The Ringer NFL Show - Joe Burrow Out for the Season. What Does This Mean for the Bengals and the Rest of the AFC?

Episode Date: November 17, 2023

Nora and Ben give their instant reactions to the news that Joe Burrow will be out the remainder of the season due to a torn wrist ligament. They discuss the ramifications this holds for the Bengals' future and how this injury affects the landscape of the AFC playoff picture. The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please check out theringer.com/RG to find out more, or listen to the end of the episode for additional details. Hosts: Nora Princiotti and Ben Solak Producer: Eduardo Ocampo Additional Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's been a while since we had an emergency pod. Unfortunately, this one does not occur under positive circumstances. I'm Norrinciati, and I'm here with Benjamin Solac to discuss the season-ending injury to Joe Burrow. Boo, his, Ben, I'm bummed. No, this really sucks. It's been an up-and-down season for the Bengals. It's already been a Joe Burroughs injured. We're not what we were to start the season for the Bengals.

But, okay, tough A-Hare. FFC playoffs, last to the FACC North. Still, you trust Joe Burrow, you trust Zach Taylor, you trust the legacy and the playoff experience. Like, this team's going to

make the way into the playoffs. No one's going to want to play them. Like, they're going to play some good January football. Now it's Jake Browning down the stretch. Not ideal. Yeah, suboptimal. It is just not a, in this AFC playoff picture,

even as like the Browns transition at Dorian Thompson Robinson and the Steelers play Kenny Pickett, who's functioning a backup quarterback at this point. Even with that considered, it's still just really difficult, I think, to push your way into the same thing.

AFC playoff picture. So this feels like a death knell in the season for the Bengals. This feels like ringing the bell. I don't see how they make it into the postseason with this Joe Burrow injury. And now they have to worry about their franchise quarterback's grip strength moving forward. It's a tough thing. Right. So we should talk about, I want to talk about the AFC North and do the here and now stuff

at some point. But worrying about your starting quarterback's grip strength, obviously not ideal. This is now, you know, the second Joe Burrow season that has. has ended with a significant injury. That's something that they have to think about going forward. And the thing that I wonder is, you know, there's some possibility that we get super hyped up for this Thursday night football game. It's like the first great Thursday night football game and who knows how long.

And then it turns into this kind of bummer night and it could end up being there is, I think, at least some possibility that that's the last time that we see, you know, a team with Borough, Chase, and Higgins together. And I mean, you know, T, obviously wasn't part of that. But that nucleus of that Bengals offense, there's some chance that this is the end. T is going to be a free agent after this year. Obviously, having given Burrow the massive contract going into this season, changes the finances for the Bengals significantly.

Jamar Chase is not going anywhere. He will be in the fourth year of his rookie contract next year. but that's when you start thinking about extension. Obviously, they'll pick up his fifth-year option. Never say never. The cap is fake. But this is a team that's going to have to make some really hard decisions. And so it's not only that, you know, they lose to the Ravens.

They're five and five. It seems like it would be a tough, tough hill to climb even if you did have Joe Burrow. And with Jake Browning, I mean, it's almost, you know, I don't want to be a downer, but the bengal seemed pretty cooked as far as 2023 goes. But the thing that's, that kind of bums you out even more is that you get to 2024 and start thinking about the future of this roster. And it only gets tougher from here because you no longer have the privilege of a rookie contract quarterback.

Yeah. If, assuming there's no more T. Higgins after 2024, the official last game of Burrow plus Chase plus T when they're all active and plus. will be the win over the Bengal, or whenever the bills, excuse me, which if your last he's azaa is breaking another AFC contender such that they go through like a coaching staff blow up, that's not a bad way to go out, all right? It's a good, yeah, it really is like, you know,

you go out with the boys for one last Tehran, you have a great time. Good work from the team. But yes, Jamar Chase, like you said, two years left on his deal and then the fifth year option. But besides that, you have Joe Mixen for this year next year, you have Tyler Boyd for just this year, you have T. Higgins for just this year. Even Wider Severe 4, Trent Irwin, who, like, has played well in Higgins'

