Bengals to Blame for Joe Burrow’s Injury Woes? It’s Complicated, With Ben Baby

0:00Welcome to the Ringer NFL Show. I'm your host Sheil Kapadia. We unfortunately got our first big quarterback injury of the season in week two. Joe Burrow goes down with a toe injury, having surgery out for at least three months. What does this mean for the Bengals season and for Burrow's future in the state of the AFC? We're going to talk about it all with Ben Baby, who does a terrific job covering the Bengals for ESPN. Ben, how much more do you know about turf toe now? than you did like 24 hours ago. Are you a legit expert now? I'd like to think so. I think our Stefania Bell at ESPN helps us out a good amount with any time understanding these injuries.

0:39Understanding why it's called turf toe, it's always strange. It's funny, the NFLPA had a couple guys in there, and there were some conversations over the turf situation, and the PA has shifted. Now, the Bengals did change their turf recently, so they got rid of the turf that everybody hated. It's still turf, but we were having a conversation, And, you know, I was wondering, does this happen if it's grass? And, you know, I think the PA obviously has been shifting. I know we're getting real deep real early now into turf toe. Yeah, that's interesting. But I was just like, you know, I said on the side, I said, well, they don't call it grass toe.

1:12So, you know, we'll see how that changes. But yes, now I'm getting more familiar with the injury over the years. Okay. Yeah. See, I didn't even know that. I didn't even think turf versus grass there. So you're already informing me. So, yeah, we're going to talk about it all. Are the Bengals to blame with their roster building? Is Joe Burrow injury prone? Can they keep this thing afloat with Jake Brown? And we'll get to all those questions. We'll take a quick break. We'll come back and get to it. This is the Ringer NFL show presented by FanDuel and the NFL is officially back. So if you're going to be in it, be in it with FanDuel.

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3:51All right, we're back on the Ringer NFL show. Ben, let's start with the basics here. What have we learned over the last 24 hours in terms of Joe Burrow's timeline, recovery process, how the Bengals are dealing with the news? Before we get to the other stuff, give us the basics of where this stands. Yeah, right now, it seems like according to ESPN's Adam Schefter, it's going to take about three months for this thing to heal. At minimum, Burrow will need surgery. That has been confirmed by Bengals head coach Zach Taylor. He's still hesitant to see what the timeline is going to look like officially.

4:21The reason why several years ago in Zach's first year, AJ Green, I think he had an ankle injury, if I'm not mistaken. And Zach thought he would come back and practice one day and AJ did not. And AJ never played again that season. Ever since then, Zach Taylor has almost refused to give any timelines on injuries. That's going to pin him down to an actual time because of that. He kind of referenced that in his presser today. So I find it funny that what happened all the way back in 2019 with Zach still kind of holds true with his injury situation. I found him to talk about injuries better than most, but they are expecting him to be out, I would imagine, for a while.

4:58That leaves Jake Browning to come in. They're still trying to find the time of when the surgery is going to occur. I think that should be hammered out sometime this week. But that's kind of where things currently are with Burrow and that toe injury. And now we'll see kind of how Jake Browning slots in and what they're able to do moving forward. coaches learn that lesson early. I feel like Ben, either they, either they pivot and then they're like, we're not giving out any timeline or there's the Pete Carroll method, which you listen, any young coaches listening, I suggest this, you give a timeline way down the road.

5:30Then the guy comes back and then Pete Carroll's like, he just has like Wolverine blood, this guy, you know, I can't believe he's out there. And then the player feels good. You know, the fans feel good because the guy's back earlier. So you got to learn those lessons as a young coach. It sounds like Zach Taylor learned those lessons. Burrow now, Ben, has had season-ending knee injury in 2020, wrist injury in 2023, played through a calf injury in camp before the 2023 season. So three injury-plagued seasons out of six. I know there's other stuff you can probably fill us in on as well, but I feel like the big sort of narrative or conversation in the 24 hours since we got this news is, are the Bengals to blame for this?

