Joe Burrow’s Injury Leaves the Bengals at a Crossroads

The star quarterback’s season-ending surgery complicates Cincinnati’s future. Plus, more on the Browns, Bears, Stefon Diggs, Dan Campbell and Saquon Barkley in Albert Breer’s tip sheet.

As usual, we’re getting ready for Sunday. But after what happened Thursday night, it’s hard not to start with a look back …

• In September, I never thought we’d be 10 weeks deep, and two of the AFC’s three superpowers would be on the outside of the conference’s playoff picture looking in.

But here we are. We diagnosed the Bills’ ills earlier this week. Today, we cover the Bengals.

And we cover the Bengals because like injuries have felled Buffalo (particularly on defense) this fall, a very, very big one nipped Cincinnati on Thursday night. For the second time this year, Joe Burrow is injured. For the second time, the injury serves as an existential threat to their season. This time around, though, he can’t play through.

The basics here, I’m sure, you know—cameras caught Burrow’s throwing hand in a wrap before the Bengals’ game in Baltimore, and then in the second quarter, he fell on the hand and was subsequently writhing in pain after a throw, showing frustration thereafter, then exiting for the locker room before the half. He was ruled out officially by the team early in the second half, with a wrist injury showing in a hand that had become badly swollen.

Imaging taken Friday showed he’d need season-ending wrist surgery. Bengals coach Zac Taylor said that Burrow wearing the wrap Thursday before the game was unrelated to the injury he suffered after being taken to the ground by Jadeveon Clowney.

So where does this leave the Bengals? First and foremost, it changes the AFC race and Cincinnati’s place in it. That much is obvious. But it also leaves the franchise at a bit of a crossroads, with Burrow and Logan Wilson now on second contracts, and Ja’Marr Chase to take care of in the near future. Tee Higgins is a free agent, as is D.J. Reader, and those two have been pretty integral to this iteration of the Bengals. Tyler Boyd, Chidobe Awuzie and Jonah Williams are up, too. There is a host of tough decisions to make.

With the window to build with its quarterback on a rookie contract now closed, Cincinnati’s probably going to have to transition as the Chiefs did two offseasons ago, when Kansas City offloaded Tyreek Hill and got younger across the board ahead of Patrick Mahomes’s fifth NFL season (2024 is Year 5 for Burrow).

Which is to say it can be done. But it’s more difficult, and it means you have to hit on draft picks like the Chiefs did with L’Jarius Sneed, Creed Humphrey, Trey Smith, George Karlaftis, Nick Bolton, Trent McDuffie and a bunch of others, so you’re stocked with cost-controlled talent that allows for the bigger contracts at the top of your ledger. The Bengals, of course, have already shown they can do it because hitting on picks is a big part of how their current group was built. That said, turning the trick again won’t be easy.

And as for now? Well, we’ll see what Jake Browning can do. But the Bengals certainly would be a decent bet to have some higher picks than expected to work with in April.

• Joe Flacco was the only quarterback to work out for the Browns on Friday, and it’s possible he signs soon—but the idea coming in, for the Cleveland brass, was to take a look at the former Super Bowl champion Raven as one potential option for filling the third quarterback spot, alongside Dorian Thompson-Robinson and PJ Walker on the roster.

Whether that quarterback is a candidate to start or just practice-squad depth fodder is still something that the coaches and front office are discussing.

Obviously, if you bring in Flacco, it’s with the idea that he’ll start for you, once he gets his feet wet and comfortable in your system. That Flacco started four games last year and has nine starts over the last three years, makes him viable—presuming his workout went well—as an option to pilot a team that, between its run game and defense, may not need a star at the position to get itself into the playoffs, and even make some noise when it gets there.

• Just to circle back to the Bills, here’s what Stefon Diggs had to say about his brother Trevon’s missives on his future earlier in the week.

“I’m not responsible for how other people feel,” he said Thursday. “Anybody in this room for this manner, a reporter, a player, even my own brother. I love my brother. In the space that my brother’s coming from is my family. So, you want to know how he feels? You got to take it up with him.”