his absence. He's been, like, a solid player for them. Restricted for a agent after this year, they're tight ends who, after Hayden Hurst left, he was on a one-year deal. Now it's Irv Smith, Drew Sample, Tanner Hudson, Mitchell Wilcox. All of them have taken snaps this year. All of them are on one-year deals. Like, every single weapon for the Joe Burrow Bengals is expiring this year or

expiring next year or named Jermarchase. Like, they are in a position where they need a dramatic, Hall. It is possible to extend T. T's got to have to want to play ball a little bit and do some stuff structure-wise to help the Bengals out. The Bengals also, a historic under the Brown family, do not like to, do not want to be a team that has guarantees in a contract more than year two. They do not like to have any money guaranteeing year three or beyond. They've started to finagle with those guideposts, obviously, as they've gotten to star talent and they have Joe Burroughs contract now. But they would have to be willing to overstep that balance.

ever make a T. Higgins contract work. And then even then, once you do that, now you're kind of committing yourself to saying, right, a lot of chips in on T, a lot of chips in on Jamar Chase. It's going to be harder to resign some of our defensive players when those guys get up, so on and so forth. So this is a big fence post moment here for the Bengals. It was always going to be. And now with the lack of the, with the lack of Joe Burrow, the rest of the way,

with the burrow injury, you have to do so with a little bit of uncertainty of quarterback and also potentially with like a top 15 pick burning a hole in your pocket. Because if the Bengals had gone through the projected season that we thought they would this offseason. Oh, AFC North, they're going to win it. Oh, they're going to play in the divisional round and they end up with pick 29.

Well, you start saying, right, are we going to replace T. Higgins with like a receiver at like 25 overall, at 30 overall? That's like Jalen Rager territory. I don't know if we can get that done. All of a sudden, if you, this season really goes south and you end up with, you know, six and 11, seven and 10 record,

and you're saying there with pick 13. Ah, it goes a little bit easier to go draft that wide receiver one and feel like you can move on from T. And so the change in draft capital here also now affects that outlook and it affects the whole conversation. So the Bengals from here on out, maybe not an exciting team to watch the AFC playoff picture, but where their draft pick lands is going to impact this team's offseason quite a bit. If you remove the massive bummer element from it, it will be interesting just because it is such a sliding doors moment of, of, you know, are they willing to do some of the stuff that they were willing to do with Joe in terms of guarantees

and in terms of the structure of the contract with some of those non-quarterback players, right? Because it can go both ways. It can go, we have Joe Burrow, we are in this competitive era that's more exciting than, you know, it's been for a while in Cincinnati and we want to go all in for it. Or it can be, we went all in for Joe Burrow

because he's our franchise quarterback. And now we want to make a statement that the Cincinnati Bengals actually don't do this. And we don't hand out guarantees like that. And we want to reset the precedent of, you can't expect this if you play. here long term. I, you know, people inside that building would have to answer the question of, of what

direction that's going to trend in. But it'll be interesting to watch. Ben, I said really depressingly that the Bengals are cooked. Let's just, let's try to be nice here. What is the absolute best case for Cincinnati playing out the rest of the season? Well, the Bengals play the Steelers, the Jaguars, the Colts, the Vikings, the Steelers, the Chiefs, and the Browns the rest of the way. all of those teams are 500 or better.

Their average opponent is like 65% win percentage right now or something like that. That's bad. It was going to be tough with Joe. And now it's Jake. Anybody who hasn't watched some Jake Browning, I would encourage you to turn on some 2017 Washington Husky's highlights.

You will convince yourself that the dude might be a dude. A lot has happened between now and then, but there was once a time. So you can get there if you want to get there. I thought Browning looked perfectly cramulous. just like totally acceptable in relief of burrow. I think that you can be a good backup quarterback in an offense. I'm supposed to just like Cromulan, just go.