6:13Is it roster building? Have they ignored the offensive line? Do they put Joe Burrow in harm's way? Do they not understand that they've got a franchise quarterback and you've got to protect him? And I'll be honest, I was at one place with this argument this morning, and then I kept digging a little deeper and now I'm wavering a little bit. So I want to hear what you think first. And then I want to give you my take on whether there's legitimacy to those, those arguments. Yeah. One, I cannot wait to hear your take on the subject, but you know, it's something that we talked about it and we put that squarely to Zach Taylor and Bengals offensive coordinator, Dan pitcher, uh, and talks about kind of the play style.

6:49And Zach said, listen, our play style, you know, it helped us go to a super bowl. We won, you know, we won an AFC championship, went back to another one, won a couple of division titles. You know, anyone wants to say, you know, this play style is putting, you know, players in harm's way. I will take that blame. I'll put that on me, but we feel like this is the best way to win. I think philosophically top down, you know, once they got Burrow. And I think even before, when you look at really the history of the Bengals, they've always been a team that's identified quarterbacks, identified receivers.

7:16You know, when you look at it, they've actually had a lot of stability on that front for all the other faults they may have. One of the things they've been quite excellent at is finding stable quarterback play over the years with a couple of exceptions. But, you know, I think that they want to go out, they want to put teams under pressure with the passing attack. And Joe Burrow also wants to play this way as well. He loves to be in shotgun. He likes to be able to use his superpower of diagnosing pre-snap, being able to take advantage of the defensive matchup, wherever it may be. All of those things play together.

7:48And I think that is all part of the conversation of going into this. And in terms of neglect, you know, I think the Bengals and Zach Taylor and basically anybody who's ever played offensive line will concede. When you drop back in pass sets as often as you do, it is very hard to be very good at pass blocking. You're going backwards all the time. You know, I'm a big, I'm a big fight fan. Boxing is my favorite sport. And you know, in the, in the fight game, you talk, you talk about it. It's really hard to fight off the back foot. Generally, your best fighters are going forward. When you're pass blocking, all you're doing is hand to hand combat off your back foot for basically an entire game.

8:22If you're the Bengals. So it does put them in a tough spot. They understand that. But that's the way that they want to go out and play football in terms of the neglect. you know the Bengals they do not spend a lot of money on the offensive line but they have put resources uh to it toward it I should say more so in recent years especially after the Super Bowl you go out and you get Orlando Brown uh you draft Amarius Mims at right tackle they drafted Dylan Fairchild to be a starter uh they invested in Ted Karras who's been a good center for them and then at right guard that's been the big question mark this offseason I never really found a very solid guy Lucas Patrick was that until he got hurt and even that was a little bit questionable and now you have Dalton Reiser who stepped in so I think it's I mean honestly we could talk about this for such a long time but I think there's so many different factors but I don't think it's just pure neglect as to why that offensive line is it isn't blocking maybe how people think I agree with that that that's where I was you know this because I kept saying all the Bengals have failed Joe Burrow and I think there's a difference between your plan not necessarily working out and neglect, you know, like there's this graphic floating around on NFL live.

9:29That's very interesting comparing Andrew Luck and Joe Burrow and Joe Burrow through six seasons has been sacked more than Andrew Luck who played six seasons. And it's got other numbers there, how often they're contacted. And it's not a great look for Joe Burrow and for the Cincinnati Bengals. But I feel like those Colts teams with Andrew Luck, it was neglect. They didn't understand what they needed to do to protect their quarterback. And to your point, the Bengals have signed Orlando Brown Jr. Now we can have a conversation with that. Like I thought that was a good signing at the time. And so they spent big money to get Orlando Brown Jr.

10:04I think he was the highest priced offensive tackle free agent in that class. They use a first round pick on a Marius Mims. To your point, they've drafted other offensive linemen. And so like, I think they've tried and there's always trade-offs in the NFL. Like if you're paying Joe Burrow, Jamar Chase, T Higgins, and your defense was a disaster last year, like they had to make some decisions in last year's draft and even the past couple of drafts. Do we invest in the defense? Do we invest in the offensive line? So I don't think it's a matter of neglect. I think it's fair to say, Hey, it hasn't worked out.

