Bengals, Burrow Survive Reckless Night in What Should Be Last of His Preseason Action

CINCINNATI – Cincinnati Bengals fans – and some coaches and teammates – would have loved to see an “average” Joe Burrow on Monday night.

Instead, they got the lunatic fringe, slightly cuckoo version of Burrow that even had ESPN analyst Troy Aikman pleading “Go down, Joe. It’s August.”

Burrow scrambled around, took a 17-yard sack at his own 2-yard line – “a bad sack,” he called it in a sideline interview – then later scrambled into another sack that was negated by a horse collar penalty on a play that could have ended worse than it did.

In short, he played like every snap mattered when nary a one did.

To quote center Ted Karras from earlier in the week, “C’mon, man. That’s our hopes and dreams out there.”

Burrow’s injuries have been as big of a reason for the Bengals’ slow starts the last five seasons as anything else, and the slow starts were the reason head coach Zac Taylor was willing to expose his quarterback to risk this summer.

But he probably didn’t expect a round of triple jeopardy.

"Do I love seeing that? No, I don't," Taylor said. "But at the same time, he's out there learning what he can and can't do. We've seen him get out of that stuff before. That's why he's playing in the preseason, a chance to feel what it's like to feel in a game. There's times where he's going to get out of that and get a big play, and there's going to be times where we're in a tough spot on the 2-yard line.

"He gets a chance to feel all of that and learn from it," Taylor added.

Burrow eventually made it to the safety of the sideline to watch the backups handle the rest of the action against Commanders, no worse for the wear despite the substantial scare.

Head coach Zac Taylor seemed unbothered by Burrow’s reckless outing during his post halftime interview with ESPN.

“He did a good job,” Taylor said. “It's good to get out here in these preseason situations, feel the rush, feel the environment, be in the huddle with his guys. We took Ja'Marr (Chase) and Tee (Higgins), Chase Brown out early. So he had to go out there and lead us to two scores.”

When his night ended, presumably so did the most active preseason of his career.

Burrow’s final tally on five preseason drives saw him go 18 of 24 for 185 yards and three touchdowns for a passer rating of 136.8.

The Bengals averaged 5.6 points per drive on his five series.

After playing 15 snaps on two series against the Eagles, Burrow took 24 snaps on three drives against the Commanders.

He led a nine-play, 58-yard touchdown drive to open the game. It was aided by a 24-yard pass interference penalty on a long attempt to Chase, and Brown capped the possession with a 1-yard touchdown run.

The second drive was the disastrous one that included a missed screen to rookie Tahj Brooks and the 17-yard sack.

But he rebounded by leading a 12-play, 70-yard drive that he finished with a 4-yard touchdown pass to Charlie Jones out of an empty set.

“We wanted to put them on their heels a little and come out of the huddle quick and get it snapped,” Burrow said. “That's a throw that I work quite a bit. I was able to drop my arm angle a little bit and put it on, and Chuck made a great play.”

Overall, he described the performance as “Some good plays, some bad plays. It's good to make those mistakes in the preseason this year rather than the regular season.”

The good news for the Bengals is Burrow survived his five preseason series to get to the regular season healthy.