We just keep doing a podcast. Crumulence in the dictionary because of me, okay? I know. I know. I know. You think I'm not going to use it? I'm a loyal expat. Thank you.

So with T. and Jemar Chase in an offense, you still are going to be, like, there's ways that this passing offense still works. Like, Browning looks function. It feels like an average QB2 offense where it's like, right, they're not incredible, but they can move this thing down the field with some moderate success. The problem is defensively,

this isn't the unit that it was in seasons past. They're the second worst team right now by defensive success rate. They're struggling with personnel issues on that side of the ball. Offensive line, they made their big changes last season and this season. It has not paid off for them.

Orlando Brown Jr. is a problem. On the left side for them, Cordell-Wolson is a problem for them on the interior. Like, they have issues. They have a lot of problems that, When they've won games, they've won these close, one-score games in large part because Burroughs been good in the fourth quarter and they're a great clutch team and they're awesome in these two-minute situations.

If Browning doesn't bring that, which you don't expect them to, it feels like even if they stay close and they stay competitive, it feels like they lose a little bit of that magic that they had. And so I think Browning will be fine. Like I saw like there was a Chase Daniel tweet that was like, this is why you've got to take backup quarterback seriously. It's like, I'd Chase Daniel. Like, yes, Chase.

Like that's been your... We don't have good starting quarterbacks. Like in theory, it's a great point. In practice, it's a little harder. But here we are. And like, could they have gone more aggressively after QB2 when Burrow had the caps train in the summer? Sure, but they didn't and they got Browning. I think Browning is going to be fully capable of throwing a 30-yard duck to T. Higgins and asking him to make him look right.

And I think T's going to be good to catch on that ball. So they'll be okay. You know, it's really, Josh Dobbs, Josh Jobs, Josh Dobbs competency is really tough for all of the teams that are losing their starting quarterbacks because he is just, I am assigning Josh Dobbs left and right. as reasoning for why teams didn't take their backup role seriously enough. Like, there's five or six NFL teams right now where I'm just sitting on podcasts going, you could have had Josh Dobbs for a fifth round pick, and you didn't.

And it's totally unfair. It's always mobility. QB2 needs to be a guy who can move. He needs to be a guy who can erase negative plays for you. And Jake Browning thinks he can move. And that's close. That's close. It's not always the same, though.

He is willing to move. that's just not always optimal. Do we need to talk about about like Burrow, like when the hand, the sleeve and the plane? So that's exactly what I was going to bring. Yeah, I was thinking,

okay, cool. To my eye, this injury went down when Burrow was tackled by Chedevian Clowny and fell funny, caught himself on his wrist. There's, I guess,

a little video going around where you can kind of see a mouth, something like I heard a pop afterwards. However, there is video available of Burrow getting off the team plane in Baltimore where he's wearing a wrap on his hand. The NFL is investigating whether there was any issue in the reporting of Joe Burrow may be having a preexisting injury. He was not on the injury report leading into the game. Burrow told reporters in Cincinnati today that it was a, quote, completely different thing. It's not uncommon for guys to wear compression sleeves on planes.

when you go to altitude, things can swell up. Are you calling shenanigans? I think overall no shenanigans. I think that Burrow hit his hand in the Texans game last week, last Sunday. Chris Long had the video bit up. You see him, he hits his hand. He gets like sandwich between him in Orlando Brown.

He's like shaking it. He's moving it. And then he continues to play and he's throwing the football well and like, whatever. And then I think he wore a compression sleeve on the play. in part to, you know, address the fact that his hand was sore and it was potentially going to swell as he was on that flight. Like his point is like, people wear compression sleeves on planes. It's like, yeah, people who are 80, Joe.

Like, you got to, you know, I don't think this is like that comment of a thing. I wear compression socks to fly sometimes. Yeah. Okay. I know like two people in my life who do this and they're all old. And so I don't know if the use are doing it. Wow. Brutal.