10:37It hasn't been the best offensive line in the NFL. I would love to see Joe Burrow come back from this injury in 2026 and beyond. We have you back and we say, man, the Bengals have a top five offensive line. look at this they're dominating out there but you got to have some band-aids I don't want to say cut corners but you have to say all right we can't spend as much here and I think that's probably been the interior of the Bengals offensive line but I don't look at it and say they've neglected that and the other thing here Ben is like it'd be one thing if their offense just sucked and it was like man they don't build the offensive line and their offense no their offense works really really what kind of at an elite level now maybe not in a game and a half this year but But you look back last year, top five offense.

11:19You look back 2022, top five offense when Joe Burrow was healthy. So even with the offensive line issues they've had, they've built this elite offense. And so I understand why they've made some of the decisions they made as much as I would like to just come on here and crush them and be like, they're cheap, they don't understand this, I'm smarter than them. I actually don't think that's the case here. So that's where I think I've landed with this whole thing. Yeah, I think it's a nuanced conversation, to be clear. And I feel like sometimes that's a cop out, but it's in football. There's so many things intertwined with each other.

11:51It's so hard. You know, I, you know, I teach a stats class at SMU and one of the old books that you go back and look at it, um, the hidden game of football, you know, they did all they, they basically invented the concept of EPA. Uh, they went through or just kind of flesh it out maybe further in the eighties. They were really ahead of their time, talked about CPOE and stuff like that. And they were talking about stats and they go, it's really hard to pin down stats for players and things of that nature that really quantify things because every unit is so intertwined. So everything is essentially a team-oriented deal.

12:21So trying to parse out how everything works, it's really tough in football, I think more so than any other sport because every position group is so connected on any given play. But the one thing we potentially are overlooking here, because I think we've heard the Andrew Lugg, Joe Burrow comparisons for a very long time. I think something that people do not understand as someone who's watched Burrow now for six years is that his play style also changes depending on the situation. And he will be willing to take sacks and contacts in certain situations that he will not be at other points in the year.

12:54Take last year, for example, Burrow at the beginning of the year when they were kind of in a neutral situation with their record was getting the ball out quick, wasn't really. He was kind of trying to make sure he made good decisions. And as the season progressed, as the Bengals, it became clear their offense was going to have to win them games. the defense was not going to get it done. We saw Joe Burrow holding onto the ball a little bit longer, willing to take some sacks and pressures and hits, knowing that he's got to get to trying to make the offense as explosive as it can possibly be. So I think a lot of times we just see the raw numbers, but when you look at it, the way that he plays also shifts on the situation.

13:29He said on a podcast previously, like on a third down, a sack doesn't really mean anything to me. You know, we're giving the ball back anyway. So if I get hit, who cares? I think the problem sometimes, and now we're starting to really have this conversation is that is maybe that play style subjecting himself to more hits than he needs to take. And, you know, is being in shotgun, being in this situation, playing the way, you know, in this manner, is that maybe open you up to a little more risk? And I think today we probably had the most candid conversation with Zach Taylor and Dan Pitcher about that concept.

14:02Yeah, 721 dropbacks last year, most in the NFL. If you look at all the, some of the advanced stats, you know, you're mentioning, And Seth, they're just first and second down last year. They're the most pass-heavy team in the NFL. Again, it's how Burrow wants to play, I imagine, and it works really well. So what do you do? You're going to go away from that and be a worse team and be a worse offense because you're afraid of a guy getting injured? I mean, that's not really how football works. That's not really how the NFL works. So let's take a break. I want to come back. I do want to talk to you a little bit about whether that injury-prone label is fair.

