Joe Burrow Ranked Outside Top-Five NFL Quarterbacks as Bye Week Rolls on

Sports Illustrated's Matt Verdarame dropped the site's latest 1-32 NFL quarterback rankings, and Bengals passer Joe Burrow fell outside the top five names in the update.

He started the season ranked fifth overall and is down to sixth on the board with Cincinnati sitting at 3-2 overall entering its bye week.

"When Burrow has been healthy, he’s been an elite quarterback throughout his seven-year NFL career," Verdarame wrote. "In 2026, Burrow has started all five games for the Bengals and looked like a superstar, ranking sixth with 1,361 passing yards while tossing 11 touchdowns against three interceptions. Analytically, Burrow also ranks fourth in CPOE (6.0) and 13th in EPA per play (0.179) while checking in eighth in success rate (51.2%). With Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins on the outside, Cincinnati remains one of the more dangerous offenses in football, led by a quarterback whose only true challenge is remaining on the field for 17 games."

Names like Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Brock Purdy, Lamar Jackson and Jared Goff got slotted above Burrow in that order from 1-5.

Once you get to the top-eight quarterbacks this season, it's hard to really slice one apart from the other. The QB play at the top has been fantastic. If Burrow had 1-2 turnovers instead of four, he'd likely be in that top five, and Cincinnati could be 4-1 or 5-0.

Alas, he faces the easiest remaining strength of schedule on ESPN's NFL FPI. The veteran passer can light things up the rest of the way and cement himself as a top-five hurler by the end of the season.

"We got to be smarter. We got to be smarter. Two fumbles in the red zone. A couple of personal fouls that hurt us, hurt our field position, gave them points on the board. We got to be smarter," Burrow said about the offensive operation on Sunday before touching on his bye week plans. "We'll see. I don't know. It's so early. I want to maintain my conditioning, my strength and conditioning, and certainly want to keep throwing. I'll try to find a plan. This is uncharted territory for me, having a bye this early, so we'll see."

Check out the full ranking here.

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