Absolutely brutal. Maybe it's something that I need to adopt in my own life. I don't know. I Googled the information. They were like, to help with swelling. And I was like, I don't swell on planes. I'm chilling. I only for like a really long flight.

Okay. I'm happy for you. Thank you. Thank you. I think, yeah. I think that like, I think Burroughs throwing hand was less than 100% entering this game because it got banged up.

And I think that that happens to a lot of quarterbacks. And over the course of seasons, and I have a lot of players over the course season that something gets banged up and they try to address it and they don't put on the injury reports it's like I'm not 100, I'm just 95%. Like Jaylen Hertz has been actively limping

on the field and the Eagles won't put him on the injury report with a knee. And he's acknowledged like yeah, I have a bruise in my knee. Like there's stuff that players decide falls below the threshold, especially really tough players like Joe Burrow.

Then I think in this game, he got hit by Jadavian clownie while he was throwing. He, like, Jasina Anderson reported that he said that Ravens players hurt him say after the clownie, hit, I felt a pop. Burrough said during his press conference today that he felt the pop when he threw the ball to Joe Mixin on the subsequent play.

At some point, someone heard a pop or multiple pops and something popped. And then there was that clip of him jogging to the sideline. You can see his hand is swollen up like a balloon. And that's where it's like, okay, like I think if his hand looked like that after the Texans game, I think that would have gotten on the report. I don't think that would have gotten by Bengals, Beatwriters and various people if his hand looked that way. So I think that big swelling and that big thing was a result of the Ravens thing.

So maybe some minor shenanigans, I don't think it's overt shenanigans. Yeah, I think no major shenanigans because here's the thing. The injury is a ligament tear. Quarterback's hands, disgusting, just absolutely gross. You ever look at like a veteran quarterback, you know, a guy who's been out of the game for however long? Their hands are gross. The fingers are going in all sorts of different directions. It's terrible.

And the injury report ultimately is supposed to be, and I don't have the exact, wording. So, you know, forgive some slight generalizations here. But the injury report is supposed to be a reflection of what's your ability to participate? What's your ability to participate in practice? It's not supposed to be, is there anything that hurts? Is there anything on your body that that's not feeling too hot right now? Because if that were the case, there wouldn't be a single football player that at this point in the year would be able to play. So it sounds as though he might have been dealing with something along those lines where he still, you know, would have practiced. Fully, obviously, there's also some difference in just how you go through a week of practice when it's a short week because you're playing it on Thursday night.

And having a torn ligament in the, you know, where the hand connects to the wrist. Because if that's what he's dealing with now, it seems pretty obvious that that took place during the game. So, you know, we don't know. They're investigating. We'll see it play out. but if I had to make a guess as to whether or not the Bengals are going to get, they're going to be seeing draft picks docked and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I think it seems kind of a moment.

Now, could the hit at the Texans that caused pain in his hand that made it more likely that a subsequent hit against the Ravens would lead to a torn ligament? If I knew how ligaments work, I would answer that question, but I don't. And so, like, I don't, you know, like, it's, like, could it have been total coincidence? Sure. Does it feel like there was probably some connection? Yes, is it enough to say like, oh, the Bengals, you know, cheated and didn't put them on the injury for? I don't think it is.

Like, people are like, oh, like, I would never have bet on the Bengals if I knew about Joe Burroughs hand injury. I'm here to tell you, if you've bet on 10 NFL games, you have lost one of those bets because a certain player was banged up and you didn't know about it. Like, a lot of players are playing at 90 to 80 percent. And we don't know about it and that's the nature of it. So to me, it's small potatoes that became big potatoes because of the Jamien Clowny hit because of the visibility of it. So the Ravens, having won this game, seemed to be a decent command of the IFC North. The Steelers, technically, are the only other team playing with their starting quarterback, though it is Kenny Pickett, a player. The Steelers who keep winning games and just, like, angering their fan base beyond belief with every additional win.