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15:57All right, we're back on the Ringer NFL show. So you mentioned it. You had a candid conversation with Zach Taylor and the OC today. Burrow now has had injuries in three of six NFL seasons. Is he injury prone? Are injuries fluky and random? Is this something that the Bengals have to think about going forward as they make roster building decisions? Where are you with this? Because like everything else, this is a very difficult conversation. There's no magic formula that says, yes, a guy because he got injured last year is going to get injured next year. Yeah. You know, going back to what we were just talking about, I think that I don't know if it's injury prone seems like a, anytime you broach that with a player, it seems kind of, they get offended to a degree.

16:38Yes. And sometimes, you know, I, Carl Lawson was the perfect example of this a few years ago in 2020, you know, he had a bunch of injury problems and he says, you know, injury prone, what does that even mean? It's like, some of that stuff is a little bit different. You know, it's not like, you know, and he said, listen, sometimes things happen. And unfortunately for Carl, he went out and tours Achilles with the jets a year later, and it was never really the same player, but sometimes, you know, there, I think there's more habits. There's, there's preparation. There's, there's a way that guys train.

17:05Sometimes when you have a lot of soft tissue injuries, uh, that sometimes when you hear injury prone, that's usually what it's about. It's people, you know, who have a lot of soft tissue problems that generally, you know, boils back to different things. Usually you can identify something in the preparation, uh, in maybe their diet, there's different factors that go into that. So, you know, I don't know if that's a luck thing, but in terms of this, you know, I, you look at it again, I think Burrow and the way that, that he plays the game, I think you're by nature going to end up in some situations where he's going to try to push it to the limit for better or for worse.

17:37You know, he wants to be the guy that goes out and really beats you. You know, if he was going to be a fighter, he's going to be the one that's going to go toe to toe. And he wants to land that knockout punch every time, you know, and as a UFC is his favorite sport by a mile, you know, he loves talking about that as much as anything. And so, you know, he has the mentality of like a, I've told it like a Dustin Poirier, who's willing to go out and do what he's got to do, you know, go out on a shield if needed. and I think those players are often remembered for their courage but that also means there's a lot that you have to come with and Burrow's always been comfortable with that he's never shied away from contact I think they've had to yell at him to slide yell at him to go down yell at him to get rid of the ball and at some point you realize you gotta let Joe Burrow be Joe Burrow and that's part of the conversation here and he's taken the team and the franchise to unprecedented heights I think for him to turn around this franchise and for Zach Taylor to make sure that he builds everything in the franchise to support their young quarterback as best as they can.

18:33I think that's probably, we talk about young quarterback development in the league. You know, the second Burrow got here, they said, whatever you need, we're giving it to you. We're at altar. You know, you're, you're going to get final say, you know, Zach said today, the last 10 % of a game plan, he's looking right at Joe Burrow and says, tell me what you like. Tell me what you don't like. This is what it's going to look like. You know, he last year, he was, we were in Dallas. I'll never forget it. You know, after the game, he goes, you know, you know, they walk out with T Higgins. I said, Oh, you know, probably a good chance that you're not going to have him back he goes oh i think we got a shot and he and he believed it and then after i went to his locker and i said joe you don't really believe that well y 'all can't afford him he goes yeah and he just shook his head yes and then i go how are you gonna do it he goes don't worry about it okay and sure enough they got it back yeah so so i think that you know he's had his hand in a lot if i think so i think i don't think it's injury prone i think sometimes when you just again when you play this way you have that style i think sometimes you're just going to take on some risks That's a great point too.

19:26I mean, if Joe Burrow goes to the team, maybe last year and says, I'm cool with T Higgins walking, but get me two guards for, you know, $12 million per year. They might be saying, all right, let's go get him two guards for 12 million. And now would that have been a better decision? I don't, I think you're probably not getting the same value as you're getting with T Higgins and Joe Burrow knows how he can play and how he can overcome some offensive line issues. So, yeah, I think that's, it's such a hard thing to coach out of quarterbacks. I find it's like one thing that when there are guys who are just like, we're not going to let a play die.

