National Football League

Joe Burrow Deserved Better

Updated Nov. 23, 2020 2:18 p.m. ET

By Charlotte Wilder

After the Cincinnati Bengals' second game of the season, I wrote a column headlined "PROTECT JOE BURROW."

The headline wasn’t in all-caps, but it should’ve been, because that’s what I yelled at my television throughout that Thursday night game and during almost every game since.

Cincinnati was playing with fire, placing the No. 1 pick behind a porous offensive line. Eventually, the Bengals' franchise quarterback was going to get burned.

And that’s exactly what happened Sunday.

And it only got worse on Monday, after Burrow's MRI.

Burrow took a nasty hit in the third quarter of Cincinnati's 20-9 loss at Washington. His leg appeared to bend the way your leg isn’t supposed to bend, and his body folded over it. It was so bad CBS didn’t immediately show a replay while Burrow lay on the ground, holding his knee, clearly in pain.

Then the cart came out, whisked Burrow away and took the rest of his rookie season with it.

Look – injuries are almost inevitable in the NFL. It’s hard to run into giant guys or have giant guys run at you without getting hurt. But that doesn’t mean you can put players in more dangerous positions than is absolutely necessary, which is exactly what the Bengals did with Burrow.

Many injuries are flukes, but it’s hard to say this one was.

Watching Burrow take hits like the one his former college teammate Chase Young (the No. 2 pick in the 2020 draft) laid on him early in the Washington game was like watching a college freshman take shots — someone was going to have to help Burrow pace himself. You’d think that someone would be Bengals coach Zac Taylor, given the incentive he has to keep his quarterback safe.

But it wasn’t.

Instead, Taylor called a deep ball on third-and-2, which is when Burrow got hit.

Burrow is no stranger to throwing the ball — as Troy Aikman pointed out during that Week 2 broadcast after Burrow threw for 316 yards at Cleveland.

“You throw 60 passes, you better have over 300 yards," Aikman said. "I didn't throw 60 passes in three weeks.”

Burrow might very well have enjoyed throwing the ball so much. He’s good at it! But it’s not up to him to protect himself or design plays that do so. And it seems reckless of the Bengals coaching staff to use him the way it did when the offensive line — which was bad to begin with — has been plagued with injuries.

Taylor said the line got better over the past four weeks, but if you use the phrase “revolving door of players” when you’re trying to prove that you’re doing a good job, you’re undercutting yourself.

Simply put: Burrow has taken the most hits any rookie QB has taken in 20 years.

It’s a testament to how insanely good Burrow is that the Bengals beat the undefeated Titans in Week 8 with four out of their five starting offensive linemen out. While the Bengals invested in Burrow and in fixing their defense in the offseason, they left their bad O-line almost unchanged.

Sure, Taylor is right, they have a number of viable offensive linemen. It’s just that the unit was either erratic or injury-plagued through the first half of the season. Quinton Spain and Hakeem Adeniji emerged as options when starters Jonah Williams, Bobby Hart and Fred Johnson were hurt, but the team struggled to string good performances together.

It felt like only a matter of time before Burrow took a hit that would sideline him. This isn’t even the offense’s fault. It’s on the coaching staff and management that put the team together.

It’s hard to understand how they didn’t, because Burrow isn’t just a promising young player. He’s special, and was on pace to break records as a rookie, completing 65.4 percent of his passes. He threw for 2,485 yards, 12 touchdowns and just five interceptions in 10 starts. He recorded three straight games with more than 300 passing yards, and was one game away from tying Andrew Luck’s rookie record from 2012.

You never know how well a player will transition from college to the NFL, but Burrow has been as exciting in the pros as he was when he led LSU to the national championship in January. His completion percentage is higher than that of Russell Wilson, Peyton Manning and Josh Allen through their first nine games.

But more importantly, Burrow has been asked to throw a lot. The rookie record for attempts is 627, set by Luck in 2012, and Burrow was ahead of that pace this season.

The Bengals haven't had a good run game this season, and Burrow's arm became the fix.

As LeBron James tweeted during Week 1, Burrow also just has the “it” factor. And as my co-host of "The People’s Sports Podcast," Mark Titus, said a few weeks ago, Burrow is the kind of guy who’s so good and so cool that fans should be sick of him. But he inherently knows how to make sure fans aren't sick of him. He downplays his success and stays likeable.

That’s a superpower!

Even the tweet Burrow sent out after the injury was endearing and level-headed, exuding the same chill he has shown on the field all season. He’s the kind of guy you want in the pocket because you’re confident he’s going to defy the odds of being on a bad team and make something happen anyway.

Imagine if he were on a good team?

I’ve joked all season that Burrow is my large adult son. I feel protective toward him because a) he’s now the same age as kids I babysat when I was a teen-ager and b) isn’t it a natural for maternal instincts to kick in when you watch a young, promising player keep getting rocked every week? How can you watch a Bengals game and feel like Burrow isn't your large adult son?

I hoped my "Protect Joe Burrow" piece would turn out to be an overreaction. I was mad at the Bengals for having him, which Bengals fans didn’t take well to. But even Bengals fans should be mad at the Bengals for having Burrow.

Because what good is having him if you don’t do everything you can to be sure he stays on the field?