Soon after the dressing room door closed, Burrow stepped in front of his team that had just been humbled and, at times, humiliated by the Ravens who had dressed them down verbally on the field and later in their own postgame locker room.
Sunday’s loss — the first shutout loss at home in eight years – had officially eliminated the Bengals from the playoffs.
It would be the third straight year there would be no postseason for this team that was in the Super Bowl five years ago and the AFC title game the season after.
Burrow told the team – as he would reiterate later in his terse comments in the media room:
“There is no team in the NFL that would have won the game today if I was the quarterback.”
He told the team he holds himself to a high standard and, as he put it later, he hadn’t come close to meeting it. He admitted making mental mistakes, throwing mistakes, leadership mistakes.
With the media, he called it his worst game ever.
He took the blame for this loss, and he apologized individually to some players for his performance.
He was just as candid and brutal in his self-evaluation in front of the media and then he quietly retreated back to his corner of the dressing room and sat alone.
He still wore his long sleeve white undergarment and uniform pants. His hair was mussed up, his feet were bare.
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
He stared at the floor and occasionally leaned down to rub the surgically repaired left big toe he’d injured in September.
Although doctors had said the turf toe injury would require at least three months to recover from, he had cut off the cast on his own and forced himself back into the lineup in two months because he wanted to lead his troops on Sundays like this.
But as he sat there, he looked more than deflated, He seemed demoralized, not just by what had happened, but likely by what he knew lies ahead.
All that let’s-steel-our-backbone-and-press-on talk rings hollow with this team now.
Something needs to change and even with the sloth-like, slow-mo reactions of upper management here, there’s likely to be some kind of reconfiguration after these next three meaningless games to close out the dismal 2025 season.
The Bengals are now 4-10. Sunday’s loss knocked them out of playoff contention faster than any time in the past five years.
Four days before the game – on his 29th birthday – Burrow had had a puzzling exchange with the media when he said: “If I want to keep doing this I have to have fun doing it.”
He explained no further and afterward speculation ran wild.
Had he finally had enough of the Bengals, who are paying him a boatload of money, but giving him minimal support, thanks to the smallest scouting staff in the league and some of the play-calling handled by head coach Zac Taylor, who at times seems overmatched and outmaneuvered?
Some people thought Burrow might be contemplating pulling a Barry Sanders or Andrew Luck move and want to walk away from the game completely while in his prime.
A more likely comparison would have been his fear of turning into Archie Manning, a great quarterback who took a physical pounding every week because he had no protection.
After Sunday’s game Burrow was pressed to explain his cryptic pronouncement last Wednesday:
Did he want out of Cincinnati?
“My comments had nothing to do with Cincinnati,” he said. “My comments had everything to do with me, my mindset and football.”
Chase – whose bond with Burrow goes back to their national championship days at LSU – knows the quarterback better than anybody in the Bengals quarters:
“He just really loves the game. He just wants to be great. I can respect that from him, but like he told me, I can’t let him kill himself mentally.”
When Chase was asked what kind of changes he’d like to see in the offseason, he said: “If I had a say it would probably be something…”
He caught himself and before opening up more he just said he’d try to control what he can.
But the inference was there. There needs to be a change.
Taylor faced a similar challenge last offseason, and all he did was change defensive coordinators and the unit got even worse than it was before.
This time it needs to be something more drastic than that.
Taylor was asked if he thought he and his staff were still up to the task. He said he believed in everyone here.
Chase didn’t give such a blanket endorsement.
And Burrow’s postgame actions and demeanor said he didn’t either.
‘Out of harm’s way’
Burrow – who ended the day completing 25 of 39 passes for 225 yards and two interceptions, one returned for a touchdown, and a passer rating of 58.2, second lowest in his career – was out of kilter from the start.
The Bengals opened with an 11-play drive that had them on the cusp of the red zone when Burrow, trying to avoid a pass rush, scrambled backward and was buried for a 15-yard sack that knocked the team out of field goal range.
On the next possession his pass to Chase coming across the middle was high – though still catchable – and bounced off the receiver’s hands into the arms of Ravens cornerback Marlon Humphrey.
It went on like that all day and in the fourth quarter – with his team facing a third-and-goal situation from the Ravens’ seven yard line – Burrow was intercepted by Ravens’ linebacker Kyle Van Noy who then lateralled to safety Alohi Gilan who sprinted the last 84 yards of what was a 95-yard pick six TD play.
With the Bengals down 24, Burrow – just a couple of weeks back from his second major injury in the past three years and the fourth in his six-year career – was sent back onto the field with 7:24 left against the team that had been roughing him up all day,
I asked Taylor why Burrow – their $275 million investment – was out there:
“That was tough. We just ended (with a) pick six. We didn’t give (Joe) Flacco any time to warm up in zero-degree temperature, so we tried to manage it – just hand the ball off or quick-game things that would keep (Burrow) out of harm’s way.
“If it was anything other than zero degrees, we probably would have quickly made the change.”
A tremendous leader
As the dressing room emptied out Sunday, Burrow still sat there.
He looked nothing like the confident guy on the cover of Sports Illustrated’s Sport and Style issue who sat in an ice bath while wearing a maroon suit. Beneath the image was the headline “Joe Brrr,” a reference to his cool persona.
And this was not the celeb who showed up at the Met Gala this year in a heron blue double-breasted Gucci jacket and Cartier sunglasses or the guy who walked the runway in Paris for Vogue last summer.
Now Joe Cool was crumbled.
I asked Chase what he could do to lift his pal:
“If I’m being honest, I’ve never been in this situation with him where I had to uplift him. But going forward I might need to because he does it to me. At the end of the day, you never know what he might be going through.”
Not far from Burrow’s locker, Brown finished dressing, looked toward his quarterback and said:
“We know he’s a tremendous leader. We know how important he is to everything we are as a team. He is our engine.
“To me, No. 9 is one of the best quarterbacks to play the game in history.
“We have got to do a better job in totality and put him in position to highlight that. I need to tell him again. It’s not just on him. We all got a hand in this.”
Brown would do that later though. When dressed, he left.
Finally, Burrow headed to the showers, then dressed and looked around the near-empty locker room. He saw cornerback D.J. Turner on the far side of the room and headed over to him. He talked quietly to him for a minute and then walked away.
Turner stared at his departing quarterback and without saying a word he put on his coat and headed for the dressing room door and the freezing cold outside.
It would feel better than the uncomfortable climate he had left.
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