20:02We're not going to prioritize protecting ourselves. Those conversations happen year after year, but it's very rare, not impossible, but very rare that the, you know, there's a huge change from what it got. It's just kind of in you or not, or you learned it earlier or not that you're going to go that way. So going forward here, Ben, Jake Browning, they turn to Jake Browning here. Hey, four and three with Browning in 2023. What's the feel around the Bengals with their backup quarterback? And I guess the dream scenario here would be Browning keeps them afloat. Burrow comes back mid-December. They're in the playoff mix.

20:38He's healthy. Chase is healthy. Higgins is healthy. Maybe the young offensive linemen are playing better. Maybe the young defensive players are playing better. and all of a sudden you say, hey, we sneak in, who knows what can happen? We've seen it before. So is that kind of how the Bengals fans should be looking at the rest of this season here? Yeah, you know, I think the optimism and if that Joe Burrow can come back in three months and Zach Taylor said, you know, he's going to attack his rehab, you know, as ferociously as he's always done. And he has been as intentional. Like at some point I had to cop to him last year.

21:09I said, Joe, I'll be honest. I saw you throw in training camp. I didn't think you'd end up throwing it this well this season. And, you know, I was like, I don't want you to hear from anybody else. I want you to hear from me first. And because I think the work, I don't think he gets enough credit for how he looked at OTAs and training camp last year to what he looked like at the end of the season. I don't think people fully grasped the difficulty in the work that he put in. That's something he's taken a lot of pride in. If you want to get Joe, I think the highest praise that anybody can give Joe Burrow is that he works really hard and has put in the time to be good at what he does.

21:42I think he takes so much pride in that. So I think in terms of the rehab process, you're going to see that, you know, continually come through, you know, but when you look at where they're at moving forward, you know, we talk about the receivers. If you're Jake Brown, you've got to love, hey, I've got Jamar Chase to throw to. I've got Tee Higgins to throw to. And we saw that come to fruition against Jacksonville. You know, we saw that in 23 when Jake needed a touchdown. He said Tee Higgins is down there. Tee Higgins goes out and makes a play. You know, they're still sets. They're so unique. You know, when Jamar, you know, he's so good in open space.

22:12you get him the ball and he's going to generally run away from folks he's got so much power and speed that rare combination has really evolved in his route running and then t higgins who's been such an underrated receiver uh jamar make sure to clarify when they both sign 1a and 1b um you know and that's how they view him you know t's got such a good catch radius strong hands you know is is probably a better route runner than people think you know those combined you can definitely have a very solid offense. And the other thing that doesn't get talked about enough is that the play style is going to change a little bit too.

22:46With Jake Browning, you're going to be able to maybe get under center a little bit more. That may be something he likes. You're going to be able to work the play action off that a little bit more that you could have some boost in the run game, which hasn't gotten going these first couple of games. And so I think there are ways for this offense to continue to get better. And it's interesting, you know, I said it on Sports Center, you know, earlier, you know, Joe Burrow and Zach Taylor, Zach Taylor came in on the meeting today with the offense and showed them all the bad plays that they had against Jacksonville.

23:13And it was a way for them to show this. We can get so much better than what we put on tape. And when Zach talked today about the optimism being sky high, and when you talk to players, I don't think that's hyperbole. Everybody, they're obviously upset that Joe's not out there, but there is a genuine and firm belief that Jake Browning is good enough to get them into the postseason. I don't think that the feeling in that locker room for a team that just lost their starting quarterback, it wasn't as despondent as you would think because they know what Jake's capable of. And I think the guys genuinely do believe in it.

23:46Yeah. Sometimes you hear that and you're like, give me a break. You have to say this. I get it. You got three months ahead of you here, but there is a little proof of concept here again, 2023. I don't want to overblow it. Like they were, you know, the greatest show on turf or anything, but they finished 11th and offensive DVOA that year. Jake Browning ranked 17th out of 34 quarterbacks and drop back success rate that year, like for a backup quarterback to get competent, mediocre play. And like you said, you could change some things with the offense. You can go under center play action. Now Zach Taylor can be like, Oh, you know, these are the things I've been wanting to do.