The Steelers season is shaping up to be one of my favorite things in the history of the NFL. It's just so silly. It's just absolute silliness. The Steelers right now, 2% chance to get the one seat in the AFC, just an FYI. That's so funny. That's so funny. That's so good. We're in range, baby.

In one out of every 50 universes, Steelers, one seed. There are like fire mat Canada signs at like Premier League soccer game. Like, it's just, it's completely jumped the shark, and it is so funny, and I absolutely love it. But beyond Pittsburgh, but I guess including Pittsburgh, who do you? think benefits the most from a severely hampered Bengals team in terms of the playoff race. Yeah, I think that the, to me, the geometry of the AFC, North doesn't change too much. When on Monday, when all of the quarterbacks were healthy slash going to play, I would have told you the Ravens were the scariest team, Browns were second, Bengals were third, Steelers were fourth.

Now with Deshawn and Burrough both injured, I think the Ravens are the scariest team. I think the Browns are second. the Bengals might still be third, probably fourth, and then the Steelers like move. But I think AFC Northwise, I don't think too much changes, changes for me with the burrow injury.

The Bengals were a team that I didn't have a lot of trust in from the jump. When you go and you look at the five and five Texans fighting for a wildcard spot, five and five Colts fighting for a wildcard spot, five and five Raiders,

whoa, weird, fighting for a wildcard spot, five and five bills, fighting for a wildcard spot. I'm not going to say four and five chargers because obviously I don't believe in the Chargers and I would never have any faith in them.

These teams, I think you're going to see Cincinnati fall out of that very thick 500 group that's going to be fighting for seed six, seed seven, and the AFC, those are the teams that benefit. If you're the bills right now, you were like, all right, like the Bengals beat us and we can never beat the Bengals, but Joe Burroughs out and we made the change of

coordinator, here we go! And like, I don't know if that's real or not, but that's what you're trying to do, so there it is. I feel the way about the bills that you do about the chargers is like, I'm, I'm thinking it in corners of my brain, but I don't want to say it on a podcast. It's, you don't say it. What you do is you say that you're not saying it. And that way, you never said it, but if it turns out it happened, then you were saying it.

It's a professional podcasting over here. I think this is good. I would say that this is good for the Texans, except I have planted my flag on the Texans are going to win their division. Yeah, I'm there with you. in which case I guess it's good for the Jax. So there are going to be some of these, you know, I hate talking about injuries this way because injuries are the absolute worst. But we started this season talking so much about how loaded the AFC was and who was going to be the odd man out or the odd men out because there were going to be teams that we looked at as contenders as super competitive who were just not going to be able to make math work.

And right now it's looking like a lot of those. decisions, results are going to happen because of the injuries. But we get to see who gets to take advantage of a little bit of extra room in the playoff picture, which will be fun. We're transitioning to that time of year. Like a lot of the first 10 weeks of the season are like, who are you as a team? What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses?

Trade deadline. How do you improve? How do you grow? What do you want to work on? We're entering the cold weather months. One thing, there's two things that matter. We had to end the season and the post season. health tackling.

Everything's that. The schemes have been schemed. They've been solved. You have your stars. We match up to these guys this way. We match for those guys those ways. Now it's how healthy can you stay? Can you bring the guys down when the weather's cold?

Like that's what football becomes when we get past Thanksgiving and we're well on our way. And so if you're for a team and they're in the playoffs, like what should I care about? Bubble wrap everybody you can because this is when health really starts to matter. All right. Anything we need to hit before we go out? I don't think hip drop tackles are illegal. I hope Lamar's okay. Mark Andrews has a crack tribula.

I hate Thursday night football. It's very stressful. And I hope Joeverro is okay. And he can hold a football again because it would really, really suck if this becomes a bad thing. I think that's the right note to end this on. So this has been the ring around NFL show. I'm Norvind Ziyadi. He is Benjamin Silak.

Thank you to Eduardo Ocampo for producing this episode and for Manning the Socials Department and to Arjuna Ramapal for additional production. supervision. Stephen and I will be up next on dual threat breaking down all of Sunday's games.