Clickbait but true: Joe Barro of the 4-8 Bengals deserves MVP consideration

Football is a team sport played by individuals, which means that at any given moment one individual can single-handedly undo the work of an entire team. The kicker who misses a crucial game-winning field goal, the quarterback who throws a crushing pick-6, the defensive lineman who commits a back-breaking penalty … when one player’s failure is the pivot point on which a game is lost, it’s crazy, but At the same time every player realizes that he too can be that player one day.

The exact opposite scenario is playing out in Cincinnati right now, a strange dynamic where the team is undoing the superiority of the individual. Joe Burrow is playing the best football of his career … and the Bengals defense is taking the sledgehammer for all that hard work.

See, “Joe Burrow of the 4-8 Bengals deserves MVP consideration” is the kind of clickbait headline everyone hates in the media, but it’s not as ridiculous as it sounds. The numbers are pretty impressive, starting with the fact that Barro leads the NFL in passing yards per game (278.1) and touchdowns (30) and is fourth in passer rating, behind only Lamar Jackson, Jared Goff and Tua Tagovailoa.

The Bengals are fifth overall as a team in points scored (27.9), tied with Tampa Bay and trailing only Detroit, Buffalo, Baltimore and Washington. And thanks to Baro, Ja’Mar Chase’s 1,142 receiving yards and 13 receiving touchdowns both lead the NFL.

The problem, quite simply, is that Buro are playing a team with an atrocious, almost league-worst defense. For example, consider the many ways Cincinnati reached or set dubious records for offensive fireworks losses:

Only Carolina has allowed more points per game than Cincinnati’s 28.3. The Detroit Lions outscored their opponents by an average of 15 points. The Bengals scored nearly half a point lower.

Put another way, Burrow’s offense needs to score more than four touchdowns a game to outscore its own defense. That’s a tremendous burden on your shoulders every single game, and Baro admitted after Sunday’s loss to Pittsburgh that it’s weighing on him.

“I feel it. I feel it. I feel the pressure on me to be great,” he said, then backed away from the accusations of his own defense. “That’s part of playing QB in the NFL. I have to play at the peak of my ability every week to go and win.”

He is doing his worst. Sunday marked the third straight game in which Baro threw for at least 300 yards and three touchdowns. Bengals record over that stretch: 0-3, thanks to the Cincinnati defense allowing at least 34 points in those three games. All told, Cincinnati has held exactly one team to fewer than 14 points on the season: the woeful New York Giants, who managed just 7 in October.

Burrow is certainly doing his part. In Week 13, he graded out as the NFL’s best quarterback by at least one standard:

Even more impressively, he’s putting up numbers that put him with the Giants — and not the terrible New York kind. According to ESPN research, only six players in NFL history have averaged 275 passing yards, thrown 30 passing touchdowns and thrown five or fewer interceptions through 12 games: twelve, plus Tom Brady (2007), Aaron Rodgers (2011, 2014, 2020) and Patrick Mahomes (2020). All but Mahomes will be named MVP. Guess who’s the only player on that crew with a losing record?

It’s enough to burrow around – almost — Break the code of clubhouse omerta that defines football. At the very least, he set off Fourth of July fireworks in the locker room.

“We’re going to learn a lot about who we have in our locker room, guys we can count on going forward and guys we can’t,” he said Sunday. Who we can rely on and who we can’t.”

Under any normal circumstances, these five games would provide some considerable hope for a league-leading offense. Cincinnati finished the season with Dallas, Tennessee, Cleveland, Denver and Pittsburgh. The playoffs are all out of reach — Cincinnati is five games behind Pittsburgh for the division lead, and 2 ½ games out of the seventh playoff spot. But dignity is still on the table. If the Bengals can come out of 2024 with some self-respect, they can figure out what to do about the defense in the offseason. More than almost any team in the league, the quarterback is not the problem.