed to build a franchise.

Burrow keeps getting hit, the coaching is bad, the front office is bad, and the rest of the AFC North (not you, Browns) is getting better. There’s no reason Cincinnati shouldn’t be battling for the division title with the likes of Pittsburgh and Baltimore, but instead they’re losing to teams like the Patriots, being doubled-up by the Eagles, and can’t even hang with the Chargers on Sunday Night Football when Joe Burrow throws for 356 yards and 3 touchdowns.

It’s impossible to feel hopeful for this franchise long-term. Nothing will get better until Zac Taylor goes, until they get a real general manager to run the show. Until there’s someone willing to take accountability for the franchise’s mistakes and stop letting Burrow or Chase be the only guys who seem like they give a damn.

Sorry Bengals, we were all rooting for you, but at this point the franchise is beyond help in its current state.