Love this, although you gotta draw the injury-shortened career of Greg Cook into the equation. Virgil Carter came in after Cook's rookie season when he was instantly awesome, Burrow-like. Cook had rotator issues, something that might have been cleared up with surgery three or four decades later with technical advances but pretty much a career-killer in 1970. Shop and compare Cook's performances as a rook with Burrows's etc. I was a fan of the newbie team. Kinda broke my teenage heart when he had to hang'em up.
We need to start looking at these quarterbacks from a financial perspective. This is particularly true for sports that impose some hard cap on player expenses. Is Joe Burrow supremely talented? Yes. However, he’s also supremely expensive and that impacts the Bengals’ overall performance in profound ways. Football is a business, and businesses don’t just look solely at the value of their assets – they look at the liabilities associated with the expense of carrying those assets too.
The NFL seems to be stuck in a never-ending paradigm of failure where they have wrongly convinced themselves that the only way to win a Super Bowl is to irresponsibly overpay for a supposed elite quarterback. In looking at the list of highest paid quarterbacks and their lack of postseason success, the evidence against this strategy is beyond overwhelming at this point. Yet, the scared front office lemmings in the NFL continue to reject any other path and go over the cliff.
Football is a labor-intensive team sport comprised of both offense and defense. What history teaches is that the moment you ink a single quarterback to top of the market money and blow your financial flexibility under the cap - you’re headed downward. Maybe you have a year or two reprieve depending on when the extension starts, how much is structured as a signing bonus or you just happen to get lucky and crush the Draft, but eventually the piper shows up to get paid.
Key players can’t be resigned, quality free agents can’t be acquired, and the team moves into an era of inevitable decline all as the media provides cover by talking about how the overpaid and exorbitantly rich quarterback is now supposedly being “ruined” by the organization that met their demands. This, despite the contract being the sole reason the franchise is financially shackled and unable to do the things it needs to do to improve.
The piper has now come to Cincinnati. After inking Burrow to his huge extension numerous Super Bowl starters left, the once terrific defense fell off, Joe Mixon was sent packing, and most importantly Chase and Higgins played pissed without a deserved extension and a risk of catastrophic injury creating a season long distraction. Next year will be tougher potentially without one or both.
Burrow went to the Super Bowl three years ago with a loaded roster on a rookie contract that allowed it. What has been quickly forgotten, however, is that undrafted free agent Jake Browning ran essentially that same offense last year as Burrow sat out injured – again. Browning showed what roster construction can do with 98 Passer Rating, a 60 QBR while making just $750,000.
Outside of hitting on a rookie quarterback as the Bengals did, the only way to stop the decline is for the quarterback to take less and move some of their money to sign other key contributors. This is what Mahomes and Brady have done in winning multiple Super Bowls. It’s what Shohei Ohtani is now doing in L.A. It’s what Burrow should have done - but didn’t do - when he had the opportunity and all the leverage in the world at extension time.
So, who ruined who exactly? I’m not convinced that it wasn’t Joe Burrow – or his wildly expensive contract to be more precise - that has ruined the Bengals.
Why do the Bengals have more "Expected SB Won" if the Vikings have more QB PAA?
That’s because particularly high PAA seasons can boost that season’s expected SB% higher than we would expect if it scaled linearly.
Love this, although you gotta draw the injury-shortened career of Greg Cook into the equation. Virgil Carter came in after Cook's rookie season when he was instantly awesome, Burrow-like. Cook had rotator issues, something that might have been cleared up with surgery three or four decades later with technical advances but pretty much a career-killer in 1970. Shop and compare Cook's performances as a rook with Burrows's etc. I was a fan of the newbie team. Kinda broke my teenage heart when he had to hang'em up.
We need to start looking at these quarterbacks from a financial perspective. This is particularly true for sports that impose some hard cap on player expenses. Is Joe Burrow supremely talented? Yes. However, he’s also supremely expensive and that impacts the Bengals’ overall performance in profound ways. Football is a business, and businesses don’t just look solely at the value of their assets – they look at the liabilities associated with the expense of carrying those assets too.
The NFL seems to be stuck in a never-ending paradigm of failure where they have wrongly convinced themselves that the only way to win a Super Bowl is to irresponsibly overpay for a supposed elite quarterback. In looking at the list of highest paid quarterbacks and their lack of postseason success, the evidence against this strategy is beyond overwhelming at this point. Yet, the scared front office lemmings in the NFL continue to reject any other path and go over the cliff.
Football is a labor-intensive team sport comprised of both offense and defense. What history teaches is that the moment you ink a single quarterback to top of the market money and blow your financial flexibility under the cap - you’re headed downward. Maybe you have a year or two reprieve depending on when the extension starts, how much is structured as a signing bonus or you just happen to get lucky and crush the Draft, but eventually the piper shows up to get paid.
Key players can’t be resigned, quality free agents can’t be acquired, and the team moves into an era of inevitable decline all as the media provides cover by talking about how the overpaid and exorbitantly rich quarterback is now supposedly being “ruined” by the organization that met their demands. This, despite the contract being the sole reason the franchise is financially shackled and unable to do the things it needs to do to improve.
The piper has now come to Cincinnati. After inking Burrow to his huge extension numerous Super Bowl starters left, the once terrific defense fell off, Joe Mixon was sent packing, and most importantly Chase and Higgins played pissed without a deserved extension and a risk of catastrophic injury creating a season long distraction. Next year will be tougher potentially without one or both.
Burrow went to the Super Bowl three years ago with a loaded roster on a rookie contract that allowed it. What has been quickly forgotten, however, is that undrafted free agent Jake Browning ran essentially that same offense last year as Burrow sat out injured – again. Browning showed what roster construction can do with 98 Passer Rating, a 60 QBR while making just $750,000.
Outside of hitting on a rookie quarterback as the Bengals did, the only way to stop the decline is for the quarterback to take less and move some of their money to sign other key contributors. This is what Mahomes and Brady have done in winning multiple Super Bowls. It’s what Shohei Ohtani is now doing in L.A. It’s what Burrow should have done - but didn’t do - when he had the opportunity and all the leverage in the world at extension time.
So, who ruined who exactly? I’m not convinced that it wasn’t Joe Burrow – or his wildly expensive contract to be more precise - that has ruined the Bengals.