I don’t think any of us signed up to watch one of the great on-paper matchups of the season to see it finish with a flailing Jake Browning frantically trying to make up ground for the Bengals against an elite Ravens defense, but I’m in the silver lining business.
This has been a massively disappointing season on the injury front, especially when we look at the AFC. Aaron Rodgers made it a handful of plays. Deshaun Watson is now out for the season. Joe Burrow, who left Thursday’s game with a wrist injury that was serious enough to disallow him from throwing a football (and prompt a deleted post on social media that revealed some type of brace or coverage on the injured area before the game), struggled with a calf strain for the opening month and a half of the season and was clearly less effective. The AFC, in particular, was supposed to feature the gold standard at the position, which caused a lot of teams—certainly the Browns highest among them—to bend moral and economic principles just to keep pace in the first place.
The positive is that, in the absence of an elite starting quarterback we find the sort of primal skills of a franchise laid bare. Namely, how good, really, is a coaching staff? How good, really, is a general manager?
A truly amazing quarterback, one whom we would universally consider a top-five player in the NFL, can mask so many deficiencies. While the situation in New England is far more complex than pre- and post–Tom Brady, there is an endless supply of prospective coaches from that tree who have failed to replicate the offense and roster-building strategy without the greatest player in NFL history. Josh McDaniels would be the most recent and most public example, having been twice fired as a head coach in the middle of a season.
The Broncos, without Peyton Manning, melted like a chocolate rabbit on Mercury. The Saints are middling at best without Drew Brees, and their coach absconded west to avoid the nightmarish salary cap ramifications of trying to spend through the fear of Brees’s departure. We can weight accomplishments differently, and peel away the mythos that some of these coaches, who are less great coaches and better globbers-on (clinical term). That, my friends, is exciting.
In Cleveland, since Watson was not playing all that well anyway before his season-ending shoulder injury, we have seen something of a clinic in putting a team together. So much so, that I have repeatedly questioned the need for Watson in the first place. Jim Schwartz, Myles Garrett, elite lines, a complementary secondary … all of it points to a process that has been successful in most ways.
With the Jets, I would argue, similarly, that we have seen truly inspired moments of coaching post-Rodgers. The Jets’ victories over the Eagles and Bills, plus a loss to the Chiefs that was completely derailed by a bogus holding call, should be weighted—viewed in an entirely different context from a legendary coach plowing through sleepy wins with a quarterback gifted enough to repaint the Sistine Chapel with a toothpick whilst blindfolded. (Similarly, we could wonder whether we are seeing the limitations of the front office in terms of its ability to build an offensive infrastructure around a quarterback, and whatever remains the driving motivator in trying to turn Zach Wilson around in 2023, despite a growing amount of evidence that he may need more time to develop.)
Now, if Burrow’s wrist issue causes him to miss a few games, we will find out what becomes of the Bengals.
It is funny how narratives change. Incredibly, we can witness, without bemusement, Burrow taking record numbers of sacks over his first few years in the NFL. Only after Burrow sits for an extended period of time does the hairsplitting begin. Much like we’ve learned about Garrett Wilson still thriving with Zach Wilson, we will learn about Ja’Marr Chase. Much like we deduced Kevin Stefanski could really coach with PJ Walker leading the charge, we will find out how much changed in Zac Taylor and the Bengals between his 6–25 start before Burrow and during Burrow’s rookie season, which was interrupted by an ACL tear, and his 27–16 record since.
What team owners choose to do with that information is ultimately up to them and whatever tweets they happen to read before walking into a meeting where they actually have to make a decision. But there is nothing wrong with getting a little closer to the heart of the matter, which, next to being consistently dazzled beyond needing to ask hard questions, is almost as fun.