Diggs then said he respects his brother’s opinion, but that it should be regarded as just that—opinion—with the older Diggs saying he hadn’t addressed his situation of late with his little brother.

I also think, based on what I know about him, Diggs does deserve the benefit of the doubt. People who have worked with him generally love him, and say the issues with him often relate right back to winning and losing (and the belief, one held by a lot of great receivers, that the best way for the team to win is to get him the ball).

• A lot of folks have asked about Ryan Tannehill or Jimmy Garoppolo requesting to be released and going somewhere (Cleveland?) to help a quarterback-needy team.

Three problems with that.

One, those two, like every other vet post-trade deadline, are subject to waivers. So there’d be no assurance that either would make it to his desired spot in the waiver order. Two, the Titans or Raiders would risk having to pay out their contracts if they let go. For Las Vegas, that’d mean potentially being on the hook for the $11.25 million roster bonus in March. For Tennessee, it’d mean being responsible for the $10.5 million Tannehill has left this year. Third, in the case of Garoppolo, a claiming team would have to absorb that roster bonus.

Of course, it’s fun to think about something like this happening post-trade deadline. But it’s much, much harder to pull off in practice.

• Texas A&M’s interest in Dan Campbell, of course, makes sense. Campbell is an alum, knows the state and the program, and presumably could be a force in short order on the recruiting trail. It also makes sense, with the team he has, that Campbell would quickly shoot an offer down and move forward with the red-hot Lions.

So is there another NFL name that might make sense for the Aggies? How about Campbell’s defensive coordinator, Aaron Glenn? Glenn is another A&M alum, another native Texan and another who I think would resonate as a recruiter.

If I’m A&M, I at least make a call there and see whether the 51-year-old would have any interest.

• When Justin Fields gets back under center Sunday for the Bears against the Lions, it’ll have been five weeks since he initially went down with a thumb injury. And Fields, as you’d expect he would, has used the time judiciously as undrafted rookie Tyson Bagent has filled in. And for what it’s worth, Fields played his two best games of the season going into the game he got hurt in against the Vikings.

So he should be well positioned now to make his case to stay on as the Bears’ quarterback into 2024, with Chicago currently holding the first and fifth spots in the draft order. Whether he’s good enough to pull it off is still an open question. We’ll see.

• Giants RB Saquon Barkley said this week that “loyalty don’t mean nothing,” and it’s a point that should be well taken by any NFL player, given the realities of pro football. That said, it doesn’t line up with his desire to stay put at the trade deadline. I think it’s pretty easy to make the argument that it would’ve made sense, at that point, for Barkley to go to a playoff contender, and for the Giants to get a return for him.

And that’s especially true if he’s on another roster in four months.

• I’m all for player safety—but I think banning the type of hip-drop tackle that felled Mark Andrews on Thursday night will bring some sort of unintended consequence. The reason we’re seeing more of that style of tackling is because of well-placed efforts by coaches to teach rugby/Seahawk-style technique, where a defender wraps and rolls to avoid head contact as he’s bringing an offensive player down.

The problem with that technique is, I think, what we saw Thursday. The offensive player isn’t just going to go down. He’s going to keep driving his legs, which can carry the defender’s body weight off the ground. If the defender then drops his weight (the only real response in that situation), the offensive player’s legs are in jeopardy.

And that illustrates what happens with all this stuff. New rules and emphases go into effect, and coaches and players adjust, and then some entirely new problem arises, and you can become a dog chasing its tail with this stuff. Feels like outlawing the hip drop would be, well, exactly that.

• With Michigan doing all it can to get itself to the College Football Playoff with as much intact as possible before the NCAA completes its investigation and drops the hammer, it’s fair to say the rumor mill will be a-churning on Jim Harbaugh returning to the NFL.

• Sunday’s schedule? Not great. The two best matchups of the weekend were last night’s game and Monday night’s game (Eagles vs. Chiefs). And this sort of slate is exactly why the TV networks don’t want a second bye incorporated into the calendar—it’ll lead to too many soft spots in the schedule. Which, ultimately, is why the NFL hasn’t really considered the idea of going to a 19-week double-bye much at all as of late.