Clickbait but true: Joe Burrow of the 4-8 Bengals deserves MVP consideration

Football is a team game played by individuals, which means that on occasion an individual can singlehandedly undo the work of an entire team. The kicker who misses a crucial game-winning field goal, the quarterback who throws a crushing pick-6, the defensive lineman who commits a back-breaking penalty … when one player’s failure is the pivot point on which a game is lost, it’s maddening, but at the same time every player realizes that he could be that player one day, too.

The exact opposite scenario is playing out in Cincinnati right now, a strange dynamic where the team is undoing the excellence of the individual. Joe Burrow is playing some of the best football of his career … and the Bengals defense is taking a sledgehammer to all that hard work.

Look, “Joe Burrow of the 4-8 Bengals deserves MVP consideration” is the kind of clickbaity headline that makes everyone hate the media, but it’s not quite as ridiculous as it sounds. The numbers are pretty staggering, starting with the fact that Burrow leads the NFL in passing yards per game (278.1) and touchdowns (30) and ranks fourth in passer rating, behind only Lamar Jackson, Jared Goff and Tua Tagovailoa.

The Bengals as a team rank fifth overall in points scored (27.9), tied with Tampa Bay and behind only Detroit, Buffalo, Baltimore and Washington. And thanks to Burrow, Ja’Marr Chase’s 1,142 receiving yards and 13 receiving touchdowns both lead the NFL.

The problem, quite simply, is that Burrow is playing on a team with an atrocious, nearly league-worst defense. Consider, for instance, the many ways in which Cincinnati is reaching or setting dubious records for losses despite offensive fireworks:

Only Carolina has given up more points per game than Cincinnati’s 28.3. The Detroit Lions score an average of 15 more points a game than their opponents. The Bengals score about half a point less.

Put another way, Burrow’s offense has to score more than four touchdowns a game just to outrun his own defense. That’s a phenomenal burden on your shoulders every single game, and Burrow conceded after Sunday’s loss to Pittsburgh that it’s weighing on him.

“I feel it. I feel it. I feel the pressure on me to be great,” he said, then deftly pivoted away from an indictment of his own defense. “That is part of playing QB in the NFL. I have to play to the absolute peak of my ability each week to go and win.”

He’s doing his damndest. Sunday marked the third straight game in which Burrow threw for at least 300 yards and three touchdowns. The Bengals’ record over that stretch: 0-3, thanks to the fact that the Cincinnati defense has allowed at least 34 points in all three of those games. All told, Cincinnati has held exactly one team to fewer than 14 points on the season: the woeful New York Giants, who only managed 7 in October.

Burrow’s certainly doing his part. In Week 13, he graded out by at least one standard as the NFL’s best quarterback:

Even more impressively, he’s compiling numbers that put him in the company of giants — and not the terrible New York kind. According to ESPN research, only six players in NFL history have averaged 275 passing yards, thrown 30 passing touchdowns and five or fewer interceptions through 12 games: Burrow, plus Tom Brady (2007), Aaron Rodgers (2011, 2014, 2020) and Patrick Mahomes (2020). All except Mahomes would go on to be named MVP. Guess who the only player of that crew with a losing record is?

It’s all enough to make Burrow almost — almost — break the code of clubhouse omerta that defines football. At the very least, he launched a Fourth of July firework into the locker room.

“We’ll learn a lot about who we have in the locker room, the guys we can count on going forward and guys that we can’t,” he said Sunday. “I think the next five weeks are gonna say a lot about who we can count on and who we can’t.”

Under any normal scenario, those five games would offer some substantial hope to a league-leading offense. Cincinnati finishes out the season with Dallas, Tennessee, Cleveland, Denver and Pittsburgh. The playoffs are all but out of reach — Cincinnati is five games back of Pittsburgh for the division lead, and 2 ½ games out of the seventh playoff spot. But dignity is still on the table. If the Bengals can manage to come out of 2024 with some measure of self-respect, they can figure out what to do about the defense in the offseason. More than almost any team in the league, the quarterback ain’t the problem.