Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow had the best season of his entire football playing career this season. Unfortunately, the Bengals wasted it.
Coming off of a season-ending wrist injury he sustained last year, Joe Burrow had an absolutely dominant 2024 NFL season, leading the entire league in passing yards and passing touchdowns while ranking in the top five in the league in both quarterback rating and completion percentage.
In any other season, Burrow would likely have been the MVP frontrunner for the way he performed consistently throughout the season. But this was not any other season.
As dominant, consistent, explosive, and surgical as Burrow was in the pocket, his team consistently let him down. Whether it was a missed game-winning field goal, a series of blown coverages, or an offensive line failing to provide protection, Burrow delivered nearly every time, but his team failed him all season.
The Bengals lost four games this season in games in which Burrow and the offense scored 30 or more points – by far the most of any team in the league.
The Cincinnati offense set a franchise record with 472 points – the sixth most in the league – the defense allowed the fifth most in the league with 434.
The Bengals are one of seven teams to have more than 40 touchdown passes in a single season over the last decade and the other six each won at least one game in the playoffs. The Bengals did not even make the playoffs.
The list goes on and on.
Ultimately, the Bengals wasted a career season from the best quarterback in franchise history. But the good news is, the team are already took one big step to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Following the season, the team decided to part ways with defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo, making it clear that the defensive performance this season was unacceptable.
“I just felt like we needed a change,” Taylor said of firing Anarumo according to the team website. “I thought long and hard about it. Lou’s been doing this for six years here and the success that we’ve had he’s been a big reason why we’ve had a lot of the success. I don’t take this lightly; put a lot of thought into it. It’s not an easy day for any of us. I just felt like we need to perform better as a football team. It’s not in any specific one area. I think we’ve got to be better in all three phases of our team and these are the decisions I made today and we’ll work to be better.”
In addition to Anarumo, the team also fired Frank Pollack, the team’s offensive line coach and run game coordinator, as well as defensive line coach Marion Hobby and linebackers coach James Bettcher.
There’s still work to be done in terms of the personnel on both sides of the ball, but it’s clear that the team realizes they wasted a golden year with a special player, and they’re trying to make the necessary changes to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Burrow will be back with the Bengals next season. We’ll have to see if the Bengals as a team can be better for him.
