Is Joe Burrow Actually Elite?
A Mostly-Reasonable Inner Dialogue About The Bengals’ Signal-Caller
“Hey, I got your message. You wanted to write an article about Joe Burrow?”
You got it.
“You wanna take a victory lap? You did call him the 2nd best quarterback in the NFL two years ago before he whooped Josh Allen in Buffalo and nearly beat Mahomes again at Arrowhead. Word on the street is he won you a ton of money too. Now it seems basically everyone (coaches / scouts, writers, players, stats guys) agrees with you that he’s top-3, and ahead of Allen. Vegas has him as the 3rd most likely guy to win MVP.”
Well… actually the opposite. I’m not sure any more that Burrow is elite.
“Uhh… what? Give me a little more explanation here.”
OK, fair enough. So I first began to wonder about this last season, when I did a with-or-without-you (WOWY) analysis for the quarterbacks who missed time. I introduced this concept in an article last year on Lamar Jackson. The basic idea is that in a sport with too many confounding variables, the best way to test a player’s ability is the natural experiment that occurs when he gets injured. If you get half the season with him, and half the season without him, you can compare the team’s performance to see the impact.
When I ran the math for Lamar, who missed 25% of his team’s games from 2020-2022, his team scored ~11 points per game more with him in the lineup. Dak Prescott (10 ppg) and Kyler (9 ppg) also looked great by this measure, while Tua (5 ppg) and Jimmy G (1.2) looked far more pedestrian.
Last year, we had a ton of QB injuries and, consequently, a raft of great data. Burrow was one of them - he started 10 of 17 games after a midseason hand injury. Here’s how it shook out, with Burrow and backup Jake Browning highlighted:
This chart shows every quarterback who both started and missed at least 5 games. There’s a ton of fascinating stuff here1, but the big surprise for me was Burrow. He’s the only big-time QB whose team was better when he wasn’t there. Look at what surrounds him? It’s an all-you-can-eat buffet of terrible QB play.
“Well, I don’t love seeing him down in the Tannehill / Pickett / Dobbs quadrant. But come on, it was 7 games. And Jake Browning is good!”
I hear you on the sample size. Weird things happen, and he did have a lingering wrist injury to start the year. But I think you gotta update your beliefs a little bit more here. Jake Browning was an undrafted guy who didn’t make it above a practice squad in 4 years - that’s about as low a vote of confidence as the league hands out. In his 7 games, the defenses he played ranked 6th, 10th, 20th, 11th, 6th, 7th, and 2nd by DVOA – pretty tough! His QBR for the year was decisively better than Burrow’s, 60.1 to 51.6.
Maybe Ja’Marr Chase, Tee Higgins, Zac Taylor, and Joe Mixon were doing more of the legwork than we thought.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah - Burrow has got a bit of help. But you’re a stats guy - weird things happen in small intervals. I can play the small interval game too – before he got injured, he’d just lit up San Francisco and Buffalo for a QBR of 87 across two games.”
I agree with you - but I didn’t call you just because of the first bit of work. Burrow’s career stats are not as impressive as those rankings would imply. While it’s hard to find an all-encompassing quarterback production stat, I favor two advanced metrics: ESPN’s QBR and Adjusted Net Yards / Attempt, which takes yards per pass attempt and adjusts it for interceptions, touchdowns, and sacks. Below, I plotted Burrow’s career averages against every other Week 1 starter in the NFL (minimum two seasons of data):
What’s so elite about that? He’s in the same range as Tua, Hurts, and Cousins!
“Wait … you’re seriously insinuating that Burrow is worse than Tua and Kirk Cousins?”
Yeah - you like that?
Nah, just kidding. Those two are just products of the McVay/Shanahan game-breaking offenses. I don’t seriously think Purdy is the best QB in the NFL.
“Phew, you had me on tilt there. I admit that graph isn’t looking good for my boy. But all you’re talking about right now is the regular season - and you know the money is made in the playoffs. That’s where Joey B shines, baby. 5-2. 3-1 on the road. You know they used to call it Burrowhead, right? He’s a young Timmy Brady!”
Have you looked back at that playoff run recently?
“Uhh, what does that mean?”
Like - did you know Burrow has never scored more than 28 points in the playoffs?
“No, but that seems a bit arbitrary.”
It’s not! Over the last 5 years, 28 is the minimum number of points you need to score to guarantee a 70% chance of victory. You need 25 to be better-than even odds to win. Burrow does that in less than half his playoff games. His teams have averaged 22 offensive points a game. Usually that has you winning 45% of the time.
It’s his defense that has been elite. They’ve given up just 19 points a game. Remember when they had Mahomes seeing ghosts? They crushed Josh Allen up there in New York. Maybe this playoff run goes out a bit more to Big Lou.
“I like Big Lou. But come on. Burrow has been clutch. You watch in January and those other teams are scared of him. He’s a killer out there – way better than the regular season.”
My heart is with you on that. He has a killer’s vibe. But the numbers don’t say the same thing… the playoff stats are way worse than the regular season. The QBR is 52 and the Adjusted Net Yards per attempt is sub-6… that’s, like, Josh Dobbs. He takes a sack once every 10 dropbacks!
“Wow you’ve got an answer for everything, man. Must be nice to argue against yourself!”
It is, not gonna lie.
“OK, so you think Joe Burrow sucks?”
No, I don’t.
“Then what do you think?”
I think it’s complicated and we don’t yet know if he’s elite. Saying he’s a top-3 quarterback in the NFL feels extremely premature and more vibes than reality. The Browning stretch makes me think we are severely underrating the strength of his offensive supporting cast. A closer study of his playoff run shows his defense deserves much more credit than it gets.
But he might still get there. There are a couple inconvenient truths for the case above. First, in his rookie year, he also got injured after 10 games. With him, the team averaged 21.6 and without him, 14. That’s an elite difference and most of the supporting cast was the same.
Second, here’s how Burrow’s career compares to the first four seasons of the star QB he is most often compared to…
The early 2000s were a slightly different era of NFL football but still, QBs can get a LOT better over the course of their careers.
“So you’re telling me you wrote 1,300 words to just tell me you don’t have a goddamn opinion about this.”
No – my opinion just has ~nuance~.
“Jesus Christ, you statistics people are a real pain in the tuchus”
I’ll take that as a compliment.
“Of course you would.”
Among them: (1) Kyler Murray continues to look great, (2) Aiden O’Connell exposed Jimmy Garropolo, and (3) holy moly is Desmond Ridder bad at football.
Awesome insight here. Especially coming off the injury it's complex to handicap the Bengals this season. I didn't realize Browning was so good last season!