Joe Burrow’s disappointing Week 10 just a blip in strong rookie season

Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow is seeing his ceiling limited by a bad offensive line.

Joe Burrow was never going to have life as good as he had it at LSU in 2019 in his first year as an NFL quarterback and, in the ninth game of his career as the Cincinnati Bengals starting quarterback, he received a reminder of just how steep the climb will be as he seeks to lead the struggling franchise to the league’s upper echelons.

The raw numbers from this season make for positive reading for the number one overall pick in the 2020 draft. Burrow has completed 65.4 percent of his passes for 2,485 yards, 12 touchdowns and five interceptions, with his interception percentage of 1.4 the eighth-best in the league.

However, he is coming off a chastening day against the vaunted defense of the Pittsburgh Steelers. In a 36-10 blowout loss to their undefeated AFC North rivals, Burrow connected on only 52.5 percent of his throws for 213 yards and one touchdown.

While Burrow’s struggles against a legitimate Super Bowl contender were hardly surprising, they did his hopes in an Offensive Rookie of the Year race seemingly being won by Justin Herbert little good.

Burrow’s season has not had the spectacular highs of Herbert’s 2020 campaign but, as the Bengals prepare for a stretch run filled with winnable games, how should we evaluate the 2019 Heisman Trophy winner’s rookie year so far?

Here we look at his performance in some advanced metrics to attempt to answer that question.

Accuracy on point until Week 10

Burrow struggled mightily in delivering the football accurately in the loss to the Steelers. That is reflected by his completion percentage and by his performance in completion percentage above expectation against Pittsburgh.

According to the NFL’s NextGen Stats, Burrow’s expected completion percentage was 63.6, meaning he finished the Week 10 matchup with a completion percentage above expectation of minus 11.1.

Yet that is not in keeping with how Burrow has fared in that metric overall this season. Indeed, for the year Burrow’s completion percentage above expectation is 3.9. Just four quarterbacks in the league have outperformed him in this metric.

For context, Herbert (3.7) is only a little bit behind Burrow in completion percentage above expectation and has the edge in terms of efficiency and value added on a per play basis.

Herbert more efficient

While Burrow is near the top of the league in an advanced metric that offers a strong indication as to the accuracy of signal-callers, he is in the bottom half of the NFL in Football Outsiders metrics that measure quarterback value.

Burrow ranks 26th in Defense-adjusted Yards Above Replacement (DYAR), which gauges total quarterback value. He is also 26th in Defense-adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA), a metric that assesses value per play.

By stark contrast, Herbert is 10th in DYAR and seventh in DVOA and their respective performances in Expected Points Added (EPA) per play also illustrate the greater value the Chargers rookie has added this season.

EPA per play measures a player’s impact on the scores of his games on a per play basis. Herbert’s advantage in this metric is more negligible – he is 19th in the NFL with an EPA per play of 0.188 while Burrow (0.135) is 24th, according to data collated by Ben Baldwin of The Athletic – suggesting that the gap between them is not as wide as the Football Outsiders metrics indicate.

In fact, the main difference may be that the former Oregon star has had the benefit of significantly better protection than Burrow has experienced in Cincinnati.

Bengals must fix O-Line woes

Though Burrow’s play has been largely encouraging, the same cannot be said for that of his offensive line.

The Bengals are a lowly 27th in Football Outsiders Adjusted Sack Rate, which ranks teams according to sacks (and intentional grounding penalties) per pass attempt adjusted for down, distance, and opponent.

Cincinnati has allowed 32 sacks of Burrow, the second-most in the NFL behind Carson Wentz. Herbert has suffered half that amount in his eight games for the Chargers, who are 15th in Adjusted Sack Rate.

Burrow may not win Offensive Rookie of the Year as many had expected him to at the start of the season. But, while his display at Heinz Field was disappointing, there is little in the season-long numbers that points to it being anything more than a blip in an otherwise strong start to his pro career.

One of the more accurate quarterbacks in the NFL in 2020, Burrow is a quarterback whose ability to add value is being limited by the poor play of the Bengals’ offensive line.

If Cincinnati wants to get the most of a quarterback who has adapted well to life at the highest level, then investment in the trenches in the offseason needs to be the organization’s top priority.